Music: Bands of the Mind: Johnny Hoho:

Rather than open up a "Radio Plays without a Radio" department, we'll place this one here for now, since the spirit of "Bands of the Mind" includes any homemade audio production whose circumstances are similarly microscopic.

Recently our friend JLK unearthed these lost classic pieces of audio storytelling from his Middle School years. Johnny Hoho was a character that appeared in a comic strip drawn by "JLK and JKL" and published in their homemade newspaper, The JLK and JKL Daily Post. Johnny Hoho was supposed to be a walking, talking Hostess™ Ho-Ho (in spite of the fact that he was always colored yellow in the Sunday strips - perhaps his daddy was a Twinkie?). See pic below, from June 1979.

"Johnny Hoho Goes to Japan" is the name of this 10 minute audio presentation, credited on the tape as a "JLK and JKL Production." Accompanied by his talking dog Fred, Johnny ventures to Japan and engages in one guffaw after another, most of which involves humor that utilizes the Japanese word for "penis." The other side of the cassette featuring this precious radio drama contains tape-drive data for a Commodore 64 computer! Now, if only we had the hardware to know what exactly was stored on here ...

Johnny Hoho returns from his Japan adventure and follows it up with a trip to the Bluegrass state in the sequel "Johnny Hoho Visits Kentucky." Once again followed by Fred the Dog, Johnny sees the local sights, including a climactic visit to Mammoth Cave, where he and Fred fall into the Bottomless Pit and end up back in Japan. Clocking in at about 15 minutes, this presentation features Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" as its opening and closing theme (and thus eating up at least three minutes of the running time).

Eventually selections from our Bands Of The Mind department will be made available on "Talent", a projected series of compilation CDs. In the meantime, if you just can't wait, contact us and maybe we can do some swapping.