Piano Dumped on the Beach

Subject: Piano Dumped on the Beach
From: Raggytash
Date: 30 Oct 17 - 07:43 AM

A piano has been dumped on a beach in Cornwall Link

So if we all gather for a sing what should we be singing.

Stranger(est) on the Shore.

Subject: RE: Piano Dumped on the Beach
From: Vashta Nerada
Date: 30 Oct 17 - 08:02 AM

You have to scroll way down to the story (it's listed in the summary but without a link)

Posted at 3:57
Dumped piano on beach leaves sour note

Supporters of a beach in Cornwall are trying to figure out how and why an upright piano was dumped on it.

The Swanpool Beach Facebook page revealed yesterday how the instrument was discovered, saying: "Unless Elton John is having his next concert on Swanpool beach, this shouldn't be here".

Image

They added that: "As usual, we'll get it shifted. But, if anyone fancies having this bad boy in their jazz pad, then you're more than welcome to take it."

What would you play on it where it was found? Anything by the Beach Boys might be one suggestion.

Mind you, if it was caught in the high tide, it could be a section of Handel's Water Music, we suppose.

Subject: RE: Piano Dumped on the Beach
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 30 Oct 17 - 08:27 AM

Love leftus in the sand?

Subject: RE: Piano Dumped on the Beach
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 30 Oct 17 - 08:31 AM

We do like to be beside the seaside.
Show me the way to go home.
Right said Fred.

Subject: RE: Piano Dumped on the Beach
From: Rapparee
Date: 30 Oct 17 - 10:00 AM

By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea.
Piano man.

Subject: RE: Piano Dumped on the Beach
From: Iains
Date: 30 Oct 17 - 10:30 AM

Maybe it came from a yellow submarine?

Subject: RE: Piano Dumped on the Beach
From: Jos
Date: 30 Oct 17 - 10:46 AM

'What kind of a noise annoys an oyster?'

Subject: RE: Piano Dumped on the Beach
From: Greg F.
Date: 30 Oct 17 - 11:04 AM

Perhaps this is the same one that used to be on Ben Nevis & has simply been relocated?

Subject: RE: Piano Dumped on the Beach
From: keberoxu
Date: 30 Oct 17 - 12:04 PM

Well, there was that Jane Campion film that
won two acting Oscars.

Subject: RE: Piano Dumped on the Beach
From: robomatic
Date: 30 Oct 17 - 01:18 PM

The Hartlepool Monkey.

I was once 'invited' to help some friends move an upright piano from one flat to another. They had rented a largish truck, larger than a van, anyway. When we got the piano up in the cargo hold, I asked where the lashings were. I figured they were going to lash it to the left-hand wall. They had no lashings and reckoned if they drove real slow its mass would keep it more or less in place. I don't really have to finish this story do I? I followed them slowly on my motorcycle and was in prime position to hear the piano play its last notes, every one of them at once, as it did a face plant on the first very minor, very slow, curve.

Subject: RE: Piano Dumped on the Beach
From: mg
Date: 30 Oct 17 - 04:05 PM

Kiri's piano?

Subject: RE: Piano Dumped on the Beach
From: robomatic
Date: 30 Oct 17 - 04:09 PM

Oddly enough, about ten minutes after I posted the above story of a piano falling over in a truck, I was told that about seven years ago a million dollar piece of electrical equipment had made it into town after transit from its construction in Germany, and was being pulled into the work-site on a flat bed, which promptly dumped over on its last turn! Total loss.

Subject: RE: Piano Dumped on the Beach
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 30 Oct 17 - 05:50 PM

My former father-in-law failed to properly secure a piano he was moving in his pickup truck.

No, it didn't fall over.

It fell completely out.

On top of a parked car.

Subject: RE: Piano Dumped on the Beach
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 30 Oct 17 - 06:04 PM

Robomatic's tale gave me a big smile, Bee-dubya-ell had me Laughing Out Loud!

Decades ago my brother & a workmate borrowed one of the firm's trucks & moved my stuff from one apartment to another. The sign on the truck (Piano removals) attracted the attention of one of my new neighbours who hired them (paid them money, not beer like I was giving them!) to move his piano. Safely, of course, they were professional furniture removalists.

sandra

Ebony and ivory: a field of ruined symphonies Just outside the tiny town of York (Australia) sits a piano graveyard, where the majestic instruments are taken to die.
It began as an art installation, and has become a tip-of-the-hat to Buddhist ideology.
The project began with composer and musician Ross Bolleter, who works solely with ruined pianos; instruments that are anywhere between the first and final stages of decay.
Bolleter ran an art installation in Perth that allowed the public to experiment with 16 ruined pianos, and at the end, was left with nowhere to keep them.
A call from a mutual friend to the owners of Wambyn Olive Grove in Western Australia resulted in a home for the instruments on a property just outside of York, a town about 100km out of Perth.
From that point onwards, Penny and Kim haven't looked back, accepting pianos from those who can't bear to dump their beloved instruments on the rubbish tip.
Since the early 2000s, the couple have collected over 35 pianos, placing them at random spots around their property, allowing the pianos to live out the rest of their days in the middle of the bush. (Read on)

Subject: RE: Piano Dumped on the Beach
From: banjoman
Date: 31 Oct 17 - 06:00 AM

I donated my mothers piano which was on its last notes, to a group of university students in Liverpool.(1960,s) They smashed it up in order to get the whole thing through a 9 inch hole in a wall. Some sort of competition which they won.

Subject: RE: Piano Dumped on the Beach
From: Jos
Date: 31 Oct 17 - 09:04 AM

Piano smashing contests were popular entertainment in the 1970s. I saw one once - unbearable.

Subject: RE: Piano Dumped on the Beach
From: Mr Red
Date: 01 Nov 17 - 05:06 AM

Piano smashing rather fell out of fashion, particularly when they got on to cast iron framed pianos.

What about the song that includes that immortal poetry "P P, P P, Pi-an-o" ?

or there are 3522 of them here

Subject: RE: Piano Dumped on the Beach
From: leeneia
Date: 01 Nov 17 - 11:43 PM

The article says that a group of students abandoned the piano on the beach. They probably decided it was useless since there's no way to plug it in.

Subject: RE: Piano Dumped on the Beach
From: keberoxu
Date: 02 Nov 17 - 12:44 PM

My favorite piano-moving disaster story is East Coast US in origin.
It comes from one of those specialist moving companies who can charge
frightening fees because they are so serious about moving pianos.

Said company was hired by a widow who wanted a piano moved into her home. And this prospective client
told them HER horror story,
about the last time a piano needed moving.

Her husband had hired the movers, whoever they were.
Moving the piano into their residence
entailed getting the piano up at least one steep flight of stairs.
The landing at the bottom of that flight of stairs
ended in an outside wall.

When those movers lost their grip on the piano,
it went whooshing down the stairs,
hit the wall,
crashed through the wall,
and fell to the pavement below,
in front of the building.
Where the piano finished exploding into matchsticks,
something it had begun to do when it crashed through the wall.

One other detail.
Between the landing at the bottom of the stairs,
and that wall,
stood the lady's husband.
He did not survive the impact of the whooshing piano.

Subject: RE: Piano Dumped on the Beach
From: leeneia
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 09:58 AM

Keberoxu, I don't think that really happened.

1. What of the piano mover who would have been on the downhill end, pushing up? Why isn't he mentioned?

2. Why didn't the husband step to the side when piano started slipping?

3. The piano wouldn't have developed enough velocity to go through the plaster, studs and outer surface (bricks, say) of the exterior. When it got to the landing at the bottom of the stairs, it would slow down.

I believe you have been victimized by an urban tale.

Subject: RE: Piano Dumped on the Beach
From: Raggytash
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 12:23 PM

It was a long flight of VERY steep stairs !!

Subject: RE: Piano Dumped on the Beach
From: Mo the caller
Date: 04 Nov 17 - 01:13 PM

I bought an old piano from an advert in the Oxfam shop while living in a shared rented terraced house in Stockton-on-Tees. Hired a removal firm, paid extra because I wanted it upstairs. But in spite of having the extra bod they couldn't get it into my room so put it downstairs in shared living room.
A year or so on I was moving to a new job and had sorted out a room in YMCA while I found other accomodation. Not worth moving the piano and a friend said he would like it. So a group of us dismantled it and wheeled it through the street. It wasn't too heavy once all the bits that would come off were off. Don't know if they ever got it back together again.

Subject: RE: Piano Dumped on the Beach
From: EBarnacle
Date: 06 Nov 17 - 09:02 AM

Mo's tale reminds me of a move we made while I was a graduate student. A friend was moving about 8 blocks and had a very old [on the order of a century] rubber plant that had come down through his family. As we could not get it into the already overloaded van we stuck it on a dolly and walked it up West End Avenue. A police car stopped us and asked what we were doing. I explained that the rubber plant was rather old and needed to be taken outside to be walked as it could not hold its water while confined in the apartment. They laughed and drove on.

Subject: RE: Piano Dumped on the Beach
From: frogprince
Date: 06 Nov 17 - 09:46 PM

At least this wouldn't be like the instance of the piano dropped down a mine shaft, which resulted in a flat miner.


I'll get me hard hat...

Subject: RE: Piano Dumped on the Beach
From: keberoxu
Date: 07 Nov 17 - 04:49 PM

Thank you, froggy!
I needed that!!