Saturday 29 May 2010

Mitch Miller and raw fish

God invented Fish and Chips with vinegar and salt. The Devil invented the deep fried Mars Bar in batter, and with it seduced the Scots. The Japanese unleashed raw fish on the world, and I tried it for the first time at the Chicago Food Festival in 1982. The lime juice helped.

What didn’t help was the Mitch Miller Orchestra, Mitch himself conducting the ‘Worlds Largest Singalong’ Maybe he’d been inspired by the World’s Largest Crucifixion in Wax at Niagara, though as I travelled through America, I came across ‘The World’s Largest…’ quite a lot.

To give you a flavour of Mitch at his best click here, and imagine it even bigger and louder, and you with raw fish in your mouth.

Roland, Birged Modler, Daghmar Baron and Evelyn Deidrich shared a similar interest in good food for almost nothing, and may even have been turned on by Mitch Miller. I remember a warm, vibrant and exciting night, moving as a group from stall to stall - a great experience for someone as greedy as me – Chicago’s finest eateries ‘giving away’ food at knock-down prices, and all of us humming along to Mitch - (even if he does look a lot like Ming the Merciless from Planet Mong)









And here he is conducting the people of Mong.
























And wondering which fool persuaded him to eat raw fish.

2 comments:

Maria Zannini said...

OMG, Mitch Miller does look like Ming the merciless! No wonder I never see them together.

I'll never be able to look at Mitch the same way.

Mike Keyton said...

Is there a way to look at him?