My friend mwude asked me to shed some light on this, so here it is. I am the friend he quotes above.
Now this isn't something I 'heard', or a 'friend of a friend' kind of thing, it was ME, Voicedude, actually involved here. The late Jack Wagner was the offical parkwide voice of the Disney theme parks until he died. He also did the voices of Mickey, Donald, Goofy, etc. - but ONLY for in house audio, not movies or recordings. As I said in your quote, I gave Jack the very first, poor audio quality version of this back in 1989 when we worked together on the Blast To The Past project. I have no idea who the original crappy version (that no one here has EVER heard) was by, but it wasn't anyone Jack or I could recognise - and we BOTH come from extensive radio backgrounds. Radio and other production guys like engineers are kind of geeks when it comes to collecting stuff like this. Back before file sharing on the internet, this stuff was passed around from 'geek-to-geek' with audio tapes - usually a copy of a copy of a copy, etc. so quality was usually pretty poor.
I was given THAT particlar tape by none other than guitarist Bobby Cochran (Eddie's nephew, who was also in Steppenwolf and other groups) who also liked to collect this stuff. The tape had other stuff on it like some old torch song called "Eveybody's Fucking But Me", whose singer we all tried to identify. In return Jack Wagner, a guy with a wonderful, twisted sense of humor for an old dude, gave me a tape with stuff on it like John Cameron Swayze busting up, completely losing it live on the air. All of these things were eighth/ninth generation and had been making the rounds for quite a while - and remember, things were still a bit lo-tech back then, nothing digital. (BTW, I've also been given the very first copy of "Everybody Fuck Now" - the C&C Music Factory Parody, by the very engineer who recorded it. And another recording engineer friend of mine shared with me recordings of Mel Blanc swearing as famous WB characters - NOT the lame stuff that his son and others did later, but the original Mel Blanc! It was racy and funny as all hell, and he would NOT give me or anyone else a copy due to a solomn promise to Mel. To my knowledge, these recordings have still never been heard outside this guy's studio....)
Anyway, Jack liked this bit so much, he re-recorded it - correcting the grammar (he was a stickler for that), and then adding a few more examples of his own as well as the Vivaldi BGM. He gave me his first copy, the very first version of this now famous audio (often miscredited as George Carlin or Monty Python - I've often contacted those who have misidentified it, like the Flash file video version. Sometimes they thank me and make corrections, sometimes I never here from them).
Anyone with half of an ear can confirm it's Jack if you ever visit the train ride at Disneyland, at Disneyworld, ride the Orlando Airport shuttle, etc. Online through file sharing, I know there's been some 'official sound of Disneyland' stuff ripped from CDs that featured every single song and voice recording at the park down to the 'we're now closed, please exit' announcements. If you can find some of these, the comparisons are easy.
I hope this clears things up. I know; I was semi-involved in it's creation.
SOMEWHERE I still have a copy of the original crappy, shorter version with no music (don't ask me to find it!). But who would want to hear THAT version when Jack's is FAR better anyway!
- Voicedude
