Keystone Kops

Carl Davis’s Keystone Kops music was commissioned in 1980 by Thames TV for its Hollywood - a celebration of the silent film which naturally included clips from the historic Mack Sennett comedies featuring the Keystone Kops. Inspired by the “zaniness” of the Keystone films, which he has described as “very rough-house, very very silly,” Davis wrote a lively galop à la Offenbach incorporating such sound effects as bicycle bells, duck quacks and, of course, police whistles.