Monty Python's Flying Circus - Classic or Dud?

incorrect

like incorrect on both counts but so incorrect on in not being a debate that you should be banned

Since we brought up The goodies, bill office was quite the musician/songwriter, two songs a week on. I’m sorry i’ll Read that again for ten years.

Needless to say there is a lot of Python in ISIRTA and the earlier series probably have a similar hit/miss ratio. Ferret song stands with most of the best python sketches.

out of em all was bill oddie or gilliam or who the biggest prick

tim brooke-taylor clearly the worst ito no actual talent coattailing

Oddie the worst in terms of glaring me down when I saw him on a bus one time and was thinking of thanking him for his work

A glare that intimated the real possibility of verbal assault if I dared to acknowledge him

old cunt

t/s getting slotted by Bill Odie vs Rory McGrath.

Hate to say it, but Oddie used to be a regular customer when I worked in the jazz department of London's biggest record shop and he was always perfectly fine - clearly knew and loved his music, didn't expect or demand any special treatment, no trouble at all.

I know someone who used to work with his ex-wife and, yes, ex-wives and all that, but...

out of em all was bill oddie or gilliam or who the biggest prick

... or Cleese or Idle.

Just watched the episode with the Clockwork Orange parody for the first time in several decades ( https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6ewjb0 ) and it's pretty insane. And is in fact a parody of 2001 as well. Graham sends rabbits to the moon, Bill and Tim follow suit and get kidnapped by the moon rabbits who have become a super race and are sent back to earth as rabbits to terrorise the population (The Transistorised Carrot). How in hell they dreamed that up I don't know. It sort of holds up.

And it references Monty Python too!

That NTNOCN sketch is great, and sent me back to the original, which I still think might be their finest moment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeKWVuye1YE

if you can bear it, the bill oddie "who do you think you are" was interesting, if also wrenchingly sad (one of the saddest i remember): http://www.bbc.co.uk/whodoyouthinkyouare/past-stories/bill-oddie.shtml

it doesn't quite expunge the "don't be a prick" rule but it does explain what maybe turned him into one

If Marcello was here he could list all the jazz/improv musicians who played on the Goodies records. I know Dave Macrae, from Matching Mole, was heavily involved. Also that "Funky Gibbon" was inspired by Parliament/Funkadelic, though it sounds more like "Smash the Social Contract" by Cornelius Cardew.

... actually it's the other way round "Smash the Social Contract" sounds like "Funky Gibbon".

*hurries off to the wire to steal that insight for a thinkpiece*

isn't it also the "vote for nigel barton" tune tho? i think it's something repurpoised from the common realm

Yes, I think you're right, nonetheless I refuse to give up on the idea that Goodies inspired Maoism was a thing at some point in the 70s.

the guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish on a (three-man) bicycle swims in the sea

Here: http://www.alwynwturner.com/glitter/funky_gibbon.html

Bill Oddie:
You won't believe the musical pretensions that went on in my head. I listened to a lot of jazz and a lot of funk, and that period of the '70s for me was fantastic - it was really the era when fusion started. The people I liked were Sly Stone and early Parliament, and I listened to what was happening in jazz at the time, when Miles Davis was coming up with some very interesting hybrid music. With 'Funky Gibbon', I started off - it's almost unbelievable considering how stupid the song is - trying to get the feel of a Miles Davis track, I can't remember which, probably just after Bitches Brew and that sort of era: some really choppy Miles Davis-type rhythm, again with a Sly Stone influence.
We had marvellous musicians on those sessions, but they couldn't get it. They knew what I was sort of trying to do, but I probably listened to that sort of thing more than they did, and it was driving us nuts, so we sent the drummer and the bass-player and the guitarist home. And I had a keyboard player called Dave Macrae, who'd played with Matching Mole and Robert Wyatt and people like that - governor player - and he started playing some clavinet, very Stevie Wonder-type feel to it, and I said, 'That's fine; could you do a synth-bass on it?'
And then I literally started whacking the top of the grand piano. So the actual rhythm-track of 'The Funky Gibbon' has only got me and Dave on it - he plays clavinet and synth-bass and we miked up the top of the piano. Then we got the horn section of Gonzales playing a Memphis Horns-type thing. It was lovely for me to be able to use musicians I liked and try to reproduce sounds which I also listened to. And then put the stupid song over the top of it. The idea that all that effort went into 'The Funky Gibbon'!
It sounds like Parliament on a bad day, or something like that (laughs), that kind of thing. I think subconsciously people feel it - this was always my theory about it, I thought: I want the music to sound good or authentic, whatever style it happens to be in.

the deeps of this man! no wonder he is always cross

I have a positive Oddie story that involves a large bag of chocolate peanuts. It was Halloween and we kids knocked on his door. Always had time for the man after that but now re-evaluating my whole childhood.

I had a better impression of him than of Mel Smith who I also 'met' around the same time when he was filming something in a mate's house.

Still the NTNOCN hi-fi shop sketch remains classic at least until I decide to watch it again and I can't remember anything specific from The Goodies.

Henry was to meet a grisly end. While working as a semi-retired night watchman in his late 60s - back then a comfortable retirement was a luxury not extended to the working class - he died after tripping into a vat of boiling brine.

sniff, I heard he was remarkably well preserved.

lol i knew you'd enjoy that bit

If Marcello was here he could list all the jazz/improv musicians who played on the Goodies records. I know Dave Macrae, from Matching Mole, was heavily involved. Also that "Funky Gibbon" was inspired by Parliament/Funkadelic, though it sounds more like "Smash the Social Contract" by Cornelius Cardew.

― Monica Kindle (Tom D.), Thursday, November 29, 2018 11:09 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

... actually it's the other way round "Smash the Social Contract" sounds like "Funky Gibbon".

― Monica Kindle (Tom D.), Thursday, November 29, 2018 11:18 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

*hurries off to the wire to steal that insight for a thinkpiece*

― mark s, Thursday, November 29, 2018 11:20 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

isn't it also the "vote for nigel barton" tune tho? i think it's something repurpoised from the common realm

― mark s, Thursday, November 29, 2018 11:21 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes, I think you're right, nonetheless I refuse to give up on the idea that Goodies inspired Maoism was a thing at some point in the 70s.

― Monica Kindle (Tom D.), Thursday, November 29, 2018 11:24 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The 'who killed Cornelius Cardew' plot thickens...

Are you suggesting a tricycle was seen speeding away from the seen of the crime?

well, speeding then falling over

'the seen of the crime' nice

go off to yr Goodies thread already

I remember my ex-brother-in-law gave me a *tape of "Silence" by Michael Mantler with this photo on the cover, which he'd labelled, l-to-r, Robert Wyatt, Carla Bley, Kevin Coyne, Michael Mantler:

https://dvd-fever.co.uk/dvd-fever/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/the-goodies-featureda.jpg

(*we did get on, in spite of this)

warning: personal anecdotes time.

1. inspired by repeated listenings of a dubbed copy of my friend's cassette of MP's the final rip off comp, i recorded my own comedy sketches tape. it was probably no more than 4 or 5 sketch ideas, but i sequenced them, voiced the characters, etc. this was probably ca. '89. i only recall 2 of the ideas. in one, a famous literary critic is on a radio show to discuss (pausing to recall the novel...) (ah!) hardy's return of the native. he gets called out for instead just reading the back of a hardy boys book. the other one i remember was this week's episode of "dictionary reading for the blind," in which i pick up where we left off last episode just reading through the dictionary. my voice fades and the music comes up. the end. really shitty stuff, but what i wouldn't give to have this tape still.

2. i participated pretty heavily for a couple of years in the NFL (national forensic league). my specialty was HI (humorous interpretation, or humorous interp if you're in the know). you got like 10 minutes to present your piece. do all the voices if there are any. etc. in 11th grade i got 2nd place in the state (missippi) on the strength of my performance of "four yorkshiremen." it won me a trip to nationals that summer in san jose. only trouble was they required material to be published in written form and submitted. i couldn't find anywhere where that sketch was transcribed/published. i did, however, find "crunchy frog" published in written form somewhere. so i did that one at nationals and failed miserably. there was a great dance party for all of us, though, and the dj played all my faves of that time: "hippy chick," "enjoy the silence," etc.

go off to yr Goodies thread already

sorry this is now a Goodies thread

I can't understand why this episode hasn't been repeated. What could go wrong?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_Roots

Funny how little TV Python I'd seen when I wrote a thesis school project on them (CSE Drama, only the middle-class kids got to do the O-level). Fortunately, I could borrow Roger Wilmut's From Fringe to Flying Circus for weeks on end from the library, to lift sections from verbatim. And then shoehorn in references to Comic Strip and Alexei Sayle, which didn't work at all. I dimly remember the Cleeseless 4th series when it went out (or soon-after repeat) and only saw the early "good" stuff around '87, when BBC ran the lot again. I knew the films and the records best at 15, I suppose.

I’ve fussed abt this on ilx before but it’s pertinent here too: we laugh at things for many reasons, but two of them that don’t really coincide are surprise and comfortable familiarity.

MP is very nearly 50 years old, and its ideas are even more pervasive than its actual material these days. I first saw eps (airing in real time) in maybe 1971- 72, when I was 11 or 12. Someone that age today couldn’t possibly watch a sketch — semi-chaotic TV version or slicked-up film version — and be startled into hilarity by the style, I don’t think… as you still could by watching British TV at the end of the 60s. We primarily laugh at it because what’s funny in it reminds of enjoying ourselves in past times — and this isn’t at all a bad thing! but it does also mean that the er difficult elements grate a lot more than they did back in the days when it was genuinely busy puncturing professional staidness, at a formal level as much as anything.

As some of you are aware — promo shill alert klaxon — I’ve been working on a book for the last few years, an anthology of stuff talking about the UK music press from the 1960s to the early 1980s. One key development in this story is how NME converted from a failing pop-focused early 70s trade rag to the best-selling voice-of-underground-youth UK rock paper — which it did in 1973-74. In May 1974, it included a free flexidisc 45 on the cover: Monty Python’s ‘Tiny Black Round Thing’ — which entirely fitted in with its new editorial ethos (as well the tastes of the readership).*

Because among other things it had cemented its turnaround in direction by a full-on assault on the writer-readers fourth wall, using endless self-reflexive MP-ish tricks in headlines and standfirsts and coverlines and captions to draw the reader into the process of making a weekly paper, including self-deprecating gags about how headlines and captions get decided, plus running jokes (often via editorial interpolation — ed.) about writers as recognisable characters whose views and behaviour you could poke regular affectionate fun at. This wasn’t new to the world of publishing — editors and writers were often also Marvel fans well aware of Stan Lee’s ‘Bullpen Bulletins’ — but it revolutionised the tone of the UK rock weeklies, and set it strongly against the dominant “view from nowhere”, which permeated establishment media. So there was a kind of pellmell anti-officious surrealism suddenly at work, right there among the very extremely sober work of explaining why the Groundhogs were better than Blodwyn Pig.

So yes, anyway — this is an immediate subcultural effect of MP in the UK, which tells you something about the very widespread receptiveness to it, at the level of the teenaged political unconscious.

•It wasn’t actually the first UK rock publication to do this! In 1972, when NME was still flailing re its identity, the underground UK rock monthly ZigZag put the ’Teach Yourself Heath’ MP flexidisc on its cover, a kind of linguaphone parody of the then-prime minister’s very imitable (and widely imitated) voice patterns.

^ Good stuff.

I think I said it somewhere else on ILX, but worth mentioning here, football fans singing "Spot the Looney" to the tune of "Son of Your Father" - I'm not sure you can't get more 1970s UK than that.

RIP Terry Jones. You and the lads warped me forever at 14. I've met Michael and John, but never you nor Graham. A great writer/performer/director for a timeless team. Thanks Jonesy. pic.twitter.com/ZXxXpgkNL0

— Dennis Perrin (@DennisThePerrin) January 22, 2020

R.I.P., heaven needed two sheds.

I saw a Jones appearance at a Museum of Broadcasting thing on Python, likely in the '90s, with Idle and Palin. They had cardboard cutouts of the other three onstage.

Someone asked how they each felt about "being an icon" and Jones said, "I don't mind being a painting in a Russian Orthodox church."

Unless that was Idle.

RIP

Sir Bedivere - rest well good soldier!

RIP

RIP

this sketch makes me laugh so hard every time i see it, and the accent Jones does is so hilarious to me

https://youtu.be/saY10AWXLIY

This made me tear up

I was lost, on my way to an audition in 1992. Rather desperately, I stopped a man for directions. He started to explain but then said it would be easier to show me.He walked me there,told some stories,then came in to charm the casting director because I was late. #TerryJonesRIP

— Minnie Driver (@driverminnie) January 22, 2020

Here's one of my favorite deep-ish cut Python sketches, where Jones is both the straight man and one of the eccentrics, trying on all the wacky voices personally. And you get to hear him try to wrap his Welsh accent around the word "burglary" https://t.co/BGfo5bhzde

— Matt Prigge (@mattprigge) January 22, 2020

I find myself singing Sgt. Duckie's song rather often.

Harry "Snapper" Organs is in many ways a personal hero of mine tbh