Revisiting Monty Python's cautious first album

The wacky Monty Python boys early in their career, minus Terry Gilliam.

 

Python's semi-forgotten 1970 debut album.

Though its origins were in television, Monty Python quickly became a multimedia phenomenon. The British comedy troupe produced numerous films, stage shows, books, and albums between 1969 and 1983. If the 2000 documentary From Spam To Sperm: Monty Python's Greatest Hits is to be believed, the boys were never too keen on making the records, with only Michael Palin (my vote for Python's all-time MVP) possessing the necessary patience for it.

And yet, despite this utter lack of enthusiasm, Monty Python managed to create a string of inventive and funny LPs, including Another Monty Python Record (1971), Monty Python's Previous Record (1972), Matching Tie And Handkerchief (1973), and The Album Of The Soundtrack Of The Trailer Of The Film Of Monty Python And The Holy Grail (1975). All keepers. I'll even vouch for Python's little-loved Contractual Obligation Album (1980). These albums, which generally combine new and repurposed material, can be enjoyed at full length, but 1988's double-disc The Final Ripoff is a good distillation of their audio-only work. In that aforementioned 2000 documentary, Steve Martin confesses that he originally thought Python was a recording act before he saw their TV show or films.

The group's 1970 debut album, simply titled Monty Python's Flying Circus, is a decidedly modest affair, released purely as a promotion for the eponymous BBC series. The material on it comes directly from the TV show, with almost nothing prepared especially for the album. The reason it was not included in The Instant Monty Python CD Collection (1994) or a subsequent series of reissues is that Monty Python does not own this album. The BBC retains the rights to it, nearly half a century later.

The 1989 book The First 200 Years Of Monty Python by Kim "Howard" Johnson indicates that the 1970 album is simply audio taken from the TV show. So I was initially not very interested in it, but I bought a used copy on vinyl anyway. It turns out that the LP was actually recorded live at the Camden People's Theatre in London. So why does it have a laugh track? Well, the audience was not terribly lively that night, Whoops.

Ian MacNaughton, madman.

The now largely forgotten album was produced by Ian MacNaughton (1925-2002), who directed most of the episodes of Flying Circus on the BBC, as well as Python's debut feature, And Now For Something Completely Different (1971). He also wrote the surprisingly straight-laced, joke-free liner notes, briefly explaining how the troupe and the show came into existence. Like And Now..., this album appears to be a collection of "greatest hits," designed mainly to introduce Python to newcomers.

Is the damned thing any good? Surprisingly, yes. The audience may have been sitting on its collective hands, but the Python boys really do their best to sell this familiar material anyway. The troupe members had plenty of stage experience by this point, going back to their days at Oxford and Cambridge, and seem comfortable in front of a crowd. John Cleese, especially, seems energetic and displays great range, playing everything from a shy, hesitant young man ("The Mouse Problem") to a bombastic drill sergeant ("Self-Defense"). Palin, too, is in fine form, belting out "The Lumberjack Song" as if he'd been performing it for years. Keep in mind: The now-famous bit was still new back then.

The track names are not particularly helpful. The sketch widely known as "Crunchy Frog" is here called "Trade Description Act." Cleese's infamous "Albatross" routine is merely "The Cinema." And there are tracks called "Television Interviews," "Interviews," "and "More Television Interviews." The first is about an otherwise unremarkable man (Palin) with three buttocks. The second is about filmmaker Sir Edward Ross (Graham Champan, misidentified here as "Grahame"), who doesn't like being called "Eddie baby" or "pussycat." And the third is about that poor, harried composer Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson (Terry Jones), whose nickname has overshadowed his music.

In its studio albums, Python would get better at creating comedy that works without a visual component, strictly through dialogue, sound effects, and music. (No wonder the Contractual Obligation Album was so heavy on songs.) They hadn't really learned how to do that as of this debut album, though. High-concept sketches like "Flying Sheep," "The Visitors," "The North Minehead By-Election," "The Mouse Problem," and "Self-Defense" do lose a bit of impact here when deprived of pictures, and Cleese's explanatory narration in "The Barber" seems like an afterthought. And a supposed "stereo demonstration" by Graham Chapman's Colonel -- one of the few bits prepared especially for this LP -- is spoiled because the album is presented in monaural sound.

And yet, despite these misgivings, the Monty Python's Flying Circus album has a definite, crude charm to it. If Python was comedy's answer to The Beatles, this was its own Please Please Me, i.e. a chance to hear a soon-to-be-legendary group at the cusp of its success.

My (brief) thoughts on the Monty Python finale

Michael Palin, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Carol Cleveland, Terry Gilliam, and John Cleese together for the last (?) time.

I have just returned, my lovelies, from the local cineplex, where I paid $18 for the privilege of seeing a group of paunchy, jowly, sagging septuagenarians shuffle through some ancient sketch comedy for three hours (with a half-hour tea break in the middle). I would not have missed this opportunity for the world. These affable old-timers, you see, were the five surviving members of Monty Python, and the occasion was the British comedy troupe's "farewell" performance, which was staged at London's O2 Arena and then simulcast to movie theaters around the world. The rapidly-deteriorating comedians tell us that this is "it" for the team. Monty Python is no more. Bereft of life, you might say, it rests in peace. Or in pieces.

So how was the big finale? Was it worth $18 of anyone's money? Oh, sure. I laughed throughout the entire running time, which felt good to do even though I'd heard most of these jokes dozens of times. I even got a few chuckles from the 30-minute intermission, during which the screen went blank apart from a clock counting down the minutes and seconds, because the movie-going audience had not been briefed of this in advance and thought for a few minutes that it might be some kind of high-concept prank. (It wasn't.)

An ad for the concert

As for the rest of the program, it was quaint, sentimental, and nostalgic. The innovators and provocateurs of yesteryear are now the established old guard, and this was a chance for them to cycle through their greatest hits and bits. Some of these golden oldies were conflated: "Vocational Guidance Counselor" became "The Lumberjack Song," "Dead Parrot" melted into "Cheese Shop," etc.

The fact that the show was the brainchild of the group's hammiest and most mercenary member, Eric Idle (the self-described "Greedy Bastard"), was plain to see. This was a slick, Broadway-style revue with a heavy emphasis on production numbers and fit, lean chorus girls and boys leaping and tumbling around the stage as the doddering oldsters watched in appreciation.

For me, though, the highlights of the show were the quieter, more intimate moments when the five surviving Pythons (Graham Chapman died a quarter-century ago) simply took pleasure in sharing the stage with one another. The venerable "Four Yorkshireman" sketch, in which a quartet of wealthy old geezers try to outdo each other with outlandish tales of childhood suffering and poverty, has a special resonance in 2014 because the comedians performing it now really are the age of the folks they're parodying.

As you'd expect, the show ended with a group rendition of "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" from Life of Brian, and I can't have been the only one who got a little misty-eyed during that. After all, Monty Python has been a huge part of my life since the 1980s, when I first saw their BBC sketch comedy series in reruns on MTV. This really felt like a way of saying goodbye to the boys, plus Ms. Carol Cleveland, the honorary female "seventh Python." Perhaps now, they can be packed up in crates and shipped off to that warehouse from the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Of course there's a biopic of France's infamous Le Pétomane! Why wouldn't there be?

And he looks so suave, too: British thespian Leonard Rossiter played many types of roles in his career. Including this one!

This was the book!

The Book of Lists (1977) was the first dirty book I ever read, and was it a doozy!  I found this best-selling reference volume and its equally-smutty 1980 sequel in the library of the junior high school I attended in the late 1980s, and I can remember spending many lunch periods poring over its delightfully sleazy contents. 

For the uninitiated, The Book of Lists is exactly what its title claims it to be: a collection of supposedly-factual trivia organized into fun little lists with titles like "People Who Died on the Toilet" and "Twenty Great Events That Happened in the Bathtub." I think the book was supposed to give people some fodder for conversations at dull cocktail parties, but because it was compiled by a family of well-known authors -- historian David Wallechinsky, his father Irving Wallace, and his sister Amy Wallace -- and took up about the same shelf space as a dictionary or thesaurus, it had an air of respectability and wound up in libraries across the country. 

Apparently, a few librarians balked at the racier entries, which included a list of sexual positions and their various advantages and disadvantages. (How I remember that one! I still recall that Ovid advocated having lovers lie on their sides facing one another.) Later in life, I learned that some of what I had "learned" from The Book of Lists was pure bunk. John Dillinger, for instance, did not have an abnormally large penis which was detached from his body after his death and placed in a museum. I think the old yarn about Catherine the Great getting it on with horses was in one of those Book of Lists, too. I couldn't believe I had stumbled onto such a valuable artifact at school. What a world, what a world! 

Not too long after this, I found a paperback of Semi-Tough (1972) by Dan Jenkins in the basement of our suburban home, and suddenly The Book of Lists didn't seem like such hot stuff anymore. But for a while there, this silly little nothing of a book became the center of my entire erotic life.

The Artiste

Don't get the impression, however, that The Book of Lists was all about sex. There was plenty of violence and gross-out stuff in it, too, which I appreciated. In the latter category was the story of Joseph "Le Pétomane" Pujol (1857-1945), the French music-hall performer who delighted Parisian audiences with his skilled and versatile displays of flatulence. It was only a year or so later that I finally saw Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles (1974), in which the director himself plays a character named "William J. Le Pétomane." When I heard that, I was weirdly embarrassed. It was like Mel Brooks knew about my secret shame, taking The Book of Lists into a secluded corner of the junior high library to drool over its most salacious details. 

Anyway, I have some distance on these events now, and my interest in Le Pétomane and The Book of Lists is now rooted in fond nostalgia. The video below is a light-hearted but substantive BBC production about Joseph Pujol's life, starring Leonard Rossiter (of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Barry Lyndon) as the title character. Fascinatingly, it was directed by Ian MacNaughton, who is well known for his work with Monty Python in the 1960s and 1970s. It was MacNaugton at the helm of the Pythons' BBC television series and their first feature, And Now for Something Completely Different (1971). Python fans may notice that the score for Le Pétomane comes from De Wolfe, the same British production music company whose melodies graced Monty Python's Flying Circus and Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Mill Creek comedy classics #16: "His Double Life" (1933)

Former silent movie star Lilian Gish has something to say to Roland Young in His Double Life.

The flick: His Double Life (Paramount release of an Eddie Dowling Pictures production, 1933) [buy the set]

Current IMDb rating: 6.2

Director: Arthur Hopkins (a few scattered film and TV credits; mostly known as a Broadway director, producer, and playwright from 1912 to 1948; his play Burlesque was performed three times on TV and ran twice on Broadway.)

Actors of note:

• Lilian Gish (The Night of the Hunter, The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, a 75-year film career)

• Roland Young (The Philadelphia Story, played the title role Topper and Topper Returns)

• Montagu Love (The Adventures of Robin Hood, Gunga Din)

• Lumsden Hare (at least three Hitchcock films: Rebecca, Suspicion, and The Paradine Case)

• Lucy Beaumont (The Crowd, The Devil-Doll)

• Roland Hogue (Broadway actor from 1917 to 1943)

The gist of it: Extremely reclusive artist Priam Farrel (Young) is England's greatest living painter, but no one knows what he looks like, not even his own cousin Duncan (Love). Trying to dodge a woman who wants to marry him, Farrel hides out in an obscure address with his valet, Henry Leek (Hogue), who quickly takes ill and dies. The attending physician assumes Leek is Farrel, and soon the news of the great artist's death spreads around the world. No one believes the real Farrel's story, and he becomes a penniless outcast, mocked wherever he goes.

Luckily, Henry Leek had been corresponding through a matrimonial service with sweet, uncomplicated Alice (Gish), who takes an immediate liking to Farrel and doesn't care who he is. Priam and Alice begin a cozy and blissful life together, but trouble arises when the artist goes back to painting in order to supplement the couple's modest income and his new canvases fall into the hands of a knowledgeable art dealer (Hare). Soon, our publicity-shy hero finds himself at the center of a very public trial over his identity.

Lovely Lillian Gish

My take: Initially, His Double Life has a problem similar to the one that plagued Lost Honeymoon. Specifically, it's another extremely contrived and unlikely romantic comedy with the tragic death of a perfectly nice person at its center. Nobody in this movie, not even long-time employer Priam or romantic pen pal Alice, thinks to mourn the real Henry Leek, an extremely dedicated servant who is still thinking of his boss's needs as he dies horribly from double pneumonia.

It should be some consolation that Leek is buried in Westminster Abbey, but this fact drives Priam mad with frustration and misplaced envy. He attends his own funeral and breaks down weeping -- not for Leek but for himself! Later in the film, an awful woman (Beaumont) and her idiotic twin sons, both curates, show up at Alice and Priam's cottage claiming to be Henry's long-abandoned family. But they're greedy opportunists trying to claim a reward, and they misidentify Priam as their paterfamilias. Luckily, in probably the movie's funniest scene, sensible Alice is able to frighten them away with a completely farcical story about her husband being insane, abusive, and worst of all, broke.

A silent star in only her second talkie, Lillian Gish is easily the best thing about His Double Life. Her character, Alice, is completely unflappable and keeps her wits even when Priam is panicking. She's not stoic or serious; she just accepts life as it comes and doesn't waste her energy worrying about things beyond her control. These qualities make her an excellent role model for men and women alike. Frankly, Priam is lucky to have her. Without her, the artist is just kind of a selfish, unlikable jerk.

Incidentally, apart from an obscure silent film in 1919, this was Arthur Hopkins' one big venture into movies. Truthfully, it's not bad from a directing standpoint. The opening shot, in fact, is rather tricky by 1933 standards. The film begins at an exhibition of Priam's paintings, and in one long, unbroken take, the camera crosses the room and catches fragments of various conversations as attendees gossip and speculate about the AWOL artist. Alice herself attends this event, and it's one of the movie's better running gags that she's the only one unimpressed by Priam's work. From what we see of his paintings, they're nothing special, just some slightly blurry landscapes. We have to take it on faith that he's a genius.

Is it funny: Not at first, no. In the early scenes, I didn't find Priam as endearing as I think he's intended to be, and the sight of poor Henry Leek on his deathbed -- a bit too convincingly played -- did not inspire great fits of laughter from me. Also, the film's gimmicky, high-concept plot requires a large leap of faith on the part of the viewer. But once Priam and Alice meet, the film lightens up considerably and becomes much more enjoyable. Most of my amusement came from Lillian Gish's utter nonchalance at the incredible circumstances in which she finds herself. She alone seems to realize that this is all a very trivial matter that could be easily sorted out.

Apart from Gish's scenes, much of the humor in His Double Life is of the bone-dry, oh-so-reserved British variety. A lot of the gags revolve around characters simply repeating phrases over and over like mindless automatons, such as a scene in which the jury at Priam's trial keep saying, "I see, I see" in perfect unison. This kind of joke is mildly amusing at best, and it certainly loses its charm over the course of an entire motion picture.

Other attempts at humor must not translate terribly well from 1930s England to 2010s America, like a moment when Priam imagines that all the people in the courtroom are wearing identical white masks. Monty Python fans, though, are likely to perk up for the appearance of some traditional English bobbies, wearing those high-crowned helmets and saying, "What's all this?" just the way they're supposed to.

My grade: B

P.S. - Nothing even close to a negative racial stereotype here. But we're not out of the woods yet, folks. There are still 84 movies left to go.

Vivian Stanshall (1943-1995)

Vivian Stanshall, a.k.a. The Ginger Geezer

If I could give you but one piece of advice this fine September day, ladies and gentlemen, it would be to explore the life and work of Mr. Vivian Stanshall, an eccentric yet brilliant British comedian and musician perhaps best work for his days leading an anarchic 1960s musical collective called the Bonzo Dog (Doo-Dah) Band. 

I first heard of the Bonzos through their personal and professional associations with The Beatles and Monty Python, and my curiosity ultimately led me to track down a greatest hits album by the Bonzos. Before buying it, I'd only actually heard one of the ex-Bonzos, Neil Innes, performing a solo version of the group's lone hit single, "I'm the Urban Spaceman," in the film Monty Python at the Hollywood Bowl. I'd never heard any of their studio recordings and had not experienced in any way the work of Mr. Stanshall. 

Friends, I was stunned by what I heard on that greatest hits disc. Here was a man with the wild, surrealist humor of Python but with the dapper, distinguished manner of a true English gentleman. "Finally," I thought, "an old-money aristocrat has started a rock band! It's about time!"

I can't begin to summarize what Vivian did, but I can give a sample of his work. Here's an Elvis-inspired tune from his days wih the Bonzos, entitled "Canyons of Your Mind":

(today's zomby) AND A COUPLE OF FAKE DAVID LYNCH TRAILERS

Sorry, readers. I saw that parrot hanging upside down from its perch and my mind could only go to one place. Here's a version of the "Dead Parrot" sketch you maybe haven't seen a dozen times already, one recorded live at a Secret Policeman benefit concert for Amnesty International:



And here's a lesser-seen live iteration of the famous "Cheese Shop" bit:



Meanwhile, the idea of doing the punchline for today's Zomby upside down put me in mind of director David Lynch. (And did you know Lynch totally had his own comic strip? So we have something in common! Sort of.) Lynch's directorial style is so distinctive and familiar that he can be fairly easily parodied by anyone who knows how to edit. Here are two of my favorite ersatz Lynch trailers. Please do enjoy them, perhaps with coffee and donuts.

(today's zomby) AND THE POWERS OF TEN!

ZOMBY!!! returns... uh, a little earlier than expected:

So November didn't work out the way I'd planned it, but you know who can put my problems in perspective? Charles and Ray Eames!

Mr. & Mrs. Eames doing something

One of the definitive "fun couples" of the Twentieth Century, Charles (1907-1978) and Bernice "Ray" (1912-1988) Eames were pioneers of American design who worked in a variety of fields, including fine art, architecture, furniture design, and film. Still today, I covet one of their best-known creations: the iconic Eames Chair:

Technically "Eames Lounge and Ottoman." Cost: $3579.

But I'm not here today to talk about fancy furniture. I'm here instead sing the praises of the Eames' most famous short film, Powers of Ten (1968). I've watched this countless times, and I never get tired of it. I guess I just like the whole planetarium/science museum vibe of this piece. There are so many disparate elements at play here. Elmer Bernstein's memorably chilly score contrasts with the affable, plainspoken narration by physics professor Phillip Morrison. Sad to think that Bernstein, Morrison, and both of the Eames are dead now, but here's the movie which will place all of human existence into its proper context:



I've long felt that the "Galaxy Song" from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life would make a great companion piece to Powers of Ten. Same basic subject matter, but an entirely different approach:



P.S. Yes, The Simpsons did a nifty parody of Powers of Ten some years back:



I'm with you, Homer. Wooooooooowwwwwww! A big part of the appeal of Powers of Ten is its "mind blowing" trippiness, cool in that late 1960s way. Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey also came out in '68 and had a similar effect on its audiences. Appropriately, The Simpsons does a little mash-up of the two films by using "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" on the soundtrack.

The Art(lessness) of the Title: You Can't Do That on Television

A shot-by-shot breakdown of the You Can't Do That on Television credits.

The wonderful website Art of the Title offers its readers elegant and thought-provoking articles that break down and analyze the title sequences from prominent films and TV series. It's a fascinating site, and you owe it to yourself to spend some quality time there. But I figured it would be a long, long time before Art of the Title ever got around to doing You Can't Do That on Television, the decidedly lowbrow, kid-oriented Canadian sketch comedy series that aired on Nickelodeon in the 1980s. If anyone was going to analyze the show's memorable title sequence, it would have to be me.

While the series itself seemed to take most of its cues from American shows like Saturday Night Live and Rowan & Martin's Laugh In, albeit with a greater emphasis on pre-adolescent "gross out" humor, the opening title sequence of YCDTOTV is directly inspired by Monty Python's Flying Circus. Terry Gilliam's "cutout" animation, produced by taking actual cutouts (often photographs) and moving them frame by frame, became emblematic of the British sketch comedy series.

Paradoxically, Gilliam's anarchic work gave the series a sense of form and organization. A Gilliam cartoon could link two seemingly unrelated bits together, and the longer cartoons served as bits in and of themselves. Monty Python's ever-evolving title sequence, scored incongruously by Sousa's Liberty Bell March, wonderfully set the tone for each episode.

Here's how the title sequence looked during Season 2. As you can see, it's a series of non-sequitir visual jokes, with a parade of bizarre humanoid characters being mangled, reassambled, and crushed in a variety of creative ways:

 

The effect is manic and violent, but utterly cheerful nonetheless. The abundant silliness on display here undermines the seriousness of the often-dour source photos and the militaristic pomposity of the music. In about half a minute, we have a neat summary of the show's basic philosophy of life and its approach to comedy.

The title sequence for YCDTOTV is about the same length as the Monty Python titles, but it's more linear and narrative in the way it's laid out. Before we go any further, let me at least show you the darned thing. There were a few versions of the titles over the years, but the following clip is pretty representative:

Right away, you should see many motifs taken directly from Monty Python: factories, assembly lines, people being disassembled and reassembled, comedic subversion of familiar classical music (in this case Rossini's William Tell Overture), God-like hands reaching into the frame, "perfect" blue skies, and people's heads cracking open. And as I said before, there is something like a linear narrative here.

The credits begin with an ominous-looking building rising up against a pop-art landscape. It is the ghoulishly-named Children's Television Sausage Factory, an obvious swipe at Sesame Street's Children's Television Workshop. The building has a giant meat grinder on its roof, which suggests that the television business is brutal and impersonal and only interested in cranking out thousands upon thousands of identical copies. Inside the factory, the heads and torsos of children emerge from chutes and are carried along conveyer belts. The fully-assembled children emerge from a giant spigot that pours them directly into a school bus. It is interesting to note that Terry Gilliam's title sequence for Monty Python's the Meaning of Life also features a machine that cranks out millions of identical copies of "ideal" nuclear families.

Up to this point, the YCDTOTV credits have been fairly dark. Even the music is a little unsettling. It sounds at first like a Soviet military march punctuated with pained shrieks. But once the factory-made children are on that school bus (another symbol of childhood oppression), the music turns into a Dixieland-style gallop and the mood completely changes. For the rest of the running time, the titles are all about youth taking over adult institutions and totally overpowering the grownups who try to stop them. The school bus takes the kids to a very grim-looking building simply designated TELEVISION NETWORK, but the youngsters are not cowed one bit. They emerge joyously and chaotically from the bus. The doorman, a grouchy-looking old white guy, holds up his hands to stop them.

It's significant that this is the point at which the POV switches from objective to subjective. We are seeing this from the kids' point of view and are asked to identify with them as they trample the terrified, wide-eyed guard. Once inside the studio, the kids have seemingly seized control of the cameras. (We see one roll by of its own accord.)

The credits end with the final triumph of youth over old age and authority. A serious-looking, unsmiling man looks directly into the camera -- directly at us, in fact. He may well be the same guy who was guarding the door a few seconds ago. But he has scarcely made his presence known when a giant hand -- a kid's hand -- reaches into the frame and stamps the title of the show directly on the man's face. Totally defeated, the adult authority figure literally cracks up, and his head splits open to reveal the next scene of the show.

"You can't do that on television," say the adults.

"Just watch us," the kids respond.

And with this simple yet eloquent title sequence, YCDTOTV may well have radicalized an entire generation. Is it overreaching to suggest that the protesters currently occupying Wall Street are people who grew up watching Nickelodeon...? Perhaps it was this humble sketch comedy show that convinced them that they, not the old-school elite, were the ones with real power.

At long last... ZOMBY!!! sort of rips off Monty Python

But Zomby's not the first to be confused about which pets need licenses and which don't: