Monty Python's Matching Tie and Handkerchief

"It's a very simple case of non-presence." - John Cleese as Phone-in Psychologist

In December, 1973, the Pythons were at a crossroads. They'd done three series and had become cultural icons in Great Britain, Idle even performing his "Nudge, Nudge" character for a Breakaway Chocolate Biscuit ad and filthy lucre. They performed cabarets around London, sometimes with only two of the troupe, and they had done a tour of England up one side of the coast while David Bowie was going down on the other side. This show had taken them to Canada for their first tour of North America, and the Canadians treated them like the Beatles. They were a "thing".

But they were a thing with a fast approaching expiration date. Although most of the troupe was having a blast in their first foray into celebrity, John Cleese was a little befuddled by the whole thing. First off, there wasn't as much money as he felt there should have been, and he wanted to explore other creative endeavors, instead of doing Python 10 months out of the year. There was that whole thing with his wife Connie Booth, for instance, and the group did not allow for much participation from the Yokos. He also had a good friend who was starting a company for corporate training films. Plus, whatever happened to reading a good book on philosophy once in a while? Increasingly on the tour, he would eat alone, room alone, and leave at the earliest possible moment, which according to Idle, was when the fun stuff happened. By the end of 1973, it was clear that he would not participate in any future television series. What was not clear was whether the BBC would be interested in a Monty Python series without the man many thought to be the star of the show.

Still, it was Christmas, and the Pythons had created the British Christmas record market with their previous releases. Driven by Terry Jones and Michael Palin, the lads had released three albums previously, all of them selling very well and providing all with steady income. This particular album is interesting in a number of ways--

1.) Its original title was "Free Record Given Away with Monty Python's Matching Tie and Handkerchief." They decided to shorten it by cutting out the joke. They originally sold it with an

actual tie and handkerchief. When that went by the wayside, they switched to inner sleeve artwork that showed a matching tie and handkerchief through a cutaway box on the outer sleeve, and then when you pulled out the inner sleeve, you found a man hanging from the gallows by the tie. They got rid of this in future pressings, too. Raising the question, if holiday suicides are so objectionable, how come they're so popular?
2.) It's confusing. First off, the record famously had three tracks, the second side having two concentric tracks, meaning that you would get two different playlists depending on where the needle fell on the vinyl. On top of that confusion, there were no track lists printed on the spindle label, and both sides of the record were labeled "Side 2". It's one of those things that are irritating, until you figure out what's going on, and then you really enjoy it because you're "in" on the joke.
3.) This was the first Monty Python record nominated for a Grammy in 1976. (Richard Pryor beat them out.) It shows that they were making serious inroads into the American comedy market, and should have started them all a-droolin' with the potential for a new market for their TV shows. But--
4.) It's the last Monty Python album based on their TV show material.

Let's check it out. Oh, and if you want, you can Buy It Here!! (This one has bonus tracks that we won't discuss here-- just keeping it all topical.)

We start in the middle with a brief radio forum. "Ordinary folks" vent their spleen over all the other "ordinary folks." Palin, Chapman and Cleveland angrily and hilariously decry against what all the "others" are doing, as Idle politely moderates. It's hilarious, and in 40+ years, nothing has changed. "...all right thinking people in this country are sick and tired of being told that ordinary, decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired! I'm certainly not, and I'm sick and tired of being told that I am!" The hypocrisy is dizzying, and silly. A question arises-- what would the candidates do if they were Hitler-- and that takes us into the Church Police sketch.

Church Police, or Church Fuzz, actually works well in the audio format, with Carol Cleveland literally chiming in with voice overs announcing "One slice of strawberry tart without so much rat in it later." The arrival of the Church police is not quite as abrupt as in the show, but they do give us sirens, squealing tires and crashing. They add a couple of jokes; Palin asks "What's all this, then, amen?" and he's referred to as Vicar/Sergeant and  Detective/Parson. Instead of the big hand coming down from the heavens, a nasal voice echoes "The one in the grey, he done it!"  They close out the sketch the a hymn, rewritten to include the Church Fuzz.

Cleese announces the next show,"Who Cares?", with the this week's subject of surgery, or more specifically, transplanting elephant parts on humans for no particular reason, or with any positive outcome. Chapman is the offending "surgeon and financier", It's a fun little bit, with Chapman sedately defending his work, despite the transplant of a pederast onto a Bishop and a bored woman onto a mahogany Chesterfield table, as well as Chapman's complaints about the lack of sufficient accidents to create more such opportunities. As cars crash in the background and Chapman runs off to look for new body parts--

Idle takes over with radio coverage of "Novel Writing". Just as with the coverage of the eclipse on the previous record, called Monty Python's Previous Record", this is sports coverage of the least active of activities, namely sitting your ass down at a keyboard and making words up. The subject this episode is Thomas Hardy, as he sits down to pen "The Return of the Native". Palin and Chapman provide color commentary as Hardy doodles, stares off into space, and finally, pens a rather ordinary sentence fragment that has the bank holiday crowd cheering. "It's 'Tess of the D'Urbevilles' all over again," Chapman groans, disappointed, before Hardy takes it up a notch. An old Python idea, but one of its best applications.

A new bit yet again, with Cleese doing a scarcely comprehensible bit on word association. "This is a technique out a living much used in the practice makes perfect of psychoanalysis-ter and brother..." "Eke out a living", "practice makes perfect", "sister and brother",... you get the idea. Cleese runs with it, weaving increasingly elaborate sentence fragments into his main message. It gets pretty ornate. It's funny how many people can quote the parrot sketch, yet how few will attempt "Johann Gambolputty" or, well, this.

We shift easily to the sound of flies buzzing and Australians Australiating and Philosophizing. The Watermaloo Philosopher sketch, from season 2, the first time an album has gone to seasons other than the most concurrent for material. Why would they do such a thing? Well, I suspect that between season 2 and the taping of the album, Idle had come up with the philosopher's song. After a rushed read through of the sketch, with everyone chiming in with the various "No pooftahs" rules, Idle leads the now famous song,the first time the song appears in recorded Python material.

Another bit of new follows, with Palin doing a Hitchcock-ian radio show, with suspenseful music and orchestral bangs, all revolving around how nothing happens on a fairly typical day. "For Ralph Mellish, this was not to be the start of any trail of events which would not in no time at all involve him in neither a tangled knot of suspicion nor any web of lies, which would, had he not been involved, surely have led him to no other place than the central criminal court of the Old Bailey." It's a good, fun bit, riffing on the overwrought narrative of such radio dramas. But it's soon interrupted by his wife, Jones (no surprise there,) who shoos him out to work. He obeys, narrating himself out. Chapman, as his doctor, explains what Palin's problem is, while Jones kills and eats a dog. A tempestuous and only audible (thank God!) affair between Chapman and Jones follows ("Put your tongue in my mouth, come on, come on...") with Palin returning in his own narration. This is essentially "Fun with Sound Effects" yet again, only more sophisticated, with a solid stripe of narrative running down the spine. I think another few albums and Palin would have had it nailed!

The Cheese Shop comes next, only now it's the National Cheese Emporium. The Turkish musicians vary the pace, sometimes getting irritatingly fast, thereby meriting the exasperated "Shut that bloody mazuki up!" from Cleese late in the sketch. Cleese does substitute "fucking runny" for "excrementally runny," and at the end, Palin owns up that he was "deliberately wasting your time."

Brief follow up bits follow up. The show "What's to Come" is interrupted by news that Thomas Hardy has completed his first sentence, and the crowd goes wild. A second show, on keeping Siberian tigers, is interrupted by a wasp, chasing terrified crew out of the sound studio and leaving the announcer to the mercies of the stung tiger. It doesn't go well. Finally, Cleese as great actor Sir Edmund Hilary gives us a peek behind the curtain of acting. While Idle asks about his craft in hushed tones, Cleese reveals that Hamlet is the most difficult role, because it has the most words. Othello has a lot of words, too, but it has more pauses, which gives the master thespian time to decide what face he's going to pull in the next moment. The disillusioned interviewer ends the piece with a whispered "Get stuffed." "Enjoyed it," Edmund replies. End of side one.

Side 2A starts with the Background to History. Chapman announces a very dry subject, the medeival farming system and its relation to oxen, but then turns to a Professor Tufts-- who plays a bitchin' reggae tune. "As ye shall have yoked in the plough... oh yeah! Oh, yeah!" Proof of open field farming inspires a rock song with a driving drum beat, along with a screeched out "Of the Norman Conquest" that cracks me up! Finally, an interview with a rocker/professor (Jones?) finishes up with a gospel song-- "The villeins and the ploughsmen got to have the lord's consent!", they repeat, ala "Hey Jude". This is an awesome bit of production value-- the songs are so fun, melodic and well made spoofs of music popular in late 60's early 70's Great Britain, Was Neil Innes in on this? If so, it is the best thing he has ever done with Python (and yes, that includes "How Sweet to be an Idiot".)

Next, a nice wedge of silliness with Chapman trying to buy "The Ronettes Sing Agrarian History" but can only get World War 1 Noises. "Is that the Ronettes?" Chapman asks. "No, the French and the Germans" Idle replies. He goes to a booth to hear a track, accidentally interrupting a man with a sheep. The WW1 noises are a conversation between a major and a sergeant, ala the Ypres sketch, but in this one, Jones tells superior officer Palin that his wife, according to her picture, is ugly. The record skips as a bomb is dropped, and Chapman tries to get some help from the staff-- almost all of whom are dead! The woman that sent him to the booth expired, and the store's manager has had his head ripped off during an interrogation. (Gilliam-- I think it's Gilliam, it may be Cleese-- plays the interrogator. When asked to return the manager upstairs, he shouts in a Gumby voice, "But he's told us nothing!" Funny.) Chapman finally returns to the sounds of WW1, where Palin gets a look at Jones' dog-- and she's very attractive. "I think I'll be calling on you a lot when this is over. I'm rather fond of dogs." The record skips again, and when Chapman complains-- he skips. And not in the liberated gay man way. See, he's on a record, too. Mind? Blown.

Palin announces "Boxing Tonight", Bodell vs. Kenneth Clark, as from the show. They play it pretty straight, without Idle's clowning as the referee. This is another excerpt from season 2, and we're about to get yet another, on Side 2B, (not to be confused with 1/2 a bee.)

 The "Mrs. Niggerbaiter Explodes" sketch makes a rare appearance. Ironically, the comedy album Grammy winner for that year was Richard Pryor's "Bicentennial Nigger". I wonder if some grad student has written a thesis on that year's comedy albums and the use of such offensive epithets.

Carol Cleveland sets the stage for the Oscar Wilde sketch, a true gem and almost entirely audio. The gales of laughter the first two bon mots inspire is alone worth the price of admission. They cut out the "You bastard" line, I'm not sure why, but apart from that, it still all works beautifully. The next bit, "Taking in the Terrier", is the one where Cleese comes in the pet shop to buy a cat, and they try to talk him into accepting a horribly enhanced terrier, skinned and re-eared for the market. It's a favorite sick bit of mine, and they dredged it all the way back from Season 1.

But that's all we got. It's a funny collection, but of all the Monty Python attempts, this one really feels like it's scraping the bottom of the barrel. Mrs. Niggerbaiter? Bodell v. Clark? Really? It's a shame, too, because it feels like the new material had some potential and humor.

Still, it did the job. In just two years, the Python crew would be very well known in the smarter pockets of America, and PBS stations, as well as a doomed flirtation with ABC, would come calling for the rights to the show. For the first time, the lads would start to see some serious bucks. How much of this was because of their discography? I don't know-- but it couldn't have hurt.

Next Week; "Live at the Drury Lane!"

Monty Python's Previous Record

"Not this record! Not this record! Auuugh!" - Michael Palin as a horrified listener.

The show is in hiatus, and let's face it, Christmas is cold in London. It's time for the lads to take the material that they own, and spin it into a little firewood money.

But not so fast. Apparently, selling out was never of interest to the Python crew-- at least not until Eric Idle came to Broadway. As Palin remarks in "The Pythons Autobiography by the Pythons", if they were going to do an album, they wanted it to be unique and special-- not another retread, with the lads performing transcripts in front of an audience, as in their first record (as opposed to their previous record. That's this one.) And he's not just saying that for himself. Palin is speaking for the entire group, none of whom disagreed... or agreed... or could be bothered to say anything else.

Yes, the sad part about the Monty python discography is how little interest it inspired in the members themselves. Even Idle, at this stage, had no interest in records. Cleese and Chapman couldn't care less. Gilliam apparently said "Okay, here's the album cover. You know where to send the checks." (I'm only imagining this to be the case.) Only Jones and Palin saw the possibilities inherent in the album.

Remember, this was in the 70s, the era of Cheech and Chong, George Carlin, National Lampoon-- what couldn't be broadcast on television and radio could be scratched into the black, black vinyl of a record album, constituting the only uncensored option for popular entertainment in mass media, and giving the Pythons complete and total creative freedom. It was also the readiest entree into the coveted American market, as records were as easy to play in Detroit as in London. Waking America up to the allure of Python would have meant a huge increase in the marketability of the BBC television shows, which, by the grace of the short-sightedness of the BBC, were owned by the Pythons themselves. Add to that the fact that the writing was already half way done, and it seems like a no-brainer.

"I don't want to make an album-inium!"

So why were Cleese, Chapman, Idle and Gilliam so indifferent to the enterprise? Draw your own conclusions. But my suspicion is that their brains were hurting at the time. The brilliance and genius that went into the material was apparently all they had.

Thank goodness for Palin and Jones, who took on the challenge, spear-headed the writing and organizing effort, rounded up the sullen actors and got them the hell into the studio to establish a market for themselves, add value to the brand, and create some of the funniest comedy albums of the decade.

This was their third album-ic effort. The first was a BBC prompted disaster (except for the material and performances, of course,) and the second was a vast improvement, but still marked by production difficulties-- the recording engineer didn't take any notes of the takes, and they wound up assembling the album from a tangled, unlabeled ball of tape. This time, things went relatively smoothly, if the lack of anecdotal references is any indication. So let's give it a listen. Oh, and you can buy the album here, if you want! And if you don't want, what happened, bro? When did it all become about money?

We start right off with Michael Palin screaming in terror "Not this record!" before the needle scrapes across the grooves, as if the  record itself had to be restrained before it could be played.

Lush, sweet string music follows. "Are you embarrassed easily? I am!" says Idle proudly. "It's all part of growing up and being British." The course that Idle introduces is how not to be embarrassed. Palin takes over as the cheerful but awkward creator of this self-help program, which consists of being subjected to embarrassing stimuli for a prolonged time. This becomes a cheap excuse for rude sound effects such as wet farts-- actually, wet farts is their ace in the hole (so to speak.) This is a classic example of Monty Python's predilection for combining high brow with low brow, although in this particular case, they seemed to have shot right past "high brow" with scarcely a backward glance. There is a nice running gag with Palin's professor, as he tries to administer an evaluation, with the multiple choice answers "Slightly embarrassed", "Very embarrassed" and "Good evening" the last being (ostensibly) a desperate attempt to change the subject. Plus, Carol Cleveland's in it, so that will raise a brow or two right there.

One of Palin's "Good evening"s takes us right to Chapman wishing us the same. He then introduces Cleese to read "A Book at Bedtime". But unlike the TV sketch. no one has any trouble reading this book, which seems to be some sort of "Kama Sutra for Dummies".... "the man with the melon switches on the battery and places his left thigh carefully on the swivel table..." It appears the Pythons are grasping this opportunity for uncensored antics with both hands, much like they might a melon.

Classical strings play us out, and the sound of horse hooves takes us to the Dennis Moore sketch, the first television transfer of the album so far. The material is pretty much unadapted for radio, although Cleese seems to be rushing through it. We fade out as Cleese tries to explain exactly which tree he can hit, and Idle takes over with "The Money Programme". That bit is performed exactly as it was on television, and we lose nothing without the knowledge that the men backing Idle up in the closing song are wearing Dutch milk maid outfits. The pitfalls of randomness-- no one notices it when it's gone. The song is great, an Idle classic, with "lots of lovely lira" alliteration.

Back to Dennis Moore, and they're still talking trees. Finally, Cleese gets them back on board and puts forward the big ask-- lupins. The theme song plays him off as he gallops away on his horse Concorde.

Another Idle bit follows-- he's working hard for this record-- as an Australian commentator discussing the merits of Australian table wines. Essentially, he damns them with faint praise, claiming that Chateau Chunda is a wine "specially grown for those keen on regurgitation."

A new half verse of the Dennis Moore theme song ("Mister Moore!... Lupin Galore!... Extra Whore!"... I think. These things don't come with lyrics.) bridges us from wines with bouquets like an aborigine's armpit, to the Argument Clinic. I've gone on at great lengths about my admiration for this sublime sketch. Here it is on vinyl, The set-up with Carol Cleveland seems to take longer than it should, but I can't spot any additions, so it's probably just my wretched anticipation. When Palin finally navigates Chapman' abuse and makes it to Cleese's office, we go to-- STEREO!!! Palin in the left ear, Cleese in the right. It's a wise move, an experience we never get on television, of being right in the middle of this silliness. We lose a little bit when Cleese rings the bell-- there's always a huge audience reaction to Palin's mounting frustration at being cheated, and that's missing from this otherwise excellent version. At the end of the "Getting Hit on the Head" lesson, Palin grumbles "What a stupid concept!" and we quick cut to--

"How to Do It". This was a brilliant sketch in the show. It's less brilliant on the record, although Idle, Cleese and Chapman give it their all, fairly panting with breathless enthusiasm. But without the manic smiles and the dog, it's just not hitting the mark. Another Dennis Moore verse follows; "Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore, is not in this bit!" He actually is, though, as Cleese plays Mrs. Premise to Chapman's Mrs. Conclusion in the opening exchange to the whole John Paul Sartre epic. This is the great exchange about  killing house pets for the sake of personal freedom. "I just spent four hours burying the cat... it wouldn't keep still. Wriggling, howling..." And what the hell is a "budgie", anyway? A parakeet or canary, apparently

This is a budgie. You can hit them with a book...

We only get as far as the "personal freedom" line before we cut to a brief sequence of goofy personal ads, translated for radio. "[Chime] Forced gentleman required to share large hamster gentleman. Ooo, ooo." The "Ooo"s at the end are grunts of mortification at a mistake. I don't get these jokes, really, but I like hearing Palin and Idle act embarrassed for audio.

Another verse of Dennis Moore, this one with the "dum-dum"s instead of proper lyrics, and we're in the Post Office with Cleese as he attempts to purchase a fish licence. It's pretty remarkable, is it not, how heavy this side of the record is with Cleese/Chapman material. We have Dennis Moore, the Argument Clinic, How To Do It, the Budgie Whack, and now, the Fish Licence. We're in stereo again for this bit. The only divergence from the televised sketch is when Palin finally caves to the halibut lover-- instead of needing to be shown a newspaper clipping, Palin just gives in. Now that's some good writin'! Finally, when Palin insists that there is no need for a fish licence, instead of being interrupted by something so visual as a freakishly tall Lord Mayor and a soccer game against gynecologists, Cleese switches gears and asks for a licence for his pet bee, Eric. Actually, Eric the Half a Bee. "He had an accident." What follows is one of the sweetest and rarest moments on the album, indeed in Python lore.

Cleese sings! The legendarily tone-deaf Cleese wrote (with Idle) a tiny little gem of a song/soliloquy about the philosophical implications of the existence of a half a bee, and then sang it, the first half in a Higgins-esque oratorical style, then in a low croak. I am transcribing the lyrics below, but you must hear the song for yourself! It is an awkward and amateurish attempt at entertainment, but so friggin' adorable, you feel like your son is up on stage for the third grade talent show. The material is first rate. It's just the performance, which the lads do their best to tart up with piano, guitar and Andy Williams-esque whistle. Here are the lyrics--

Eric the Half a Bee

Half a bee, philosophically, 

Must ipso-facto half not be,

But half the bee has got to be,

Vis a vis its entity. D'you see? 

But can a bee be said to be

Or not to be an entire bee

When half the bee is not a bee

Due to some ancient injury?

Singing...

Lah-dee-dee... one, two, three

Eric the Half a Bee

A-B-C-D-E-F-G

Eric the Half a Bee

Is this wretched demi-bee

Half asleep upon my knee

Some freak from a menagerie?

No! It's Eric the Half a Bee!

Fiddle-dee-dum, Fiddle-dee-dee

Eric the Half a Bee

Ho-ho-ho. Tee-hee-hee.

Eric the Half a Bee

I love this hive employee-ee

Bisected accidentally

One summer afternoon by me

I love him carnally

He loves him carnally!

Semi-carnally!

The end.

Palin, having misheard the lyrics, asks "Cyril Connelly?" (a British actor) and Cleese corrects him, but the background singers finish off with the mistake, and the whistle fades us out. Aw, my brothers, it's such a gem to hear this tune, which is almost unbearable to hear. Cleese seems to mock himself and happy songs in the same wasted breath, My personal favorite is "A-B-C-D-E-F-G". Talk about filler! Anyway, enough about this. Suffice it to say, once you hear it it will burn into your brain, and years later you will find yourself humming the song, and wondering why on earth you would do such a thing to yourself, but you will also smile, even laugh. 

The whistle takes us to some flutes,which open the brassy theme song of a new radio quiz game hosted by Idle, the other heavy hitter on this side of the album. This show plays with sound effects, the very title of the show invaded by it. "What Do You [Broken Cuckoo Clock]?" This sketch is basically a radio version of Idle's "It's a Living" sketch, where the explanation of the rules takes up the entire show. The sound effects give it that radio spin. Funny, and certainly fast and complex, if not inspired. 

Jones announces that we're in a travel agent's office, and is sure to mention the "big breasted typist" in the outre office. Yes, it's the Travel Agent Sketch! It plays out pretty much like the televised version, although after the whole "I can't pronounce the letter 'c'", bit, when Palin gives him the advice to replace the "c" with a "k" instead of a "b", Idle says "I never thought of that. What a silly bunt."  Palin's interjections are brilliant, as is Idle's monologue. There's a nice little mirror here, as Palin's hysterical pleadings turn from the oblivious Idle to the audience. "Take it off!" he screams. "For God's sake, take it off!!!" The sound of a needle skipping across the vinyl grooves, and we're done with the first side, dominated by Chapman and Cleese material, and Chapman Idle performances. Even the Travel Agent's Sketch was originally written by Cleese and Chapman, with Idle adding the monologue, and Eric the Half a Bee was an Idle/Cleese collaboration. Let's see if side two gives us some Palin/Jones representation...

Well, not at first. Someone seems to have woken up Graham. We begin with him announcing "A massage from the Swedish Prime Minister". No, that's not a typo. What we get is the sound of a massage, and a pretty slappy one, at that. Music and sound effects play us off, and Cleese takes over as host of yet another sound effects oriented radio game show. Nothing particularly memorable here, and in fact it goes by so fast, it's scarcely comprehensible. There is one item worth mentioning-- one of the sound effects sounds remarkably like the Knights who say "Ni!" Maybe this is the origin story.

Moving on, we get another Cleese/Chapman classic, THRUST, or as you might remember it, the Anne Elk sketch. Chapman, having passed the joke by in the televised version, nails it this time,introducing Cleese as "An Elk." And then screaming, as though being prodded with a point-ed stick. "Sorry. Anne Elk. Mrs. Anne Elk." There are some other nice additions of silliness in the audio version, not the least of which is Chapman making his frustration heard, as opposed to just seen. It's a nice mirror of the prior Travel Agent sketch, and at the end of it, Chapman shoots the hard-to-kill Elk, first with a pistol, then with a machine gun. They should have gotten Palin's namesake Sarah in on that job-- elks are her specialty. Elks and Russia.

Now we get something new, something complex, something silly. Do I smell a little Palin.Jones action? We begin with lush, orchestral swellings, and Jones talks about the beautiful Yangtze River in China. To bolster his points, he quotes the poetry of various... British goalies? Although this is not apparent to me at first, the lads throw me a friggin' bone, and point out that for some reason, the goalies are fascinated by the river, specifically the fish within it. In standard Python fashion, they explore this concept thoroughly, with Scottish poetry commentator Palin distinguishing between the Yangtze poetry of younger goalies, versus the older ones. Finally, a football stadium song-a-long, "We love the Yangtse, Yangtse-Kiang,
Flowing from Yushu down to Ching-Kiang,
Passing through Chung King, Wuhan and Hoo-Kow
Three thousand miles, but it gets there somehow. Oh! 

Szechuan's the province and Shanghai is the port,
And the Yangtse is the river that we all support!"

Sounds like Palin to me. (Thanks, Montypython.net for the lyrics! I couldn't make them out.)

Another "massage", and  Idle does a great bit, reading with whispered intensity form a hot novel, that soon stalls. The naked lady stands in the moonlight... "A minute passed." Idle comes up with several hilarious variations on "a minute passed," including "a different minute passed," and "another minute, that felt like an hour but was actually only a minute... passed." The name of the hot novel, it turns out, is "A Minute Passed,"

Gilliam makes a surprise appearance as he announces grandly, "for the first time on record... the eclipse of the sun!" The lads seem to have found the fun of this medium at last, having moved beyond goofy sound effects. Cleese, Chapman and Idle report on the eclipse as though they were color commentators at a baseball game. "I think we can expect some first class eclipsing today." It's a very silly series of exchanges, so silly that director Jones has to make them start over at one point, but as the eclipse begins, "Well, I can't see anyone stopping it now," it starts to rain ("Rain. Rain. Rain."). The show is over.

Palin takes over, with a recording of Alistair Cook being attacked by a duck, with Idle as Cook-- nothing much here, just an odd sound overlay-- and then, screaming with enthusiasm, he welcomes us to the world of sound! But really, it's just another excuse for Palin to play with sound effects. "Listen to a cockroach sneeze!" "Listen to an ant rubbing Vicks on its chest!" Then, of course, things start getting out of control, as he breaks things, and fart, all the whole screaming "He-hey! Isn't nature wonderful?!" His sound samples also get sillier. A herd of zebras at the chemist's buying "something for the weekend."It's fun to hear Palin really go for it, but there's a sophomoric tone to all of this "look what we can do with sound" stuff. It feels like stoner college radio, only without the world music. It's certainly well below the level of most Python material.     

Another goofy audio personal ad follows, (Idle: "We will get the deceased out of the house and down the chute within the hour."), as well as another "massage" from the Swedish Prime Minister.

The Fairy Tale, a Cleese/Booth creation, takes over, a sprawling bit of silliness that they produced for their second German episode. ("Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus!") It actually works better on vinyl than the televised version. Carol Cleveland took over the Connie Booth role-- I wonder of there's a story behind that-- and they focus on the King's song, "Yah-dee-buggity!" as opposed to the random stuff he was doing before. The silly song becomes a comic touchstone. The bit also ends much sooner, with a disastrous and random resolution to the second prince's quest for cigarettes, "which only goes to show," denouements narrator Cleese.

And that's the end of the album. Rife with the classics and great new silly stuff, as well as some filler, it's far from the revolutionary works of vinyl still to come, but it's representative of some of the great Cleese/Chapman bits from season three, Still, you can see their hearts weren't in it, and you feel bad for Palin and Jones, who try soooo hard! Let;s hope the next one sparks a little more imaginative fire.

Next Week; Matching Tie and Handkerchief!