"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
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!"
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