Category: All Posts

An Innes-cent man

You know about the Rutles, I’m sure. You must. The Rutles is a Beatles parody by Monty Python’s Eric Idle and a tremendously talented and funny musical chap named Neil Innes, whose Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (later just the Bonzo Dog Band) had a spot in Magical Mystery Tour, performing their legendary dirty ditty, Death Cab for Cutie.

http://youtu.be/jfHPs_1KUW4

Neil Innes appeared in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, singing the ballad of Eric Idle’s “Brave” Sir Robin. Innes then did a BBC comedy sketch show with Idle called Rutland Weekend Television. RWT was most notable for introducing the Rutles, with Idle playing the George part (he switched to being Paul) and Innes as John.

[flv:http://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Video/Beatles/Rutles.flv 400 300]

The Rutles film re-appeared on Saturday Night Live, and it was such a big hit that Lorne Michaels produced a TV movie with the faux four called All You Need is Cash. The parody adhered so closely to the Beatles story that it made the reality of it seem all the more unreal.

All of the Rutle songs are by Neil Innes, and they don’t just capture the sound and feeling of the Beatles. Innes managed to deconstruct the Lennon-McCartney magic and turn it inside out, while being both scathing and reverential. Lyrics like “nature’s calling and I must go there” are brilliant and hilarious.

I’ve been wanting to do a Neil Innes post for some months, but I have to do this one right now, because I will be seeing Innes perform tonight, at the Narrows Center for the Arts in Fall River, Massachusetts.

YouTube grab-bag

Do I know about Pomplamoose? Yes, for over a year.

Pomplamoose reminds me of what Les Paul and Mary Ford were doing 60 years ago.

Pomplamoose went viral on YouTube and got so big, so fast they did Hyundai commercials.

Asteroids Galaxy Tour did this…

… and it was turned into a Heineken commercial I’ve seen on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.
http://youtu.be/TLgetLmlggA

Still on the fringes, with no TV commercial to call their own, is Project: Pimento, a group that features a theramin. Thanks for the tip, tastewar.

The truth is out there…. waaay out there

Conspiracy theories abound, and all of them make me cover my ears and hum. Not because I don’t want to hear the “truth,” but because I don’t want to hear nonsense. Keith Allen, the father of Lily Allen, the bad girl of British Pop, has a documentary pushing the idea that Princess Diana was murdered by the Royal Family.

http://youtu.be/V5PFWc8DgFw

When has any conspiracy theory ever held up to serious examination? “Water-tight” cases were made that JFK was killed by Castro. No, wait. The Mob did it. Or was it really LBJ? Of course we didn’t actually go to the Moon. And 9/11 was an inside job. A current example is the so-called birther crowd. They demanded to see Obama’s full birth certificate from Hawaii, and when he produced it they declared it to be a fake.

Today’s Diane Rehm radio talk show featured author Jonathan Kay, who has written a book called Among the Truthers.

[audio:http://public.npr.org/anon.npr-podcasts/podcast/305/510071/136247861/WAMU_136247861.mp3|titles=Diane Rehm: Jonathan Kay ‘Among the Truthers’]

Where things get messy is with the Gulf of Tonkin and Saddam Hussein’s WMD. These have been proven to my satisfaction to have been hyped threats, with the intent of justifying military action. The problem is, from these facts people make the leap to saying that because the government has been deceitful in some instances, then FDR wanted Pearl Harbor to happen and a UFO really did crash in Roswell, New Mexico.

Eclairs, I declare

At work today I saw some cookies in the break room that must have been left over from some meeting, not long after my group had muffins and bagels in our monthly meeting. This brought to mind one of my favorite Disney Silly Symphonies, The Cookie Carnival, a lavish and fascinating cartoon from 1935.

Does this remind you of Dorothy’s reception four years later in The Wizard of OZ, with the parade, the Lullaby League, and the Lollipop Guild? At 2:30 into the cartoon, watch what the cookie guy (with Goofy’s voice) does with the eclairs. Obviously, the animators knew exactly what they were doing to get the attention of the adults in the audience. And I don’t think the angel food guys were interested in marrying anybody but each other.

DOuG of Arabia

I’m watching Lawrence of Arabia on TCM. One of the most memorable movie experiences of my life was seeing the 1989 reissue in a downtown Boston theater.

http://youtu.be/RQA_ldX0VI0

What made it so memorable, besides the fact it’s a great movie, was that only days before I had returned from Arabia myself. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

I spent a month there on business, and it was a very busy, unusual month. I turned down an invitation to see a public beheading, from an American who had been working there for ten years. He told me the single most important issue confronting the Kingdom, and in turn America, over the next 20 years would be the Islamic Revolution that had begun ten years before in Iran. He wasn’t wrong.

Milk spilled backwards

A week or so ago I added a link over on the right for singer-songwriter Kate Klim. As Kate pointed out last night at the Off the Common Coffeehouse in Bridgewater, MA, her name is, yes, milk spelled backwards. Now based in Nashville, Kate Klim is originally from Illinois, and she attended Berklee in Boston to study music. I sent some money to Kate about a year ago when she was working on her new CD, Kamikaze Love, and that’s why my name is printed on the case.

This is Kate performing the title track. (I need to get a more light-sensitive camera with a lens stronger than 3x zoom!)

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Appearing with Kate was Susan Levine, whose most recent CD is Atlas. (Her Atlas didn’t shrug.) 😉 After their solo sets, which were both great, Susan finished the evening with Kate singing harmony. Wonderful!

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I think Carol and I were strangers in an audience of old friends, but we were made to feel welcome and we enjoyed the concert very much. It was nice being able to chat with Kate and Susan, and Kate demonstrated something cool that I’d read about on the tech sites, but hadn’t seen before — an iPhone with a credit card swiper!