Music heals in all sorts of ways. One way is through humour, both intended and unintended. Here are just a few of my favourite balms of battiness. Hope you like them too. Comments welcome.
William Shatner, “Lucy in The Sky With Diamonds”
Apparently this was not a novelty song, but a serious effort from Star Trek star William Shatner - which makes his ham actor butchery of the Beatles all the more hilarious. In his 1968 debut album, A Transformed Man, Captain Kirk also massacres Shakespeare and Bob Dylan with the help of inept session players.
“In 2000, the album was voted number 3 in the All-Time Worst Albums Ever Made from Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums,” according to Wikipedia. “In 2006, Q magazine ranked it No. 45 in their list of the 50 worst albums ever.”
I laughed uproariously when I first heard this deranged version of the Beatles classic, and in the years since it’s never failed to lift my spirits. Soooo healing.
Leonard Nimoy, “If I Had a Hammer”
Shatner’s album wasn’t an isolated oddity. In a crazy late sixties cross-marketing craze, the entertainment industry wooed tone-deaf television stars with recording contracts. Among them was another Star Trek actor, Leonard Nimoy, who reworked this folk standard into a gem of unintentional comedy.
Spock suffered for his art…and now it’s the listeners’ turn.
Monty Python, “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? With it’s demented combo of pretzel logic and man-bee love, this 1972 John Cleese tune from Monty Python’s Previous Record never gets old.
(True story. I was introduced to both marijuana and this Python album at a house party in the early eighties. At one point I fell to the floor laughing, unable to breath. I remember concerned friends from college standing over me, one asking, “is he going to be all right?”)
Monty Python, “Every Sperm is Sacred”
Every sperm is sacred, every sperm is great / If a sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate! A classic song from the Monty Python film, “The Meaning of Life,” which won a BAFTA Music Award for Best Original Song in a Film in 1983.
The local mill has closed and a poor Roman Catholic couple, played by Michael Palin and Terry Jones, have no choice but to sell off their 63 children for scientific experiments. Dad explains to the urchins why birth control is never an option for believers, in a silly yet subversive song and dance number.
The Beatles, “You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)”
According to Monty Python cartoonist Terry Gilliam, George Harrison was a “huge Python fan.”
He was always convinced that the spirit of The Beatles went into the Pythons because we started the year they quit. I want to believe that as well.
The comment makes perfect sense when you listen to this 1970 studio oddity from the fab four. It gets progressively daffier, finishing in pre-Pythonesque glory.
In David Sheff’s book All We Are Saying, John Lennon explained that the song was inspired by a slogan on the front of the London telephone directory for 1967, which he’d seen at Paul McCartney’s house.
That was a piece of unfinished music that I turned into a comedy record with Paul. I was waiting for him in his house, and I saw the phone book was on the piano with ‘You know the name, look up the number.’ That was like a logo, and I just changed it. It was going to be a Four Tops kind of song – the chord changes are like that – but it never developed and we made a joke of it. Brian Jones is playing saxophone on it.
In 1988 Paul McCartney oddly identified ‘You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)’ as his favourite Beatles song.
People are only just discovering the b-sides of Beatles singles. They’re only just discovering things like ‘You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)’ – probably my favourite Beatles track, just because it’s so insane.
The Rolling Stones, “Far Away Eyes”
Though not exactly a novelty song from the Stones, the intro by Mick Jagger to this country western number certainly has comic appeal. From their 1977 album Some Girls.
Music aside, it’s still a mystery to me how a guy who looked like Don Knotts and danced like an electrocuted chicken ever became an international sex symbol.
Spinal Tap, “Stonehenge”
In this scene from director Rob Reiner’s 1984 mockumentary about a dull-witted heavy metal band, This is Spinal Tap, a misunderstanding over a scale model of Stonehenge commissioned for the band’s tour leads to bad feelings and mutual blame.
You can watch the movie in its entirety here. It holds up well!
Flight of the Conchords, “Bowie’s In Space”
In their television series Flight Of The Conchords, Kiwis Bret Mckenzie and Jemaine Clement pulled off a perfect caricature of David Bowie’s vocals and musical style. Rest in peace, Major Tom.
BONUS SONG
Flight of the Conchords, “Ladies of the World”
Had to include the duo’s marvelous rendering of musical male cheesiness. Watch for the gender bit that wouldn’t fly these days.
Squeeze, Cool for Cats, one of the funniest music videos in my opinion. Thanks for the great magical musical tour. Nice to end it off with some Flight of the Conchords material. Classic stuff and nice to be reminded of it.
A welcome reprieve. Thank you!