Monty Python's Flying Circus - Classic or Dud?

i liked the one where they knew the end of the world was about to happen bcz the pages in graeme's diary were blank after a certain date, aged 11 i thought this tremendous stuff

I remember one episode that was a parody of Clockwork Orange - not exactly a kids' film!

i think the parody involved them dressing up then falling down

IIRC, Cleese appears in The Goodies as a genie emerging from a can, shouts "Kids' programme!" and disappears.

everything the goodies have done since the goodies is better than anything john cleese did EVEN IN MONTY PYTHON there i said it

Some of them were definitely broadcast later than 7, I wasn't allowed to stay up for them. Altho that was probably mainly on the grounds that my dad "wasn't watching that rubbish".

yr dad otm tho i loved em (silly men falling down was my jam)

Yeah I had the books and watched the TV show whenever the opportunity presented. The books were *definitely* not kids material despite the fact that yeah it's just gussied up slapstick mostly

I still fondly remember the Bronson The Wonder Man and "many moods of Charles Bronson" jokes from the Goodies' Disaster Movie book in the school library, despite having not seen Death Wish at age 8, nor any subsequent age

Is that a dagger I see before me? No, it's Trufo the wonder dog!

...sorry I seem to have derailed a Python thread into a Goodies discussion haha.

monty python and the holy grail" is one of the most historically accurate movies about the medieval era

Unlike almost every other film, MP films really got onscreen filth right. Like, literally, the cast often looks like it'd been rolling around in the dirt and mud before shooting a scene.

holy grail is probably their finest achievement in so many ways -- a consistently funny script, fine performances, just enough animation -- that i wish i hadn't burned out on it so long ago

still laugh whenever i think of "what, the curtains?"

Yeah. Probably not an uncommon story, but The Holy Grail deeply resonated with me and my nerd (USA) friends in middle school in the mid 90s. Like actually revelatory, shaped our senses of humor and inspired us to write comedy bits that we passed back and forth. It was an obsession for a good year or two.

We delved deeper into all the other Python stuff but it was mostly never on the same level in our minds. Not entirely sure of the alchemy, that one wrecked us scene to scene but the other movies and show mostly fell flat.

Is this where I can reveal that I changed all my AOL sound effects to Holy Grail .wavs

It’s SO much funnier than ‘.. Brian’ that it’s not even a debate anymore.

incorrect

like incorrect on both counts but so incorrect on in not being a debate that you should be banned

Since we brought up The goodies, bill office was quite the musician/songwriter, two songs a week on. I’m sorry i’ll Read that again for ten years.

Needless to say there is a lot of Python in ISIRTA and the earlier series probably have a similar hit/miss ratio. Ferret song stands with most of the best python sketches.

out of em all was bill oddie or gilliam or who the biggest prick

tim brooke-taylor clearly the worst ito no actual talent coattailing

Oddie the worst in terms of glaring me down when I saw him on a bus one time and was thinking of thanking him for his work

A glare that intimated the real possibility of verbal assault if I dared to acknowledge him

old cunt

t/s getting slotted by Bill Odie vs Rory McGrath.

Hate to say it, but Oddie used to be a regular customer when I worked in the jazz department of London's biggest record shop and he was always perfectly fine - clearly knew and loved his music, didn't expect or demand any special treatment, no trouble at all.

I know someone who used to work with his ex-wife and, yes, ex-wives and all that, but...

out of em all was bill oddie or gilliam or who the biggest prick

... or Cleese or Idle.

Just watched the episode with the Clockwork Orange parody for the first time in several decades ( https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6ewjb0 ) and it's pretty insane. And is in fact a parody of 2001 as well. Graham sends rabbits to the moon, Bill and Tim follow suit and get kidnapped by the moon rabbits who have become a super race and are sent back to earth as rabbits to terrorise the population (The Transistorised Carrot). How in hell they dreamed that up I don't know. It sort of holds up.

And it references Monty Python too!

That NTNOCN sketch is great, and sent me back to the original, which I still think might be their finest moment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeKWVuye1YE

if you can bear it, the bill oddie "who do you think you are" was interesting, if also wrenchingly sad (one of the saddest i remember): http://www.bbc.co.uk/whodoyouthinkyouare/past-stories/bill-oddie.shtml

it doesn't quite expunge the "don't be a prick" rule but it does explain what maybe turned him into one

If Marcello was here he could list all the jazz/improv musicians who played on the Goodies records. I know Dave Macrae, from Matching Mole, was heavily involved. Also that "Funky Gibbon" was inspired by Parliament/Funkadelic, though it sounds more like "Smash the Social Contract" by Cornelius Cardew.

... actually it's the other way round "Smash the Social Contract" sounds like "Funky Gibbon".

*hurries off to the wire to steal that insight for a thinkpiece*

isn't it also the "vote for nigel barton" tune tho? i think it's something repurpoised from the common realm

Yes, I think you're right, nonetheless I refuse to give up on the idea that Goodies inspired Maoism was a thing at some point in the 70s.

the guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish on a (three-man) bicycle swims in the sea

Here: http://www.alwynwturner.com/glitter/funky_gibbon.html

Bill Oddie:
You won't believe the musical pretensions that went on in my head. I listened to a lot of jazz and a lot of funk, and that period of the '70s for me was fantastic - it was really the era when fusion started. The people I liked were Sly Stone and early Parliament, and I listened to what was happening in jazz at the time, when Miles Davis was coming up with some very interesting hybrid music. With 'Funky Gibbon', I started off - it's almost unbelievable considering how stupid the song is - trying to get the feel of a Miles Davis track, I can't remember which, probably just after Bitches Brew and that sort of era: some really choppy Miles Davis-type rhythm, again with a Sly Stone influence.
We had marvellous musicians on those sessions, but they couldn't get it. They knew what I was sort of trying to do, but I probably listened to that sort of thing more than they did, and it was driving us nuts, so we sent the drummer and the bass-player and the guitarist home. And I had a keyboard player called Dave Macrae, who'd played with Matching Mole and Robert Wyatt and people like that - governor player - and he started playing some clavinet, very Stevie Wonder-type feel to it, and I said, 'That's fine; could you do a synth-bass on it?'
And then I literally started whacking the top of the grand piano. So the actual rhythm-track of 'The Funky Gibbon' has only got me and Dave on it - he plays clavinet and synth-bass and we miked up the top of the piano. Then we got the horn section of Gonzales playing a Memphis Horns-type thing. It was lovely for me to be able to use musicians I liked and try to reproduce sounds which I also listened to. And then put the stupid song over the top of it. The idea that all that effort went into 'The Funky Gibbon'!
It sounds like Parliament on a bad day, or something like that (laughs), that kind of thing. I think subconsciously people feel it - this was always my theory about it, I thought: I want the music to sound good or authentic, whatever style it happens to be in.

the deeps of this man! no wonder he is always cross

I have a positive Oddie story that involves a large bag of chocolate peanuts. It was Halloween and we kids knocked on his door. Always had time for the man after that but now re-evaluating my whole childhood.

I had a better impression of him than of Mel Smith who I also 'met' around the same time when he was filming something in a mate's house.

Still the NTNOCN hi-fi shop sketch remains classic at least until I decide to watch it again and I can't remember anything specific from The Goodies.

Henry was to meet a grisly end. While working as a semi-retired night watchman in his late 60s - back then a comfortable retirement was a luxury not extended to the working class - he died after tripping into a vat of boiling brine.

sniff, I heard he was remarkably well preserved.

lol i knew you'd enjoy that bit

If Marcello was here he could list all the jazz/improv musicians who played on the Goodies records. I know Dave Macrae, from Matching Mole, was heavily involved. Also that "Funky Gibbon" was inspired by Parliament/Funkadelic, though it sounds more like "Smash the Social Contract" by Cornelius Cardew.

― Monica Kindle (Tom D.), Thursday, November 29, 2018 11:09 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

... actually it's the other way round "Smash the Social Contract" sounds like "Funky Gibbon".

― Monica Kindle (Tom D.), Thursday, November 29, 2018 11:18 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

*hurries off to the wire to steal that insight for a thinkpiece*

― mark s, Thursday, November 29, 2018 11:20 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

isn't it also the "vote for nigel barton" tune tho? i think it's something repurpoised from the common realm

― mark s, Thursday, November 29, 2018 11:21 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes, I think you're right, nonetheless I refuse to give up on the idea that Goodies inspired Maoism was a thing at some point in the 70s.

― Monica Kindle (Tom D.), Thursday, November 29, 2018 11:24 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The 'who killed Cornelius Cardew' plot thickens...

Are you suggesting a tricycle was seen speeding away from the seen of the crime?

well, speeding then falling over

'the seen of the crime' nice

go off to yr Goodies thread already

I remember my ex-brother-in-law gave me a *tape of "Silence" by Michael Mantler with this photo on the cover, which he'd labelled, l-to-r, Robert Wyatt, Carla Bley, Kevin Coyne, Michael Mantler:

https://dvd-fever.co.uk/dvd-fever/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/the-goodies-featureda.jpg

(*we did get on, in spite of this)

warning: personal anecdotes time.

1. inspired by repeated listenings of a dubbed copy of my friend's cassette of MP's the final rip off comp, i recorded my own comedy sketches tape. it was probably no more than 4 or 5 sketch ideas, but i sequenced them, voiced the characters, etc. this was probably ca. '89. i only recall 2 of the ideas. in one, a famous literary critic is on a radio show to discuss (pausing to recall the novel...) (ah!) hardy's return of the native. he gets called out for instead just reading the back of a hardy boys book. the other one i remember was this week's episode of "dictionary reading for the blind," in which i pick up where we left off last episode just reading through the dictionary. my voice fades and the music comes up. the end. really shitty stuff, but what i wouldn't give to have this tape still.

2. i participated pretty heavily for a couple of years in the NFL (national forensic league). my specialty was HI (humorous interpretation, or humorous interp if you're in the know). you got like 10 minutes to present your piece. do all the voices if there are any. etc. in 11th grade i got 2nd place in the state (missippi) on the strength of my performance of "four yorkshiremen." it won me a trip to nationals that summer in san jose. only trouble was they required material to be published in written form and submitted. i couldn't find anywhere where that sketch was transcribed/published. i did, however, find "crunchy frog" published in written form somewhere. so i did that one at nationals and failed miserably. there was a great dance party for all of us, though, and the dj played all my faves of that time: "hippy chick," "enjoy the silence," etc.