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ivan@stellysee.de
| From | "Andrew Hickey" <stealthmunchkin@gmail.com> |
| Subject | Neil Innes |
| Date | Tue, 4 Apr 2006 13:10:34 +0100 |
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I just saw Neil Innes on Saturday, and was absolutely blown away. It's
often easy to forget what a truly great talent Innes is, because so
much of his best work has been done in collaboration with others - the
Bonzo Dog Band, GRIMMS, Monty Python, The Rutles and so on. But seeing
him run through the highlights of his career in one night (and he got
through a *lot* of material, partly because he did part of the show in
a format similar to Ray Davies' Storyteller shows, playing parts of
songs and talking about the old days) was quite astounding.
The show concentrated on 'new' (ie recorded over the last 8 years or
so but never properly released until recently) material from his Work
In Progress CD (which they're promoting but won't have on sale at many
of the UK shows, as they forgot to pick two boxes of them up to take
on tour, so only had a handful to sell at the gig I was at), and this
is not the best work of his career, but he also went through a vast
amount of other material, playing many of his own classics (Urban
Spaceman, Godfrey Daniel, How Sweet To Be An Idiot, a 'Rutalot' medley
of material from the first Rutles album and a few others), part of I
Want To Tell You by the Beatles (while talking about recording at
Abbey Road while the Beatles were there), two Python classics (Brave
Sir Robin and the Bruce's Philosophers Song), several of the 20s and
30s novelty songs the Bonzos had in their repertoire (including the
wonderfully-named I'm Going To Bring A Watermelon To My Baby Tonight)
and several short 'commercials' ("cock-a-doodle-tato/the really big
potato/with a chicken inside!").
The gig was one of the best I've ever seen - ranking with Brian Wilson
or the Everly Brothers among my very favourites - and reinforced my
belief that Innes is the most criminally neglected songwriter of the
last 40 years. He's as talented as Stew, or Ray Davies, or McCartney,
but is dismissed because many of his songs are funny, and because of
his facility with stylistic pastiche.
He's on tour in the UK now, and then touring the US and Canada in May.
If you live in one of those countries and don't go and see him, the
only possible reason is that you hate music and have no sense of
humour, and none of you want to admit that, do you? Go and see him -
http://neilinnes.org/live.htm
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