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| From | "Mark Smith" <markmsmith@gmail.com> |
| Subject | Re: Neil Innes |
| Date | Tue, 4 Apr 2006 16:56:45 +0100 |
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Definitely agree about Innes being overlooked. A colleague at work has all
the solo albums on vinyl (which he was kind enough to just pass on to me
last week) so I spent some time converting them to CD for him (this was
prior to them being available on CD) and this was my introduction to solo
Innes. Previously I'd only known the Rutles and Bonzos stuff and I could
imagine that's the same for most people.
It's not helped by the TV series that Innes was involved in, Rutland Weekend
Television and Innes Book Of Records, not being available on DVD. So many of
his songs were written for those shows. I recently was able to download both
series of RWT along with the Christmas Special (featuring George Harrison
doing the much bootlegged Pirate Song) and it was great to see all his songs
in the context of the original sketches in which they were used. For example
'I Must Be In Love' which was the first appearance by The Rutles led on from
a sketch about a Doctor who thought love was an illness and he had set up a
hospital to treat those who were suffering from it. Neil was one of the
patients singing this song which then melded into the Rutles performance.
Great stuff.
Until the original albums get a wider release and these shows are released
on DVD (think RWT is tied up legally - those who wonder why may want to read
this lengthy piece
http://web.archive.org/web/20010531153921/http://home.earthlink.net/~wyuen/rutlesstory.htm)
he'll remain underappreciated.
Cheers
Mark
On 4/4/06, Andrew Hickey <stealthmunchkin@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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
>
> --
> DUMB ANGEL HAS UPDATED 7/11/05! - Little Brian In Smileland
> http://dumbangel.keenspace.com
> A webcomic about Smile
>
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