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ivan@stellysee.de
| From | "Gary Littleton" <gary@garylittleton.com> |
| Subject | Re: Neil Innes |
| Date | Tue, 4 Apr 2006 13:38:03 -0400 |
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Andrew, thanks for the review... I really hope to see him when he tours the
US. Reading this made me remember how much I loved The World - Lucky Planet,
one his earliest albums. Had some really nice and more serious badfinger-ish
tracks like Angelina. Cheers, Gasry
-----Original Message-----
From: audities-owner@smoe.org [mailto:audities-owner@smoe.org] On Behalf Of
Andrew Hickey
Sent: Tuesday, April 04, 2006 8:11 AM
To: audities@smoe.org
Subject: Neil Innes
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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