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 ======================================================================= Detailed Audities-List information: To manage your Audities List settings or unsubscribe: