After Monty Python, Eric Idle continued the sketch comedy television with Rutland Weekend Television, which featured “The Seventh Python,” Neil Innes. Best known beyond The Rutles as an amazing absurd satirist, Innes brought a musical legitimacy that Idle, with impressive musical credentials of his own, likely couldn’t match. Also, Innes did a dead-on John Lennon.
Hardly the first mock-documentary, this is one of the first – if not THE first musical-themed film in the genre. A pretty literal parallel of the actual history of The Beatles, The Rutles is impressive, if only for its attention to detail. The songs are, in many cases, dead-ringers for actual Beatles songs (which apparently caused a legal problem or two), and the story an absurd twist and comment on Beatlemania – an obsession that, no matter how you feel about The Beatles, is easily seen as one of the strangest phenomena to ever ripple through pop culture.
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Host: Jason Klamm
Producer: Mike Worden
This Week’s Guests: Dan Gomiller and Ari Jarvis
Comedy on Vinyl is recorded at Fort Awesome Studios in beautiful downtown Burbank. The samples played in these non-commercial (see: free) podcasts are used without permission, and are intended to sell more albums, not to endorse Vinyl Piracy. Follow us on Twitter or at the Facebooks.
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Mel Brooks may have made the name he has today with a unique brand of parody, but Young Frankenstein is arguably his masterpiece, and is no doubt the beginning of a brand of pastiche that has informed the work of every great filmmaker of the last four decades. Self-awareness without having to mug, genuine drama without a sly wink, and real, stone-faced, honest acting make this more than just what Mel Brooks calls a “spoof.” 
They’re back, and this time we cover the second album that made Jason and Dan become best friends while hanging out in a broken Ford Fiesta. Yep, that’s Upstate New York for you. This is, in fact, our first quadrilateral New York episode.
It’s taken much too long to get to Monty Python, given our collective love for the group, perhaps best demonstrated by how many Holy Grail references make their way into this podcast. This is a great primer album, though it makes little sense to listen to this until after watching the series and, of course, Holy Grail and Life of Brian.
For the first time, I’m going to recommend you actually watch something before listening to this week’s album (links are below). Why? Well, because Ernie Kovacs is the godfather of experimental TV. Which is why, as a comedy writer, I was blown away that my introduction to him was from non-comedian (but hilarious person) Adam X. Storm.
He was Troy McClure. He was Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer. He was Bill McNeil. Most importantly, he was a brilliant comedic actor, and loved by everyone he worked with. He also inspired some of us to do what it is we do. That was reason enough to make our first live episode a tribute to him.
(Originally posted 9/7:)
