My Sense of Humor (Audio): Firesign, Python, Freberg, Keillor

Of course my favorite is The New Eugene Oregon Show, a radio program I wrote and starred in that was recorded during January 1972 and broadcast over WTBS-FM (now WMBR-FM), the MIT student radio station in Cambridge, Mass.

The New Eugene Oregon Show

My taste in audio humor runs to Firesign Theater, Monty Python, Stan Freberg and Garrison Keillor (can you find the odd name on this list)?

Firesign’s late work, Give Me Immortality or Give Me Death was their funniest and most coherent album since All Hail Marx and Lennon in 1969. Boom Dot Bust is also hysterically funny. Although it takes a truly coherent story line (even one as flimsy as "day in the life of a radio station," which was the plot for Immortality), their spot-on parodies of cultural artifacts include city-boosting videos, films shown to visitors at national parks, commercials, Civil War-style documentaries, Infomercials, Cable-TV shows. Is nothing sacred? Not to the Firesign Theater. Alas, they are half gone, having lost Peter Bergman and Phil Austin.

I ran this list once without mentioning Tom Lehrer; a serious omission. I was introduced to his work a half-century ago at MIT (where he once sang The Subway Song, a Boston-area novelty, at my old radio home, WTBS), I have loved him ever since. I have been told the lyrics in my love songs are Lehreresque; I take that as a compliment. An especial favorite is Vatican Rag. What’s not to love about the rhyme “there the man who’s got religion’ll/tell you if your sin’s original.” I borrowed the tune for my love song When Your Hand Is On My Knee.

I love Freberg. I've loved him since the first time I heard him, in a Freberg marathon on KSFO in 1967, as my family drove to LA from Portland on a trip to Disneyland.

Here are the notes on a collection of his greatest hits:

Stan Freberg was one of the most popular comics and satirists of the '50s and '60s. Tip of the Freberg includes selections from his Capitol albums, from radio programs (an entire disc's worth of never-released radio spots) and a Freberg video.

Of course everyone knows and loves Monty Python, even though they, too, are half gone (Terry Jones, Graham Chapman). I flew to London for the sole purpose of watching their farewell concert at the O2 coliseum, Terry Jones’ last appearance. If you haven’ heard the Dead Parrot sketch or the Cheese Shop sketch, you haven’t lived.

Comments

[Robert E. Malchman]

Monty Python is "half-gone"? 2 out of 5 is 40% -- didn't they cover that in 18.01?

Of course you may be counting John Cleese as half-dead, certainly he is from the neck up.