Rant-Man's Notebook

By Jim "Rant-Man" MacQuarrie

Ya Gotta Laugh

Today was September 11. All the news media did their usual self-important thing. They all had a logo and graphic that they put up on screen as various semi-famous people prattled on about their memories of the terrorist attacks, but they all missed one of the most important points. That doesn't surprise me, because it seems that the whole world has been missing this for a while, especially us.

One of the things that makes America great is our sense of humor, which we are rapidly losing. Nothing is funny anymore. I think the problem is we're all so damn serious. That's probably because we're on alert all the time for anything that might be insensitive or offensive.

It's just like kids worrying about fairness. Have you ever heard a kid say "that's not fair; I got more than he did?" Of course not. Fairness is the battle cry of the selfish. Fairness is a nice way of screaming "where's MINE;" it has nothing to do with fairness, it's just about keeping score. In trying to teach kids to be fair, we end up teaching them to be selfish.

Among the grown-ups, all these attempts to be inclusive and sensitive and tolerant are having the opposite effect; we're becoming less tolerant, oversensitive, and looking for offense whether it was intended or not. When we find something that offends us, do we handle it in a mature manner and work out our differences? Heck no. We go to court and get rulings handed down. Things that used to be handled by common courtesy are now handled by judges. Where is our sense of humor?

Well, guess what? The Taliban has no sense of humor, either. They're a bunch of uptight, repressed, bitter old men, living in terror that somebody somewhere might be enjoying themselves. The best thing we can do is laugh. Laugh in their faces. Yuk it up. We need stuff to laugh at, and we need it now.

This came to me today as I was avoiding the radio and its obnoxious "America Remembers" segments, and instead was listening to the best of Louis Prima. Now there was a guy with a sense of humor. Josephine (Please Don't Lean on the Bell), Just a Gigolo, Angelina and Banana Split for My Baby are just a few examples of the songs he sang. On each one, his infectious good cheer can be heard; he and his band and Keely Smith are all having the time of their lives, and it shows.

This got me to thinking, how often do you hear funny songs on the radio anymore? Back in the olden days, Ray Stevens was putting out stuff like Guitarzan all the time, and Johnny Cash had a huge hit with A Boy Named Sue, but we don't seem to have much fun at all. They Might Be Giants and Trout Fishing in America do some fun stuff, but it withers in the ghetto of Radio Disney. Of course there's Weird Al Yankovic, but it seems that only his parody songs get any play at all. The only band I can think of that regularly comes out with clever and funny songs, and actually gets on the radio, is Barenaked Ladies. If I Had a Million Dollars is pure gold.

During World War II, Spike Jones had a huge hit with Der Fuhrer's Face, a song that literally blew razzberries at Hitler. Jones' band, the City Slickers, was a group of extremely accomplished musicians who played together with machine-like precision. They played off that by including pistols, trash can lids, duck calls and gongs among their instruments. It was an amazing thing to hear. Sadly, nobody is doing anything like that these days.

I'm not just talking about funny songs like you'd hear on the Dr. Demento Show, but about funny music of all kinds. Queen had a couple of funny tunes on A Night at the Opera, and Bruce Springsteen has worked some humor into a few of his songs, but nobody is doing anything like the Roto Rooter Goodtime Christmas Band used to do. I've been a fan of these guys since I was in high school. My wife doesn't get it at all; she sighs a bit when I put on one of their recordings. (She doesn't like Lenny and the Squigtones either. I think I'm the only person in America who bought that album. But I digress.) Let me see if I can explain the appeal of this odd group.

First, they had the same mix of fine musicianship and off-the-wall antics as Spike Jones. They could play rock, swing, jazz, bebop, classical... and frequently played them at the same time. Here's a sample of one of their songs; this is the Buick LeSabre Dance. It's Khatchaturian's Sabre Dance, performed as if played on car horns (it's actually three trombones and three saxophones with a little tuba and trumpet tossed in).

The RRGTCB (Awfthe Wallé, B-flat Baxter, Dr. Mabuse d.o.a., Buffalo Steve, Sgt. Charts, and Little Orphan Ollie) was best-known for the many bits of incidental music they recorded for Dr. Demento, but their performances went far beyond "demented" territory, bordering on performance art, if performance artists ever laughed at anything. For an example of musical surrealism, take their version of Beethoven's Ninth. In addition to the nearly cacaphonous arrangement of the piece, the Chorale movement features the boys singing the lyrics of the Doors' Light My Fire to the famous "Ode to Joy" music. That's genius.

Another form of humor they used is incongruity; performing songs in ways that are totally unexpected, such as a swing version of Strawberry Fields Forever, or inserting a chicken clucking Way Down Upon the Swanee River into the middle of Brahms' Hungarian Dance No. 5. They do a version of Jimi Hendrix' Purple Haze that sounds like it should be a Manhattan Transfer track (except for the little detour into the theme from Popeye). Another great piece is Swamp Lake. It's actually a selection from Delibes' Coppelia, and it gradually morphs into a football cheer and eventually into a rock guitar solo. But their masterpiece (on record at any rate; nothing can touch their live performance of the entire score from the Wizard of Oz, in which the Wicked Witch was destroyed by a bottle of Formula 409) has to be Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, a seven-minute excursion into lunacy featuring grunting pigs and tribal chants.

Don't be fooled into thinking it's all classical music gone awry; they also recorded the definitive version of Dale Evans' Happy Trails to You (which Van Halen ripped off note-for-note back when they had a sense of humor), and their playlist included the theme from Star Trek, Mack the Knife, and their original compositions, like the Martian March.

Order the CD from DB Cooper's. Give them a listen. Laugh. It's your patriotic duty.

Lighten up already. Sheesh!

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