There was a time when the pop charts had a smattering of songs that were there for comedy reasons. Jilted John, Joe Dolce, John Otway, Barron Knights, Fred Wanklock to name but a few. TOTP would have the comedy performer squeezed between two serious musical acts. They would provide light relief from the weighty subject matter tackled by the more radical political bands that followed punk – your Shakataks, your Liquid Golds and Your Dooleyses.
The genre was big enough to have also-rans who released non-charting comedy songs regularly and probably did OK on the live circuit. Ivor Big Penis (IIRC) was one such act.
Did we actually buy these records? No – we didn’t. It was the civilians. A chance hearing of a funny line or two in “Shuddup ya face” propels them straight to Woolies with their 99p. “I bought that!” they would say down the pub and learn all of the words for the pleasure of the bar staff and the underage drinkers trying to keep a low profile by targeting shit pubs, desperate for custom.
My days of listening to the top 40 rundown are over – I wouldn’t even be surprised if Mark Goodier doesn’t do it any more (it’ll be someone new and young like Zoe Ball I expect). But the last comedy record I remember being s smasheroo is “Because I got High!” by Afroman. I may be wrong (often am) but it appears to me that the genre is dead. What wax the last out-and-out comedy song to get airplay?
This is probably up there (or possibly one of their later hits):
or maybe this one – got a fair bit of play on VH1 (when I watched it) in “slightly edited” mode
I’ve listened to that a few times recently on my walks home – it’s extremely puerile and extremely funny. And I don;t think I can hear “Behind the Mask” now without hearing the title of this.
Big Shaq specialises in Comedy Songs
Man Not Hot
Lizzo is really funny.
Boys
wasn’t beanie our resident expert on this genre?
I have this deliciously awful compilation: https://www.amazon.co.uk/You-Are-Awful-But-Like/dp/B00004GM3P
There was of course quite a tradition of comedy/novelty records in the fifties and sixties. Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Peter Sellers, Bernard Cribbins etc spring to mind. IIRC George Martin was involved in producing a few.
Derek and Clive Live became a much coveted, often copied item – and re-quoted ad infinitum.
Their song Jump was lare covered by Van Halen (or maybe not?)
I never understood comedy records. Even supposedly hip comedy music acts (Bonzos, Grimms, Hank Wangford…) though I’m friendly with Andy Roberts, who was a serial music/comedy participant, even involved in the Spitting Image songs. Personally, I like his non-comedy recordings. I went to see the Bonzos revival because Andy got me in but I just didn’t find it funny. I simply don’t get it.
Hank Wangford isn’t a comedy act. He may gently send up the tropes of Country music in his patter, but he also makes the point that Country deals with serious topics that other genres avoid. The actual songs are done faithfully and with obvious love.
Hank clearly loves country music, but I think he realised when he began 30 odd years ago he could look ridiculous if he delivered his songs straight, so he adopts a persona that allows him to leaven his delivery with humour. As you correctly point out Mike, it’s done faithfully and with love.
I was thinking about a thread on this the other day. I was looking through my parents’ old singles and they had a few. This gem, for example…
https://youtu.be/635lWS8J8-U
This one too, and decades later I went to a guitar workshop with the bloke who played banjo on it…
The problem is that if there is a funny song – then the song only needs perhaps. three
Iistens at the most because we now get the joke and don’t need to hear it again. Unless it’s got a good melody or a happenin’ beat – but this is rare with such things.
Minor claim to fame time…I went to college with one of the HeeBeeGeeBees. In real life he was a superb actor and very funny bloke. The one on the right…
Michael Fenton Stevens? I used to love Radio Active…
The very same. His Mrs’s surname is Fenton and they combined their names when they got married. They met on a college musical I co-wrote! He could improvise vast expanses of opera, with multiple characters etc. Brilliant.
Very cool. Always seemed a good bloke.
He is getting back together with Angus Deayton, Helen Atkinson Wood and Philip Pope and their tour starts in April. I’ve got a ticket. Can’t wait!
Excellent. Although Geoffrey Perkins will be sorely missed. Maybe we call all suck Quilleys in his honour.
I saw the Radio Active stage show the other day. It was very funny indeed, very fresh sounding and the performers can all still cut it. The best parts for me were the songs, especially Status Quid’s Boring Song. I even picked up a signed CD of 439 Golden Greats – Never Mind the Originals Here’s the HeeBeeGeeBees.
We’ve had this on in the office a few times recently. I assume it’s a comedy record-
Meanwhile in response to the original post, wasn’t the 2018 UK Christmas number one a novelty hit?
Well, last time I looked Weird Al was still very popular…
The Rubberbandits are a good comedy song act. ‘Fellas’ is a catchy choon, cool social message and funny.
Not as funny as “I’ve A Horse Outside”.
in case there is one person on this blog who’s not seen it. Pure genius.
Comedy vs Parody – it’s the same thing with different levels of originality.
The Amatuer Transplants.
50% of the duo are still touring (the other half became a proper doctor)
Unlikely to get airplay, and definitely in the parody mould – a bit like The Barron Knights with more swearing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y-F2shCp7U
Tenacious D combined comedy with Hard Rock in 2002, and with some help from Dave Grohl came up with a listenable (if not always laugh out loud funny) album.
Problem was they tried to milk it, and the film and later songs just weren’t as interesting
(plus Jack Black was achieving Phil Collins level of ubiquity at the time)
Oh I don’t know. I thought Rise of the Fenix had some great tracks:
If you’re not familiar with Australia you’ll miss a few of the gags here but there’s enough totally obvious ones to make it worth a look. The visuals help too.
This was a deserved massive hit in the early 80s. Still makes me crack up, I know exactly what’s coming but like the best catch phrase you laugh anyway.
Austen Tayshus’s real name is Alexander (Sandy) Gutman and I’m not sure if he performs these days, he seems to mainly focus on being a rabid apologist for Israel, judging by his Facebook posts
One of the funniest bands in recent years was the Flight of the Conchords.
Delighted to see that they still seem to be touring…
This old classic still amuses me. Ladies of the World.
This is the second article on comedy records I have read today.
The other one is in the new Radio Times by (don’t tell Twang), David Hepworth.
I have no prob with the Hep. Did you know the Beatles were underrated ?
If only they could have held it together till 1971.
@Twang he nicked that from my post on here asking if they were overrated I am going to sue him for royalties.
I agree comedy records have a limited number of plays, see also those ‘hilarious’ stoned skits on Hip Hop albums which are rarely funny once unless you were in the studio at the time.
I raise you the Lancashire Hotpots though. The humour & music is pure Jasper Carrot/Mike Harding with a dollop of Peter Kay but they do it well. This and ‘Chippy Tea’ pop into my head a lot – catchy tunes.
I am similarly disconnected from the top 40, but I suspect Comic Relief has still been churning out an annual novelty record.
Even more recently, wasn’t the Xmas number one something about building this city on sausage rolls?
Re: the OP
“The genre was big enough to have also-rans who released non-charting comedy songs regularly and probably did OK on the live circuit. Ivor Big Penis (IIRC) was one such act.”
Wasn’t it Ivor Biggun?
Yes – it was one of my hilarious jokes.
Ivor Biggun…. To give his band their full title it was Ivor Biggun and the Red-Nosed Burglars. Ivor was actually TV’s Doc Cox, from That’s Life and his single The Winker’s Song (Misprint) may have even made the charts in the late seventies. Different times.
(I know this because my best mate at school had the single. He asked his Mum to buy it apparently. The coward.)
Yes, I remember him on That’s Life. I think the News of the World did a shock horror exposure of his work in an attempt to get him fired. I think he felt the need to apologise live on the show, To Esther Rantzen’s credit, she just said to him “so are you off now to sing more of your disgusting songs?”.
Yes, well, guilty as charged. In my defense, I was a first year college student when The Winker’s Song and the Winker’s Album hit the airwaves, and my un-developed consciousness was quite taken with it. To the point where roughly 40 years later I can still sing you most, if not all, of “I’ve Parted” (which is also a hilarious mis-print) and “My Brother’s Got Piles”, and I haven’t listened to them in probably well over 35 years. Same goes for some of the singles and obscure B-sides…
Having said that, in the #metoo era it’s a talent unlikely to endear ones-self to the lasses. Waaaay too many school girls crop up in these mucky post-card equivalents.
Some of my favourites are already there; Flight of the Conchords and Rubber Bandits, but I can’t believe we’re all this way down the list and there’s no Half Man, Half Biscuit yet in spite of their high position in our 2018 album chart. They always make me laugh and their quality hasn’t dipped significantly over the years. Here’s a personal favourite.
https://youtu.be/UHK-C62nzYE
I stopped short of HMHB as to call them a comedy band is doing them a disservice I think – they can do bleak and grim as well as funny.
But when songs like this come on shuffle I chortle in the street with my headphones on…
This subject piqued my interest a couple of years back, primarily due to the sheer volume of comedy records that seemed to be on BBC4’s TOTP reruns. So much so that I eventually wrote a piece about Comedy In Pop for the Civil Service Motoring Association website. What do you mean you didn’t see it?
https://thehorsebox.net/2015/04/17/comedy-in-pop-csma-life/
Great read, Martin. Lots of avenues of further exploration.
You reminded me of the wonderful John Shuttleworth.
As you probably know, previously Graham Fellows was Jilted John.
Brilliant. Genuinely hilarious.
Then there’s this one which is a funny story with a cracking punchline at the end…
The Madness version is quite jolly. The song was used in the 1943 film, I Walked With A Zombie, sung by calypso singer, Sir Lancelot and is quite different.
Nothing has surpassed Ernie’s ghostly gold tops, a rattlin’ in their crate.
A Milkman’s life is full of fun in that fairy dairy land…
If you’re au fait with current Sheffield folklore, you may have encountered The Everly Pregnant Brothers and their spoof versions of well-known ditties.
In a similar vein are Barnsley’s own Barsteward Sons Of Val Doonican who went down rather well at last years Cropredy festival
Despite decades of HMHB lyrical genius, I do think the point in the OP holds – out in Civillianland you just don’t hear the milkman* singing the modern equivalent of “Little does she know that I know that she knows that I know she’s cheating on me” nowadays.
(*somewhat anachronistic example – you may prefer to substitute “barista” or “probation officer”, depending on how you’ve done in life).
A fun subset of the witty ditty is the song where the artist takes a pop at themselves, such as in the Pet Shop Boys’ “Yesterday, When I Was Mad”:
“It’s fabulous you’re still around today
You’ve both made such a little go a very long way”
or the possibly unwitting prescience of Morissey’s “Get Off The Stage”:
Morrissey has written some very funny self-effacing lines.:
So I broke into the Palace
With a sponge and a rusty hammer
She said “I know you and you cannot sing”
I said “that’s nothing, you should hear me play piano!”
I have got a lot of time for those amusing Aussies the Axis of Awesome.
But overall, they do not write them like they used to! How would Leslie Holmes and His Smiling Voice cope today?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK3uCutK7Rk
Not a ‘comedy song’ as such but these lyrics always make me smile…
“Well do you remember Rick Astley?
He had a big fat hit it was ghastly
He said I’m never gonna give you up or let you down
Well I’m here to tell you that dick’s a clown
Though he was just a boy when he made that vow
I bet it all that he knows by now
All men, all men are liars
Their words ain’t worth no more than worn out tires
Hey girls, bring rusty pliers
To pull this tooth
All men are liars and that’s the truth.”
What about songs that are witty and amusing?
Michael Marra’s Frida Kahlo’s visit to the Tay Bridge Bar always makes me smile.
In case, like me, you do not know who Jimmy Howie was …..
https://www.scotsman.com/news/obituaries/obituary-james-howie-painter-and-dancer-1-1777965
Hat off to Tigger for posting Lizzo who is a lot of fun and I suspect a real floorfiller at discos.
But where are the other funny girls? There is no shortage of amusing women actors (Tina Fey, Olivia Coleman, Kristen Wiig, Tamsin Grieg, Melissa McCarthy etc), so why are there so few women on this thread?
While you think about that, listen to this…..
Gangnam Style? Wasn’t that a comedy song?
Catchy perhaps. But the lyrics to Gangnam Style were scarcely written by Half Man Half Biscuit.
It was an enormous hit with nursery schoolkids.
HMHB would call it Grantham Style, probably.
Be careful what you wish for, Mr Celebration.
An utterly bizarre combination.
That is very strange indeed, KFD – even by your standards that is very strange…
I have standards?? Moi?
I have really enjoyed some of the artists on this thread.
Lady in Greggs is a great improvement on the original.
The Sound of Sheffield! Another beauty from the Everly Pregnant Brothers. Dunt tha want mi?
These guys, the Lancashire Hotpots and the Bar-Steward Sons of Val Doonican must be a great night out.
I had coffee at the lady guest vocalist’s house in Sheffield just before Christmas.
If this had been a novelty hit, it might have been called a ‘comedy song’, but it wasn’t so it probably isn’t, but neither is it (that) serious:’Deborah Harry, I’m having your baby…”
Does “Dixie Chicken” by the mighty Little Feat count as a comedy record?
If so, it’s my favourite.
I hope so. Lowell was amused by the writing credit. It was a song written by himself and his classmate, Martin Kibbee, later also known as Fred Martin. Dixie Chicken, therefore, is written by George/Martin.