V02-T01 "Good evening, record lovers..."

.....When this first compilation tape was being planned I had no idea that it would be the first of a series. Although each side of the tape was conceived as its own volume, roughly the length of an LP, I wanted to remain conscious of how it would be experienced. It would have two beginnings and two ends, and I wanted those terminal points to be flagged appropriately with listeners welcomed in and ushered out. The intro to Volume 1 was one of the most famous introductions in the world, not only to the work from which it was taken, but for many children it was their introduction to 'grown-up' music. I was hoping to capture that feeling of discovery when everything is still new and more importantly when there was no need for everything to be immediately familiar. Too many adults find it threatening to their egos when they're forced to admit that they don't know something. Children spend most of their time being lectured, being expected to not know things. Finding something unfamiliar is just another part of their day. They don't get defensive about it the way adults do. I was hoping that the first intro would put people into a state of mind where the unfamiliar was a chance for personal expansion and not a threat of personal impugn. But that was the first side. The second side was time for something completely different...

Volume 2: "WE'RE ALL GOING TO JAIL FOR THIS, AREN'T WE?" track 1

• 00:50 [excerpt from "MORE TELEVISION INTERVIEWS"]
• performed by Monty Python's Flying Circus [Graham Chapman]
• original source: LP MONTY PYTHON'S FLYING CIRCUS BBC Records REB 73M (UK) 1970
• and my source: LP THE WORST OF [~] BBC Records BBC-22073 (UK) [reissue of above, prob. c.1980]

.....This was the first album from Monty Python. It was also the only one owned by the BBC and therefore left out of subsequent campaigns of catalogue reissues. At the time I put the tape together there had only been one CD pressing, one extremely rare one in the very early days of the technology and while I've never heard it, it reportedly sounds pretty poor. Entirely in character for the BBC, they were tone deaf to the very considerable demand for this material. It remained out of print on CD until the late 1990's. (For those unfamiliar with the history of the comedy group, the only reason anyone is able to see the show today is because someone working inside the BBC warned Terry Gilliam in advance while he worked on the second season that episodes from the first season would be recorded over later that day. The reason was that the BBC wanted to save money on film/tape. Gilliam bought blank film with money out of his own pocket and switched it for the Python masters and did the same for the rest of the series. Most shows were not so lucky.)

.....Because the rest of this album contains the dialogue of sketches used on the first season of the show, many people erroneously believe that it was made by lifting the soundtrack right off those episodes. It was actually recorded separately but under similar circumstances. The first season of the show was shot with a small studio audience and so was the record (hence the audience laughter you can hear on this track-- it's not canned). As the show got more ambitious and was written more as a stream of consciousness than a loose collection of collegiate-type sketches, that approach was no longer practical. But it made selecting material to rerecord for an album a relatively simple procedure. Even so, the cluelessness of the BBC prevails as ever. The famous Parrot Sketch is listed as the track "Pet Shop" and the Crunchy Frog Chocolate routine is listed as "Trade Description Act". People who would have bought the album on the strength of those bits might have passed on it not realizing that it contained them. In fact the track used here is the first minute of the second side of the album, leading into a routine better known as "It's The Arts" or "Arthur 'Two-Sheds' Jackson", but labeled simply "More Television Interviews". The final straw for the Pythons might very well have been this simple piece performed solo by Chapman with the audience. They always submitted material in advance for the BBC when doing the show; Chapman's military officer conducting a stereo test was the only truly new material for the album. That script, plus minor rewrites to the sketches to compensate for the lack of visuals, were already in the network's hands when Pythons, producer and audience entered the studio. Only during the recording process did they discover that it was being recorded in monaural. The script, as originally conceived, got its humor from the self-important officer being ultimately superfluous. As it turned out, he exposes the defective bureaucracy at the BBC. Subsequent albums were produced by the group with engineers and released by Charisma in the UK and by Buddah (and later Arista) in the US.

.....The obvious reason for wanting to use this excerpt is that it explicitly refers to the start of side two (of the record). The other less obvious reason is that it is the contrast to the opening of the first side, which sat you down and set you at ease before introducing you to the program. Having made it through that side, if the audience is still listening, if they took the initiative however minor to flip the cassette and set aside the next forty-five minutes, then they must be aware of the sentiments, the humor, the sense behind the flow or progress of the track selection. They are 'in on the joke' in a way; they know that the 'stereo' isn't working and that the powers that be don't seem to be aware of it. Now when something flies at them out of left field that surprise is something they can welcome, not something to be managed or endured.

.....Coming up, I've got a few more choice covers to get out of my system, we'll push the range back to the 1960's (my collection includes CD's with material recorded c.1900 but is mostly from the last fifty years), a few more punk singles and even some things that should be easy to recognize.