Monty Python's Flying Circus - Monty Python Live at Drury Lane

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Music reviews of Monty Python Live at Drury Lane

Music Review: Awful sound quality but the Pythons at the top of their game
Rating: 5 Stars

Only that's not true: the Pythons did take their show on the road. The US equivalent of the Drury Lane record was the 'Live at City Center' album. It was never released in the UK, presumably because its material was similar to 'Drury Lane'.

The crowning glory of that album was Neil Innes' Bob Dylan impression -- "I've suffered for my music -- now it's your turn." On this album, Innes plays a tune from his then current LP, 'How Sweet of Be an Idiot', a Beatles spoof that sowed the seed for Eric Idle's 'Rutles'.

But at the core of this album are the classic Python dialogue sketches -- "Nudge-Nudge", 'Lumberjack Song", "World Forum" and the "Parrot Sketch". In fact, in those pre-video days, this album helped define the classics, because LP and cassette tape were the only ways we had of repeating the Python experience again and again.

There are heaps of references to UK things of the 1970s -- such as Timothy Whites (a chain of chemists) and Breakaway (a chocolate bar that Idle had done some TV ads for and, I assume, was never again asked to do). That might be a negative for US listeners, or you might regard it as a self-education opportunity if you're taking a degree in 1970s English culture.

One negative for nearly everyone is the varying sound quality -- members of the team frequently stray from the microphone, and no amount of remastering can make up for that. But this production amateurishness almost adds to the intimacy of the occasion.

The sketch selection is nicely democratic: Palin/Jones wrote 'World Forum', Idle 'Nudge Nudge' and 'The Travel Agent' and Cleese/Chapman 'The Parrot Sketch'. As a schoolboy I used to know their sketches off by heart. But they can still extract a laugh from me, even if now, I'm more interested in how and why they wrote the material.

This is the classic Python Live album -- the material in the 'Live at City Center' LP has been rather too self-consciously edited for the US market, and the performers were not entirely at home in delivering the new lines.

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