Peter Schickele?

 The credit to this discovery goes to the "Why Are You Laughing" podcast, which you can listen to here.

In 1990, the nominees for the Grammy for Best Comedy Album were:

• Sandra Bernhard - Without You I'm Nothing
• Erma Bombeck - Motherhood: The Second Oldest Profession
• Andrew Dice Clay - Dice
• Sam Kinison - "Wild Thing"
• Peter Schickele - P.D.Q. Bach: 1712 Overture and Other Musical Assaults

Winner: Peter Schickele

In 1991, the nominees for the Best Comedy Album Grammy were:

• Bob Elliott & Ray Goulding - The Best of Bob and Ray: Selections from a Career, Vol. 4
• Garrison Keillor - More News from Lake Wobegon
• Various artists - The Best of Comic Relief '90
• Jonathan Winters - Jonathan Winters into the '90s
• Peter Schickele - P.D.Q. Bach: Oedipus Tex and Other Choral Calamities

Winner: Peter Schickele

1992, Best Comedy Album:

• Erma Bombeck - When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It's Time to Go Home
• George Carlin - Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics
• Garrison Keillor - Local Man Moves to the City
• Jackie Mason - Brand New
• Peter Schickele - P.D.Q. Bach: WTWP Classical Talkity-Talk Radio

Winner: Peter Schickele

1993:

• George Burns - An Evening with George Burns
• Rita Rudner - Naked Beneath My Clothes
• Jonathan Winters - Jonathan Winters is Terminator 3
• "Weird Al" Yankovic - Off the Deep End
• Peter Schickele - P.D.Q. Bach: Music for an Awful Lot of Winds and Percussion

Winner: Peter Schickele

Peter Schickele won 4 times in 4 straight years, against a murderer's row of talent: George Burns, Jonathan Winters, Weird Al, Jackie Mason, George Carlin, Sam Kinison, Various Artists... this guy beat them all.

Have you ever heard of him? Have you ever heard of someone who's heard of him? Isn't this guy on the Mt. Rushmore of comedy? How did this happen? Is this guy the most critically acclaimed yet underrated comedian in history? Well, let's take a look at his act.

Okay, well that's not great. But it's also pretty visual and he got his awards from his "P.D.Q. Bach" albums. We need to examine those.

Wikipedia:

Schickele developed an elaborate parody around his studies of P.D.Q. Bach, the fictional "youngest and the oddest of the twenty-odd children" of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Okay, well I can't find his albums on youtube directly but here's one of the songs on an album:

Comedy?! Man, awards mean nothing. People still venerate them and I used to do that myself but they are literally meaningless.

Why Are You Laughing? - Late Night Wars

 For those of you who want to learn about the Late Night wars of Leno vs. Letterman, there is no better resource than Bill Carter's book "The Late Shift."

But if you don't want to commit hours and hours of reading time, the "Why Are You Laughing?" podcast is perhaps the second best source of information.

The book was turned into a made-for-tv movie also (same name), for those of you who would prefer that. But that's a distant 3rd place, as the movie is less informative and a bit cheesy.

And for those of you who want to learn about the Late Night wars of Leno vs. Conan, there is no better resource than Bill Carter's book "The War for Late Night."

But, as above, if books aren't for you, the following podcast has you covered. There has been no made-for-tv movie about this topic, to my knowledge, but can you imagine?

If you'd like to read my book review of "The War for Late Night" see here.

As a self-proclaimed expert, I have my disagreements and differences with the podcast, just as I do with the TV movie. But they're mainly minor quibbles and who cares anyway? I enjoy their fresh perspective shedding light on my own.

Paul Shaffer: Behind the Music

 

A classic bit from the Late Show.

I watched this a million times on the Late Show website, back in the day. This is the first time I'm seeing it in actual video rather than the horror that was RealAudio/RealMedia over slow internet. Remember RealAudio?

The Charismatic Voice - No Rain

 

There is a thing that seems to happen often where a band will put an unusual "outlier" song on their album and that will be the big hit that everyone likes. People buying the album for that song, may be disappointed that the rest of the album is so different. And the band may feel the pressure of success and be forced to change their entire sound to satisfy expectations.

Such is the case with Blind Melon's eponymous album. "No Rain" is a complete outlier: rather than Country-tinged hippy rock, the album is mainly is bluesy, hard-ish rock, somewhat reminiscent of Led Zeppelin. Seriously. With the benefit of this hindsight, listen again to the vocals of "No Rain" and you will hear the Robert Plant in there.

I don't say that "No Rain" is one of the greatest songs of all-time but the music video for "No Rain" is one of the greatest music videos of all-time. So simple, so effective, so affecting.

Rad References in Hot Rod

 

In a previous post I mentioned that "Rad" is available on AltaVod and that one of the special features is an interview between Jorma Taccone (of The Lonely Island) and the cast. Jorma makes it clear that he is a huge fan and says he put "a ton" of "Rad" references into his own works. I thought it would be fun to go through some of them.

First, the phrase "set to jet" used in the "Rad" dance scene is in "MacGruber."

"Hot Rod" and "Rad" are both bike movies, culminating in a big event at the end with crowded bleachers. 

Rod's uniform often has a big star on it, reminiscent of Cru's outfit for the big race.

Both Rod and Cru get special outfits before the big race replete with stars.

Rod's friends' "Team Rod" t-shirts, are clearly referencing "Rad Racing." In both movies, the friends wear them to show support in the big climactic event.

Wesley's "Charming-Check, Witty-Check, etc" shirt is recreated for Richardson in "Hot Rod."

And in both movies, the villains drive a red corvette.

There may be more references that I didn't catch and there are other cases where it's hard to tell the difference between a reference and a coincidence.

Finally, there's a similarity that's a bit of a riddle. In "Hot Rod," Rod gets gifted a new bike in honor of the big event at the end. When Cru is gifted a new bike for Hell Track only in the deleted scene that I grew up with and remembered. Did Jorma watch the same version that I did or is this just a complete coincidence?

Rad on AltaVod

Unbeknownst to me, a special "Superfan" edition of "Rad" was released on AltaVod in 2020. It includes "original bonus footage and an exclusive Q&A with the Rad cast, moderated by The Lonely Island's Jorma Taccone." I bought it, mostly to define exactly what the bonus footage is.

Before the bonus footage, obviously there is a remastered version of the movie. It looks good.

Bonus footage. First, there is the aforementioned interview with the cast. It includes Bart Conner, Bill Allen, the co-writer of the script Sam Bernard and the producer/actor Talia Shire. It's a fairly standard interview with many of the stories and factoids that we've heard already. There's one notable thing within it and I'll be making a post about that later.

Secondly, there is a promotional "making of" film from the time of the movie's release. Aside from the novelty of a 1980s documentary (it reminds me of "Plymouth International Ice Spectacular"), it's mostly just filler: how the movie was made, who's in it, constructing Hell Track, footage from the set. There is one gem. It contains an alternate angle of "Hollywood" Mike Moranda's second dramatic exit of the day. That is the gold nugget in the tons and tons of dirt. Will we ever again uncover more footage of his iconic wipeout? I doubt it. I would share a screenshot but the image is interlaced and so the still looks so bad it's not worth sharing.

Finally, there are interviews with Bart Conner, Bill Allen, Lori Loughlin and Hal Needham. The interviews were conducted at the time that the movie was being made. Aside from the fact that interviews with Hal Needham seem fairly rare, and you learn a little bit more about the actors, it's standard stuff.

And that's it. The movie and special features are all combined into a single video file, which is annoying, but in keeping with the experience of a VHS.