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:
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.
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.
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?
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.
