Rutland Weekend Television was the post-Monty Python series written by Eric Idle, with music by Neil Innes (of The Bonzo Dog Band fame). While many Python-related shows have been released on DVD (Do Not Adjust Your Set, Not the 1948 Show, Ripping Yarns, and of course, Fawlty Towers) it seems incredible that Rutland Weekend Televison—it’s where The Rutles came from, for god’s sake—has never seen the light of day. (At least on a retail level, because it’s quite easy to download on the Internet and there are entire episodes out there for streaming, too.)

Legend has it that John Cleese came up with the title (meant to evoke a tiny, tiny television network) and Eric Idle bought it from him for one pound. The show’s pretense to being made on a tight budget was no pretense, as Idle and Innes had been granted the smallest of budgets by the BBC. Much of the show was shot in the same threadbare studio and jokes often revolved around how low budget the entire affair was.

Idle told the Radio Times in 1975:

“It was made on a shoestring budget, and someone else was wearing the shoe. The studio is the same size as the weather forecast studio and nearly as good. We had to bring the sets up four floors for each scene, then take them down again. While the next set was coming up, we’d change our make-up. Every minute mattered. It’s not always funny to be funny from ten in the morning until ten at night. As for ad-libbing, what ad-libbing? You don’t ad-lib when you’re working with three cameras and anyway the material goes out months after you’ve made it.”

After the second series of Rutland Weekend Television, Eric Idle, of course, went on to mostly make a bunch of really shitty movies and “Spamalot.” Neil Innes went on to the marvelous Innes Book of Records TV series (also not on DVD but easy to download), children’s television and continues to make great, funny music.

It might be heresy to say this, but I actually find Rutland Weekend Television, generally speaking, to be a bit funnier than Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Maybe that’s just because I am over-familiar with the Monty Python material and Rutland Weekend Television is fresher-seeming to me. Maybe it’s because of what Neil Innes brought to the table (I’m a huge. huge Bonzos fanatic). In any case, I’m sure it will get battled out in the comments.

Below, Eric Idle barters his soul with a uncooperative Satan.
 

 
More Rutland Weekend Television after the jump…

 
On new years day 1984 25 million people (myself included) throughout the world tuned in to PBS to watch video art pioneer Nam June Paik’s pleasantly shambolic live experiment Good Morning, Mr. Orwell featuring the likes of John Cage, Allen Ginsberg, Phillip Glass, Salvador Dali, Laurie Anderson and other usual suspects. All hosted by a bemused and mildy annoying George Plimpton. The full version of this was once up on the mighty Ubuweb but has mysteriously disappeared, so I bring you as many fragments of said program as I could find. Watching this in retrospect it comes off as perhaps the last 60’s style large scale “happening” featuring some of that era’s major hitters and is of course very quaint seeming “We’re linking New York to Paris on live TV !”, still very enjoyable to watch.
 
John Cage/Joseph Beuys

 
A ton more after the jump…

 
Based on the new Fantagraphics book, Destroy All Movies!!! The Complete Guide to Punks on Film this weekend, our friends at Cinefamily are presenting a full weekend of punk rock cinema, a two-day meltdown of what appears to be yet another embarrassment of cinematic riches:

From teenage ragers to mohawked post-apocalyptic gutteroids to actual, bona fide punks, this two-day multi-event mega movie showcase of pure power is a brick in the face of every film snob and/or high school principal! The book’s editors, Zack Carlson and Bryan Connolly, will be on hand to casually guide you through the garbage-strewn annals of punk celluloid history. This is the final stop on their West Coast book tour, and they’re saving all the special guests, surprises and chaos for the grand finale! Plus, Sticky Rick’s will be here to curate a punk sticker display in the Cinefamily lobby!

The line-up for this is nothing short of wonderful:

TV Party Tonight: kicks off the event with a look at how punk was portrayed on the small screen. Who could forget the punk rockers on CHiPs and Quincey? The Dickies with Don Rickles on CPO Sharkey or Black Flag on Entertainment Tonight?  Then it all goes kaboom with the seldom-seen Afterschool Special The Day My Kid Went Punk (one of Tara’s favorites).

Urgh! A Music War: A 1981 film of live performances by Devo, Dead Kennedys, X, The Cramps, Oingo Boingo, Gang of Four, The Police, Wall of Voodoo, Klaus Nomi, Gary Numan, OMD, XTC, Pere Ubu, Magazine and more). The screening will be followed by scenes not included in the US version.

La Brune Et Moi, a 1980 look on the Parisian punk underground with Metal Urbain, the Go-Go Pigalles and Astroflash.

Shellshock Rock, a 1979 account of the Belfast, Ireland punk scene with The Undertones and Stiff Little Fingers.

D.O.A.: A seldom seen gem featuring X-Ray Spex, Generation X, The Dead Boys, The Sex Pistols and an insane interview with a nodding-out Sid VIcious and Nancy Spungeon. Directed by Lech Kowalski.

Also screening, The Class of 1984, Desperate Teenage Lovedolls (with cast members and director, Dave Markey, Allan Moyle’s Times Square (with Tim Curry), The Slog Movie (LA-punk doc with Fear, TSOL, and the Circle Jerks), a special “punk in cinema montage” by the fine folks at Everything is Terrible!, and there will even be an after party at Part Time Punks when the on-screen madness ends! This looks to be a blow-out good time, people! Festival passes are on sale until midnight on Thursday.

Co-presented by Fantagraphics, L.A. Weekly, Alamo Drafthouse, Razorcake, Big Wheel Magazine, Don’t Knock The Rock and Part Time Punks.
 

 
The New Zealand band Mother Goose formed in Dunedin in 1975, with an original line-up of Craig Johnston (Vocals), Marcel Rodeka (Drums), Pete Dickson (Lead Guitar), Kevin Collings (Rhythm Guitar), Steve Young (Keyboards), Denis Gibbins (Bass Guitar). The band mixed bizarre comedy pastiche with rock and roll (think Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band meets Frank Zappa, via The Goodies), and only eighteen months after forming, Mother Goose smashed all attendance records on a tour of Australia and New Zealand. The bands success rested on their talented musicianship and incredible live shows, which led to a music contract, a first album Stuffed, and a single Baked Beans

As drummer, Marcel Rodeka recalls on his website: 

What can you say about Mother Goose? The band really was one out of the bag on all counts. There was never anything like it before and there’ll never be anything like it again. It was a unique piece of rock’n roll, vaudeville, theatre that just seemed to hit the mark wherever it played.

The original concept of the way out costumes, a mad stage performance and pumping rock music was motivated by the desire to stand out from the rest, to make a point to be better than any other local/national band and hopefully take the world on.

At the first rehearsal every band member was asked to turn up with something ridiculous to wear. I went home and dug up a green and red pixie outfit complete with pointy hat that I wore when I was eight years old in a school play. I tried it on and, amazingly, it still fitted if a little tight in the chest!

The early photos of Mother Goose reveal some ridiculous looking outfits that made no sense whatsoever but looked hilarious on. Over time the outfits became a bit more identifiable, a sailor, a pixie, a baby in nappies, a ballerina, minnie mouse and a bumble bee. We also strived to make the music different to anything that was going on at that time. We had all come from local rock cover bands and the idea of creating our own music was really exciting. The early musical ideas came from keyboard player Steve Young, singer Craig Johnston and guitarist Peter Dickson.

For me, the whole thing was a blast. Really, the life and times of Mother Goose could fill a book. But this is not the place for a tell all, warts and all look at nine years of successes and failures, hits and flops, incredible highs and incredible lows, bad management and bad decisions, fantastic beaches, fantastic parties, great songs and not so great songs, band members leaving, record company hassles, wonderful band camaraderie, stadium shows and tiny clubs, relationships and bust ups, overseas tours, rip off managers, awesome gigs, funny gigs, rotten gigs, an enviable lifestyle and the one big adventure that this was. There’s too much to tell…..

 
With thanks to Graham Tarling
 

 
One of DM’s favorite bloggers Christian Nightmares has compiled his top 15 craziest Christian music videos for The Daily Swarm. Check em out here.

I’m particularly fascinated by the uber-cheesiness of Christian Black Metal band Erlösung doing ‘Wall of Glass’. If this is Christian rock then I’ve definitely lost my religion.
 

 
Shawn Carter a.k.a. hip-hop mogul Jay-Z sat down yesterday with top African-American public intellectual Cornel West at the New York Public Library for a talk—moderated by Library director Paul Holdengräber—that was to be centered ostensibly around his memoir Decoded, but ranged through a wide variety of topics and modes.

It bears notice that despite Jay-Z’s superstar pop status and the hype surrounding the book, the appearance didn’t bear an airing on, say, MTV. I truly wonder why.

Love him or hate him, Carter’s journey from Bed-Stuy’s Marcy Houses projects to mega-millionaire mogul maps almost directly to the 30+-year story of hip-hop from marginalized urban phenomenon to global cultural movement. And West’s contextualization of the rhymer’s work and writings within the urban African-American artistic experience is pretty striking.

The status commonly accorded to Jay-Z as the greatest rapper of all time amounts to truly tedious hype. But there’s no denying that the man’s got power, perspective and a dangerous mind. 
 

 
Dangerous Minds pal Jesse Merlin writes:

Southern California followers, take note! Tonight, The Legendary Pink Dots perform at the EchoPlex in Los Angeles, as part of their 30th Anniversary Tour.

Formed in 1980 and widely credited as one of the first bands now categorized as Goth/Industrial, the LPD have long resisted any genre definition, inhabiting musical terrain of the avant garde, psychedelia, electronic soundscape, experimental noise, gothic lullaby, and even pop ballads.  Their prodigious catalogue includes roughly 60 studio releases and over 200 solo or side projects, and they command a devoted underground following in the American subculture, as well as in Europe, particularly in countries of the former Eastern Bloc.

Don’t miss this spectacular tour; The Dots simply have to be experienced live.

Below, the closest the LPD ever came to doing a (very strange) traditional music video in 1987, which is interpolated with a brief interview on Belgian television.  It takes place in an insane asylum and includes the song “Echo Police” from the album Asylum.
 

 
Jacks were a short lived but highly influential Japanese psych band who released only 2 albums of beautiful, dark, free rock. Have a listen to a couple of stunning tracks from their reverb soaked 1968 LP Vacant World beginning with the epic song entitled Marianne
 

 
More Jacks after the jump…

 
Fuck yeah!

Grinderman.

NYC, November 14, 2010.

The print above is part of a limited edition of 100 and is screen printed with four colors. It will be available for purchase after the weekend of the festival (November 1st).
 
‘Moog’ art print by DKNG Studios for the upcoming show SYNTH at Moogfest 2010.

(via Coudal Partners)