Muchas apologias. Writing on the blog has been intermittent lately. The last week has been a blur of trains, meetings and sleeping in strange beds. And somewhere among all this I’m pushing towards handing in a thesis at the end of September. Things have been kind of busy.
If anyone wants a clue about what’s going on in Montpellier, read Ed’s blog, because I’m kind of out of the loop.
However, I was introduced to Le Quatuor last week – and thought it was worth sharing: four highly accomplished classical musicians who have turned to physical comedy… well, for laughs.
I think the entire performance on their DVD is funnier as a whole, rather than the few excerpts you can find on YouTube. I’m surprised they aren’t more known outside France: most of the jokes are physical or musical, and their dialogue-based sketches are carried out in a surreal mélange of German, Italian, English, French and Spanish (check out their music lesson sketch).
If Montpellier has an internet celebrity, it’s Rémi Gaillard. He’s been making prank videos on the internet for ten years, and his clips have received over 350 million views on Youtube.
Many of his gags are filmed right here in Montpellier. One would have thought the locals would have got used to his antics by now, but Monsieur Gaillard always finds new ways to amuse and annoy: last year he turned the streets of the city into a Nintendo Mario Kart racetrack:
There is obviously an anarchist and possibly dadaist streak in Gaillard’s humour, and his motto “C’est en faisant n’importe quoi qu’on devient n’importe qui” (roughly – “By doing whatever you can become whoever”) suggests that there may be a philosophy behind what he does. There is also money – he was hired last year by Orangina and Nike to make viral videos.
You can find dozens more videos on his site, nimportequi.com. Although his gags are largely harmless, it really is a wonder that Rémi hasn’t ended up in jail yet…
This is the new video from The Mint Chicks for their song I Can’t Stop Being Foolish – discovered via a tweet from Paul Capewell earlier today.
The song is so-so, but the video’s great (if necessary, watch it with the sound turned off). Robots, mousephones and rainbow-powered jet-owls. What’s not to like?
It occured to me rather simultaneously that this sort of surreal humour is often greatly appreciated by musicians. One thinks immediately of Frank Zappa (most of his oeuvre could be classed as an extended audio-cartoon – check the film Baby Snakes his 20 minute mini-operas Greggery Peccary and Billy the Mountain), or even Spike Jones.
However, it was The Goons who took musical surreality to its illogical height. The Ying Tong Song reached #3 in the UK pop charts in 1956 – quite an achievement for a sound experiment involving differential tape speed and extensive use of foley:
Music was always an integral part of The Goon Show, with regular interludes by Max Geldray and his Orchestra and the Ray Ellington Quartet. However many of the best pieces of humour in the stories themselves were also musical (or sonic, at least).
“GRYTPYPE-THYNNE: He’s gone, He’s gone. Quick. Rifle his desk, photograph the plans of the male salami, telephone the Kremlin and mind that bust of Queen Victoria.
MORIARTY:Right.
GRYTPYPE-THYNNE: Meanwhile I’ll play two quick choruses of “When I’m Cleaning Windows” on my leather euphonium just to cover any noise, now get going.
MORIARTY: Right.
[FX: Hammer blows, sawing, breaking glass etc over Moriarty's grunts and Grytpype-Thynne impersonating a leather euphonium].”
In a different episode, the Goons ran off to Daytona Beach to attempt a new land speed record in a fifty-tonne brass-bound Wurlitzer, with all the appropriate musical sound-effects, (and a few subtle “organ” jokes).
