Seasons of Love: "Monty Python's Flying Circus," Season Two, 1970

First in a series

I was the first person I knew that was into Monty Python. I discovered them around the time of my 9th birthday; in hindsight that might have been too young, but their singular impact on me was much too great to let age be a consideration. I remember watching the show's 20th anniversary special (several years after its first airing, mind you) one night on PBS and it struck my curiosity enough that I started renting tapes from Blockbuster a couple of days later. The absurdity and silliness was what lured me in; the intellectual undercurrent was what keep me watching. Where most of my peers discovered "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" a year or two after I did, my gateway was the original series.

For the first of my "Seasons of Love" essays, I have chosen the second and arguably most immaculate season of Monty Python's Flying Circus. If MPFC instigated the "classic rock" era of British comedy, than the second series is Led Zeppelin II, Exile on Main Street, and Who's Next rolled into one. All thirteen episodes are A-quality or very close to it; I can count the number of sketches and bits I didn't like on one hand. If the first series set the tone for breaking conventions and destroying the familiar, year two reinforced the anarchy. The sweet spot between surreal interference and coherent set-pieces is hit more regularly, and without getting pummeled. The chaos is more fluid, more focused, and just about seamless. Where the third and fourth series grow increasingly hit and miss (especially after John Cleese's departure) the second series is peak Python.

To understand Monty Python at the peak of its powers is to see how the show's talent took specific roles and played that part to the hilt. John Cleese, the alpha male; Graham Chapman, the straight man; Eric Idle, cheeky and playful; Michael Palin, alternately nice and smarmy; Terry Jones, the pompous pushover; and Terry Gilliam, taciturn yet feral. Writing and creating their own material, the Pythons had totally different personalities: Cleese and Chapman collaborated on sketches that mixed foibles and juxtaposition; Palin and Jones co-wrote longer sketches that turned into meandering character studies; Idle kept it short and silly. The spine of the zaniness was Gilliam's intricate animation fills, stop-motion cutouts mixed with zaftig, macabre caricatures.

To bring home my point, here are (in chronological order) the five strongest episodes of season two:

"Face the Press," episode one of the season, 14th overall. Best known for "Ministry of Silly Walks," one of the few overly physical sketches in the Python canon, "Press" also features the Piranaha Brothers documentary spoof, which consumes the final third of the episode. A gag involving an absurd number of deliverymen installing a new gas cooker (er, oven) gives the season premiere a figurative and literally serpentine runner to bring everything together. "Dinsdale!"

"The Spanish Inquisition," episode two, 15th overall. AV Club suggested this as your Python Gateway to Geekery, and I can't disagree.  Palin is aces as the hapless Cardinal Ximenez, turning the titular 15th century religious persecution into feckless, mustache-twirling villainy. They aim for evil, but they settle for mild annoyance. Beyond the inquisition this is just a collection of sketch great sketches, including "The Semaphore Version of Wuthering Heights" and "Tax on Thingy."

"It's a Living," episode six, 19th overall. There's no recurring theme or wraparound this time, it's just a great series of sketches. "Timmy Williams' Coffee Time" is a dead-on parody of David Frost, a bite-the-hand-that-feeds moment for an early champion of Python's work. The final quarter of the episode is again dedicated a lengthier piece, a send-up of live election coverage --a Party Political Broadcast, if you will-- that pits the Silly Party against the Sensible Party.

"Spam," episode 12, 25th overall. Any Python fan worth their salt knows the title sketch and its accompanying sing-along, but this is another top-to-bottom cavalcade of scenes. "Ypres 1914" evokes Ernest Hemingway and features a great individual performance from Chapman. "Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook" is fairly quotable, and "Communist Quiz" and "Gumby Flower Arranging" later became staples of Python's live act.

"Royal Episode 13," 26th overall. "The Queen is watching," the show's announcer warns upfront. Any assumption that Python will play it safe is thrown out almost immediately; the tasteless "Cannibal Lifeboat" sketch segues into the even more abhorrent "Cannibal Undertaker" sketch, and gross-out humor dominates the proceedings. Inspired as it may have been, the perceived limits of good taste forced the BBC's censors to pay closer attention. There was a limit to what Monty Python could get away with after all.

Of course, by choosing five episodes from one season I can't touch every base. The other eight episodes of Python's second series have all sorts of great sketches, ranging from the game show spoof "Blackmail" to "The Killer Cars" to "How Not to Be Seen." "Scott of the Antarctic," perhaps the weakest episode of the season, is a tad arch and slow-moving at times, but its strongest elements trump the weaknesses. Regardless, whenever someone watches "Holy Grail" or "Life of Brian" want to know where to go next, season two is normally where I steer them.

With any luck, "Seasons of Love" will turn into a monthly feature on this blog. There are plenty of shows I like, past and present, that are worth writing about; at the same time, I'm also open to suggestions.

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That Wonderful Year in Music... 1970

In the most literal and bluntly obvious sense, 1970 was the year following 1969; from a cultural standpoint, it was the morning after. The apex of Woodstock preceded the anarchy of Altamont, basically shutting down the '60s "free love" counter-culture. President Nixon was making the tough decisions on Vietnam that the Johnson administration couldn't, including the controversial decision to invade Cambodia. Criticism of the war reached a crux on May 4th of that year, when the Ohio National Guard fired at protesters on the Kent State University quad, killing four students and wounding nine. The revolution was over before it ever began, yet the generation gap between the older "silent majority" and the younger, more liberal peaceniks raged on.

In some ways, the music reflected the uncertainty of the times. Motown, the most successful and influential record label of the previous decade, found itself in a unique state of flux; Diana Ross dumped the Supremes to go solo, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye fought for creative control of their music (and won), The Temptations were dabbling in Swahili, and their best-selling singing act was a led by an exceptionally gifted 12-year-old boy who needed no introduction. Outside of the R&B scene, paradigm shifts came a dime a dozen. The center of the music universe temporarily shifted to the Isle of Wight, where The Who, Miles Davis, and The Doors performed career-defining shows. Davis more or less invented jazz fusion, psychedelia was giving way to country-rock and folk-rock, Led Zeppelin was diversifying its sound, while a new act called Black Sabbath set the blueprint for heavy metal. Regardless, all those musical wayposts paled to the three big bombshells of 1970: the breakup of The Beatles and the deaths of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. The '60s were dead, yet a new, uncertain, and exciting era was just beginning.

Once again, my monthly musical montage has been expanded to 20 albums and notable songs. That might seem excessive, but even with a cap that high I'm bound to be overlooking something. (Considering that my 1969 list also had 20 albums and my 1971 rundown had nearly that many, I think it's safe to assume what my favorite era of music might be.) That's the charm of these audiophile blogs; arguing the merits of old LPs is fun yet oddly futile at the same time.

BEST ALBUMS

1. Bitches' Brew, Miles Davis. By 1970, jazz and rock had already been mingling and sonically fornicating for a couple of years. It wasn't until Davis brainstormed Brew, however that these friends with benefits could create something profound and meaningful. This undisputed be-all end-all of jazz fusion marked a new chapter in Davis' long and prolific career, built on dark and funky tones that made his 1950s output seem antiquated, perhaps even prehistoric. A mere phrase like "paradigm shift" doesn't begin to describe the territory that Miles explores on Brew.

2. Moondance, Van Morrison. Few artists are as stubborn and idiosyncratic, but fewer can make a growly Irish brogue sound heartfelt and soulful like the Belfast Cowboy. Where Van's solo debut Astral Weeks stands an individual work of art divided into seven-minute chapters, Moondance is a collection of brilliant songs. "Into The Mystic" is one of my favorite ballads ever; it's haunting, poignant, and for lack of a better term, perfect.

3. Led Zeppelin III, Led Zeppelin. LZ's first two albums were heavy on acid blues and rockabilly riffs, a formula that was compelling and hard-charging but could've easily gotten tired in future efforts. Zeppelin had to grow musically at some point, and this album set the precedent for their '70s output; where Side A is a slow ween from their blues roots, Side B delves deep into English folk and American country music. Granted, III pales in comparison to the radio-friendly IV, but that album wouldn't exist without the other.

4. After The Gold Rush, Neil Young

5. All Things Must Pass, George Harrison

6. Bridge Over Troubled Water, Simon & Garfunkel

7. Loaded, The Velvet Underground

8. Paranoid, Black Sabbath

9. Cosmo's Factory, Creedence Clearwater Revival

10. American Beauty, The Grateful Dead. If you were into rock music in the early '70s, it was hard to get past Jerry Garcia and his jamming minions. Released mere months after Workingman's Dead, Beauty builds upon the granola country and bluegrass stylings of their previous release. "Truckin'" and "Box of Rain" are amongst the standout tracks here.

11. Fun House, Iggy & The Stooges

12. Plastic Ono Band, John Lennon

13. Deja Vu, Crosby Stills Nash & Young

14. Abraxas, Santana

15. Weasels Ripped My Flesh, The Mothers of Invention. The next-to-last release from Frank Zappa's old band is the rarest of the rare: a B-sides and outtakes collection that's just as coherant and essential as a regular album. The Mothers had a brief yet very fruitful existence, and this collection proves that even the tracks that Zappa and company were least satisfied with have some artistic merit.

16. Let It Be, The Beatles

17. Workingman's Dead, The Grateful Dead

18. Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One, The Kinks

19. Chicago II, Chicago

20. American Woman, The Guess Who. The first Canadian rock band with any staying power south of the border, this Winnipeg-based quartet was better known for mid-tempo ballads like "These Eyes" and "Laughing" up to this point. Their natural gifts as boogie-rockers finally blossomed on Woman, carried by rollicking tunes like "No Time," "No Sugar Tonight," and the title track. Alas, success proved shorter and sweeter than planned; guitarist Randy Bachman left the band after "Woman" became a #1 hit, eventually founding Bachman-Turner Overdrive.

BEST SINGLES

"A Song For You," Leon Russell

"We've Only Just Begun," The Carpenters

"Take Me To The Pilot," Elton John

"Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)," Melanie

"Little Green Bag," The George Baker Selection

"Funk #49," The James Gang

"Mississippi Queen," Mountain

"All Right Now," Free

"Hey Tonight," Creedence Clearwater Revival

"Stage Fright," The Band

"War," Edwin Starr

"Indiana Wants Me," R. Dean Taylor

"Ball of Confusion," The Temptations

"(I Know) I'm Losing You," Rare Earth

"Love Me Or Let Me Be Lonely," The Friends of Distinction

"Patches," Clarence Carter

"Ride Captain Ride," Blues Image

"Hard Headed Woman," Cat Stevens

"Sweet Baby James," James Taylor

"The Rapper," Jaggerz

Your thoughts?