You're So Pusillanimous....Rutles Highway Revisited...Tribute To A Tribute

I remember when the film All You Need Is Cash came out, a documentary of the Pre-Fab Four, The Rutles.
The movie was a brilliant send up of The Beatles saga, replete with cameos by George Harrison, Mick Jagger and Paul Simon. I probably didn't get all the jokes at the time but I thought it was the most amazing film, definitely cafeteria grist for the next week at high school. Even though I laughed my head off, I couldn't help but notice the quality of Neil Innes' musical creations. They were not quite Beatle's tunes, but parodies that were so spot on, so close to the mark. And the songs were done with warmth and a degree of reverence that deflected the somewhat overprotective tendencies of fans toward The Beatles legacy. And Innes' creations covered the entire period of the Beatles, from fresh faced pop idols, to Sgt. Pepper psychedelia and onward to the bearded White Album/Abbey Road era. Ultimately though, Innes was sued for copyright infringement by ATV music in 1978, owners of the Beatles catalog at that time.




Rutle Mania! Dirk, Stig, Nasty,  and Barry (or is that David Duchovny?)


But for the purposes of this post we need to cut to 1990, and New York recording label Shimmy Disc, home to such luminaries as Bongwater, King Missile, Lida Husik, and When People Were Shorter And Lived Near The Water. They came up with the pure genius of a Rutles tribute album!

Now tribute albums as a rule can be dodgy things, not to be recommended as a rule. Often fan's affections for a group or performer are traded on for at least an attempted profit. So some recording label puts out a tribute album to Nirvana, or Oasis, and has all the crappy bands on their label do a song to promote their careers. And the label hopes the artist they are "honoring" is revered enough to induce music consumers to open their wallets. In other cases, you may have more established artists on a tribute but the songs are tossed together quickly, and tunes are either bland recreations of the originals, or sloppy deconstructions (which can be interesting, but has in general has been overdone). In either case, not enough time has been taken.

Of course there are numerous exceptions. There is the Neil Young tribute The Bridge, Richard Thompson's Beat The Retreat. Even a mixed bag tribute like Give The People What We Want (Kinks) isn't bad because
the exemplary renditions outweigh the so-so. And sometimes you really can find out about something great. When I heard The Briefs do a white hot version of "Come Dancing" on The Kinks tribute I had to hear more of their music. And some of the power pop tribute albums on Not Lame records (The Cars, Bubblegum Music) are very good, even though the performers are not known in most households. The tribute album to The Byrds, Time Between I would highly recommend. And surprisingly, The If I Were A Carpenter tribute Cd is pretty rock solid.

And then there is Rutles Highway revisited. The concept seems absurd, but I think the songs merit such consideration.

Shoot Me Down In Flames If I Should Tell A Lie.....

I must say that overall this is a most excellent disc, with a really disparate and eclectic group of performers.
Some were part of the Shimmy Disc roster, but many were not. There are a few better known artists, like Galaxie 500 and Unrest, Tuli Kupferburg of the Fugs, but overall not big names. Bongos, Bass and Bob has Penn Jillette in it. The whole project was put together and engineered by Kramer of Bongwater, and he succeeded brilliantly throughout. Out of 20 songs here, I don't like the rudimentary version of Blue Suede Sherbert by The Tinklers and the fairly annoying take on Get Up And Go by Jellyfish Kiss.

But there are so many good cover songs here that I hesitate to pick out a favorite. One of the best is King Missile's version of Double Back Alley, the Rutle parody of Penny Lane. The opening song is Cheese And Onions (Strawberry Fields,Day In The Life?) by Galaxie 500. And of course the talented Lida Husik who sings Good Times Roll (Lucy In The Sky). Psyche-Deli-Catessen? And of course Another Day (Martha My Dear, When I'm 64) by Dogbowl. The tune has incidentally won a lifetime achievement award for best use of "pusillanimous" in a song.




I actually saw her perform at the Mercury Lounge a long time ago, opening for the brilliant New Zealander (and Tall Dwarf) Chris Knox. He was entranced with her name, saying it over and over again throughout his mad and highly entertaining set. Very very sad about his stroke, which happened nearly 2 years ago. It seems that he is doing much better now. Hoping in the future he will be able to accomplish whatever he sets out to do.

As I said before, Unrest, Mark Robinson's Teen Beat band from D.C. is also here, doing a bang up version of Between Us, duetting with Naomi Wolf. Japanese punk pop trio is also represented with a nice take on Goose Step Mama. Das Damen covers Piggy In The Middle, the Rutle's paen to I Am The Walrus. Peter Stampfel and the Bottlecaps perform  a peppy Ouch! (Help!) Other notables include Uncle Wiggly doing It's Looking Good (Getting Better), and the Pussywillow doing Hold My Hand (guess which Beatles song that sends up), and the Syd Straw/Mark Ribot collaboration I Must Be In Love (Ticket To Ride). The tribute ends properly with a Bongwater version of Love Life (All You Need Is Love).



Definitely an album worth consideration. I find recordings like these interesting, but you be the judge.