Neil Innes -- Jammin' Java - April 15 2010

Neil Innes - The "seventh member" of Monty Python, not to be confused with Carol Cleveland, is doing a quick tour of the US and Canada. With that connection and his work in the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, it was just too hard for me to pass up this show. He did a lot of songs and song snippets over the course of a couple hours supplemented with lots of humor and stories from his most interesting collaborations with Python and Viv Stanshell. He began with a ukulele song and quickly switched off between guitars and piano thereafter. He went back to 1966 Bonzo songs and explained that they would visit record stores and buy 78s with the most bizarre titles for a tuppence and try to top each other by finding the weirdest song to record. These were hilarious and between these and his own songs, he had a lot of audience sing-alongs with choral responses (not unlike The Lumberjack Song, but shorter) that were pretty face paced and fun. And believe me, I am one of the last people that would admit to having fun with sing-alongs. He finished his first set with "Brave Sir Robin" and Eric Idle's "Bruce's Philosopher Song". The second set was more of the same with a good Elton John parody with glasses. "You're Never Alone at the Bottom of a Pile" was a fun song. He had a bad cord which was making a racket while on piano that lead to an audience member joke which he promised to steal. "I've never done a slick show in my life, so I don't know why I should start now." Well not slick, but after another crazed sing-along, he had us spell "sod off", pronounce it and then watch him sullenly leave the stage before coming back for one encore. Much fun.

Quote of the Night: Innes explaining differences between men and women-- "Why do women generalize and men don't?"