Customer Reviews

At the Drop of a Hat

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For those of you who grew up with the UK recording of "At the Drop of a Hat" be warned - in spite of what it says on the box this is NOT the recording of the 1959 show at the Fortune Theatre. This is the Broadway show.

The identity of the recording can be determined in the first minute from Flanders' introduction of Swann as "noted composer, pianist, linguist, also contains lanolin" - in the Fortune Theatre recording he is introduced as "noted composer, pianist, linguist, and all round egghead". There are substantial differences in the two performances, not least of which the pace which is a lot quicker in this recording, lacking the elegant timing which characterised the UK performance and which is comparable to the available CD of "At the Drop of Another Hat" (which WAS recorded in the UK).

Many of the jokes and asides are different - for instance in "Have Some Madeira", the Fortune Theatre recording includes an aside "He slyly inveigled her up to his flat, to view his collection of stamps [aside] All unperforated! ha ha ha ..." clearly this was regarded as too risqué for the US performance.

The songs are the same vintage and hilarious Flanders and Swann but the presentation, to me, is nowhere close to the quality of the earlier performance - it sounds to me like they were by this stage tired of the material and "going through the motions" for an audience that they did not relate to in the same way as an English audience.

Incidentally - Too Many Cookers, Vanessa, Tried by the Centre Court and The Youth of the Heart were not on the original LP recording and judging from the acoustics these were recorded elsewhere. The sleeve notes identify these as being recorded in 1957, 2 years prior to the Fortune Theatre performance.

I first encountered Flanders and Swan on the LP version of this recording forty years ago. Loved it then, love it today. These two inventive and joyful British devils have delighted theatre audiences for years and their "Hippopotamus Song" has become something of a children's classic. This is the original cast recording of their first hit London show and is a marvelous performance. Can't say enough good about it but best of all my wife and I have been humming the songs and quoting the lyrics to one another now and then ever since we got the LP as a wedding present.

My father used to work in the kitchen, cooking or cleaning, with music playing in the background. One of his favorites was this album by Flanders & Swann. He had seen the show and loved the record. I sang the songs through my childhood and now I sing them to my children, my co-workers, my friends! I only just realized that I can get the original album on CD. WHAT JOY!!!

I count myself a rare American who appreciates this recording. My uncle sent it to me on tape when I was quite small. my mom, ever handy with the censor's razor blade, let it go--untouched--in spite of the song about madeira, which I now know is about an old man doing the nasty to a young innocent lass. back then, of course, I thought it was about cake! with both mom and uncle passed on, I wanted to buy up what music of theirs I could locate, and I fortunately found the Complete Flanders and Swann, apparently no longer available. i bought up the copy and didn't get scalped, somehow. 45 years after the songs were sung, "Transport of Delight," "Soung of Reproduction," and "reluctant Cannibal," and yes even "Song of the Weather," still reverberate in my mind. i used to sing "The Gas Man Cometh," from the "At the drop of Another Hat" show album, in performances as a teen-ager, and sometimes even got good results. any of their albums are money well spent.

This British comedy album is as guffaw-producing as it was fifty years ago when I first heard it. Something about British humor. Especially memorable are "The Gnu Song," "The Reluctant Cannibal," and the one near the end about the origin of the song "Greensleeves," or as Flanders pronounces it, "Greenfleeves." Okay, the album may be a bit dated, but for those of a certain age it brings back a funnier, gentler time.

This recording is hilarious!

The British accents require some effort to understand, and there are a few truly obscure references, but overall the show is still quite amusing for American audiences.

I think that the program is very similar to the circa 1960 LP album, which did not have the encore, however.

Regrettably, the liner notes from the original LP album are missing, although the cover shot was preserved.

NOTE:
The performance includes 13 listed songs, plus an encore, and is presented all as one long cut, so if you want to listen to any particular song you will need to skip to time points which you have derived, manually -- the individual song timings are not shown on the jacket.

My brother out-law hooked us into this by giving us the Bestiary album. We enjoyed the songs so much that we went looking for more. The humor is very English, the historical references are sometimes dated (and therefore educational) and the music is first-rate. I must also add that the lyrical complexity is something that bears more than one listen. Flanders manages to squeeze so much meaning out of so few words, that one picks up new insights even after many listens.

First heard this when I was in grade school and 50+ years later am still singing the songs on it. We used to listen to it when we came home from school for lunch and with the family after dinner. It never lost it's appeal.