Customer Reviews

Buy This Box or We'll Shoot This Dog: The Best of the National Lampoon Radio Hour

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you are bored with listening to music while driving, get this great 3-CD set! Lots of classic actors in here from the old Saturday Night Live days and some timeless comedy bits. Hard to believe that this was recorded in the 70s. I know all the bits aren't here :) I'm now waiting for Part II to be made (hopefully 3 more CDs!)

When the National Lampoon and the Second City came together creatively, hilarious sparks flew. This chemistry was essential in paving the way for "Saturday Night Live" and "SCTV Network." Indeed, many of those show's alumni appear on these discs. Where else can you find an ensemble that includes John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Christopher Guest, Richard Belzer, Gilda Radner, Brian Doyle-Murray, Bill Murray, Joe Flaherty, Harold Ramis, & Michael O'Donoghue? No where else, that's where. This box is a must for anyone who loves comedy. All the tracks are great, few are dated, and the performances sparkle with the force of hungry, brilliant comic minds. The writing on this show was also top notch, the scribes going on to pen "Animal House," "Multiplicity," "This Is Spinal Tap!," "Best In Show," "Waiting For Guffman," "SCTV," "Scrooged," and the first years of "SNL." Highlights include Chris Guest's truly bizarre space hero, the stream-of-consciousness spouting Flash Bazbo, Belushi's Brando interview with Chevy, Gilda & Bill Murray's "Evil Santa," and several dead-on musical parodies of such artists as B. B. King & Neil Young. There'll never be this much talent amassed in one single place ever again. Buy it!

This three volume set is so funny. I just with it was longer (that is my only complaint). The funny thing is, the more you listen to it, the funnier it gets.

Not only did I buy a copy for myself, but two months later I got a copy for my sister (we share the same type of humor).

Hearing John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Christopher Guest, and alumni doing spoofs of Marlon Brando, Charles Bronson, Joni Mitchell, Clint Eastwood, Gregory Peck, and James Taylor are simply hilarious.

Surprisingly, the jokes have held up very well, and not as out of date as I would have thought. A smart, refreshing, hilarious send up of just about everything, National Lampoon delivers the goods.

The National Lampoon Radio Hour was a radio comedy show that ran from late 1973 to late 1974. It originally was an hour long, but was soon cut to half an hour when they started to run low on material (while still being titled The National Lampoon Radio Hour). Here we have over three hours of highlights from the show. This is very funny stuff. In a way, the show was a precursor to Saturday Night Live, using many of the performers and writers that later worked on that show. Buy this box.

This collection of Radio Hour skits is great stuff, but it leaves out the most over-the-top material from this era. Who can forget the spot-on send-ups of Joan Baez, John Lennon or Helen Reddy? How about the travel commercial for Haiti or the C&W song "Clap Is Just The B Side Of Love"? Or "Kung Fu Christmas"?
Are we too repressed now to handle it?
Too dumb? Too many lawyers?

I recently went to nationallampoon.com and contacted them, asking if "Radio Dinner" and "Goodbye Pop" would ever be released on CD. The answer I got back was from somebody who apparently never even heard of the albums because he said that those titles may someday be re-released on CD... but they never have been! If you read the liner credits on some of the recent compilations, you'll know that Radio Dinner and Goodbye Pop were probably the best NatLamp albums ever! One even says that Radio Dinner is still the best-selling NatLamp album to date!!!

This box set is the best you're gonna get until those albums come out... if they ever do! You can get a track here and there on the recent compilation releases, but where oh where is my beloved "Art Rock Suite", arguably the most ambitiously produced musical satire ever produced!

Radio Dinner is scheduled for release in May 2005 at amazon.co.uk so hopefully in the USA as well.

Now come on NatLamp and release my personal favorite Good Bye Pop!

Yes, this is gorgeous humor. But honestly, WHEN will they re-release the old "Radio Dinner" album? Us baby boomers wanna re-live the exciting days of the Nixon/McGovern campaign:
"Some of you are asking, why, in announcing our complete withdrawal from Vietnam, and the legalization of marijuana, I am wearing these ludicrous headlamps on my ears. Well, let me explain."

::sigh::

But this one will do until that happy day.

wistfully,

The box set is well worth having. But what I'd really like to see is the classic National Lampoon Radio Dinner LP released on CD. "Deteriorata" and "Catch It and You Keep It" are classics. (If you're a fan of the Bob & Tom radio show, you've probably heard them do their lifted version of "Catch It and You Keep It" on April Fool's Day.) Any record execs listening?

This is hit or miss...most of it is pretty juvenille, but some of it is brilliant. The array of talent is incredible...John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Billy Crystal...all before they became famous via SNL. Michael O'Donoghue is the very warped mind behind many of the bits. It's all edited like the radio show it was back in the mid 70's. so it's fun to listen to straight through. I love the impressions of James Taylor and Neil Young. My favorite bit is Christopher Guest as music promoter Ron Fields. Laugh out loud funny!!