Customer Reviews

National Lampoon's Lemmings (1973 Original Off-Broadway Cast)

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

 

 

I finally got to see a tape of this show the other day. I've been searching for it for sometime now but it's out of print for many years. I finally stumbled across a copy on eBay. I've had the CD of the show for a while and the first time I heard it, it just blew me a way. I used to play it constantly. The Lemmings, for anyone who doesn't know, was a comedy revue created and performed by members of The National Lampoon in 1971 at the Village Gate Theatre, as a parody of the Woodstock Music Festival, here called The Woodchuck Festival of "Peace, Love and Death". The show featured the then unknown talents of such performers as John Belushi, Christopher Guest and Chevy Chase. Additional writers on the show were Tony Hendra (best known for his role as Ian Faith, the manager in This Is Spinal Tap, who also co-directed the show), Doug Kenney (one of the founders of National Lampoon, co-writer of Animal House and best known for his role as Stork in Animal House) and P.J. O'Rourke.

The concert portions of the show are incredible. During the show they parody some of the biggest musical acts of the time. What blew me away were not only the dead-on impersonations of these acts but the quality of the songs and the talent of the performers. I think they all really played the instruments. Belushi, Chase and Guest all took turns playing all of the instruments (guitar, bass, keyboards and drums).
Some of the tunes they performed were:
Belushi as Joe Cocker doing a tune called Lonely At the Bottom, an incredibly rocking tune that could have easily been a radio hit and was supposedly the first time Belushi did his Joe Cocker impression. ("I was making musical history, now I'm working for Muscular Dystrophy").
Christopher Guest doing two great dead-on impersonations on songs that he co-wrote, one of Bob Dylan on Positively Wall Street where he perfects both the whiney, nasal Dylan (as in Stuck Inside Memphis) as well as the country-fied Dylan (as in Lay Lady Lay) in the same song, and James Taylor on Highway Toes where he taps into JT's depression, heroin use stage singing such lines as "...shooting up the highway on the road map of my wrist" or "...going to Carolina where I left my frontal lobes"
Chevy Chase doing a John Denver parody on Colorado
A Crosby, Stills and Nash take off called Lemmings Lament that sounds exactly like CS&R during their Woodstock period.
And one of my favorite tunes, Papa Was a Running Dog Lackey, an extremely funky Motown-style tune sung by the "Motown Manifestos". Another tune which could have easily been a radio hit.
The closing song, which was supposed to help the surviving members of the audience kill themselves (as Alice Playton, the Mega groupie says during their introduction, "Did you know that pure rock sound can kill? Isn't that far out? So the thing to do is go over to the amp and put your head there.") was sung by the heavy/death metal group, Megadeath. I wonder if I the real group Megadeath took their name from this revue. And on a personal note, when I was about 14, a few years before Megadeath even started, I wrote a sketch about a death metal band trying to come up with a name. After exhausting such names as Bring Out Your Death; Whole Lotta Death; Death, Death, Death, they finally came up with Megadeath.)

There are also some great bits in between. One of which is Chevy mimicking the Hell's Angels guy who flops out during the Stones concert at Altamont. It is one of the funniest things I have ever heard Chevy do. (Regrettably it's not included on the video.)

Unfortunately the video of this show is of really poor quality. But what's worse is it's obviously not the same show as the one they recorded the album from. The music on the CD was tighter and more refined. The audience of the show on the video doesn't really seem all that receptive and a lot of the bits seemed to go over their heads. There was a lot more audience laughter on the CD then the video. I would love to see this show remastered on DVD which included the entire show. It would be, if I may say, to die for.

This is probably, along with "Animal House," the most successful of all the various National Lampoon projects. It is the 2nd Act of a live comedy revue the Lampoon mounted in the early '70s and is a satire of the Woodstock music festival, here presented as the "Woodshuck Festival of Peace, Love, & Death." The satirical targets are twofold: popular rock icons and the death of the "peace 'n' love" movement of the '60s. It is, in a word, brilliant. Part of the success must go to the stellar cast assembled for the show: John Belushi, Christopher Guest, Chevy Chase, Gary Goodrow, Alice Playten, Paul Jacobs, and Mary Jenifer-Mitchell. As we all know, Belushi, Guest, & Chase went on to much bigger and better things ("This Is Spinal Tap!," "Saturday Night Live," "Waiting For Guffman," etc.). But, here they are, young, raw, and ripping pop cultural sacred cows a new orifice! Belushi acts as the Emcee, constantly encouraging the audience to do away with themselves, and scores with his devastating Joe Cocker impersonation. Guest weighs in with brutal digs at Bob Dylan and James Taylor. Chevy takes aim at John Denver and does a hilarious Altamont Hell's Angel. Also of note is Paul Jacobs, the musical director who also savages Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young. But the real genius lies in the writing of, primarily, two Lampoon mag vets - Sean Kelly and Tony Hendra (Hendra, you might remember, was "Spinal Tap"'s manager Ian and also a Cambridge contemporary of Graham Chapman & John Cleese's). Their lyrics are vicious and hilarious (James Taylor: "Shooting up the highways on the roadmaps of my wrists..."). A better rock parody cannot be found! And again, it's Belushi, Chase, & Guest when they were all young, vital, and funny (of the three, only Guest has managed to keep up all but the young part). What more do you need? Buy it!

I guess we should be grateful that the majority of NATIONAL LAMPOON'S show LEMMINGS has been preserved on CD- the show certainly showed off the talents of John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Tony Hendra, Christopher Guest, along with actress Alice Playten (OBC of OLIVER!, film of Tom Cruise's LEGEND).
But VERY DISAPPOINTINGLY omitted from this CD is the Joan Baez spoof PULL THE TRIGGERS NIGGERS("Pull the triggers, Niggers- we're with you all the way... right across the bay..."). As offensive and politcally uncorrect as the song is in its brevity, it's hysterically funny- and I'm bewildered why National Lampoon would edit the song out of this revue. Anyone know why?

except that listening to this after watching "Woodstock" is as much fun as watching "Life Of Brian" on Easter!! (Except you don't have to suffer through Ten Years After with "Lemmings")

I finally got to see a tape of this show the other day. I've been searching for it for sometime now but it's out of print for many years. I finally stumbled across a copy on eBay. I've had the CD of the show for a while and the first time I heard it, it just blew me a way. I used to play it constantly. The Lemmings, for anyone who doesn't know, was a comedy revue created and performed by members of The National Lampoon in 1971 at the Village Gate Theatre, as a parody of the Woodstock Music Festival, here called The Woodchuck Festival of "Peace, Love and Death". The show featured the then unknown talents of such performers as John Belushi, Christopher Guest and Chevy Chase. Additional writers on the show were Tony Hendra (best known for his role as Ian Faith, the manager in This Is Spinal Tap, who also co-directed the show), Doug Kenney (one of the founders of National Lampoon, co-writer of Animal House and best known for his role as Stork in Animal House) and P.J. O'Rourke.
The concert portions of the show are incredible. During the show they parody some of the biggest musical acts of the time. What blew me away were not only the dead-on impersonations of these acts but the quality of the songs and the talent of the performers. I think they all really played the instruments. Belushi, Chase and Guest all took turns playing all of the instruments (guitar, bass, keyboards and drums).
Some of the tunes they performed were:
Belushi as Joe Cocker doing a tune called Lonely At the Bottom, an incredibly rocking tune that could have easily been a radio hit and was supposedly the first time Belushi did his Joe Cocker impression. ("I was making musical history, now I'm working for Muscular Dystrophy").
Christopher Guest doing two great dead-on impersonations on songs that he co-wrote, one of Bob Dylan on Positively Wall Street where he perfects both the whiney, nasal Dylan (as in Stuck Inside Memphis) as well as the country-fied Dylan (as in Lay Lady Lay) in the same song, and James Taylor on Highway Toes where he taps into JT's depression, heroin use stage singing such lines as "...shooting up the highway on the road map of my wrist" or "...going to Carolina where I left my frontal lobes"
Chevy Chase doing a John Denver parody on Colorado
A Crosby, Stills and Nash take off called Lemmings Lament that sounds exactly like CS&R during their Woodstock period.
And one of my favorite tunes, Papa Was a Running Dog Lackey, an extremely funky Motown-style tune sung by the "Motown Manifestos". Another tune which could have easily been a radio hit.
The closing song, which was supposed to help the surviving members of the audience kill themselves (as Alice Playton, the Mega groupie says during their introduction, "Did you know that pure rock sound can kill? Isn't that far out? So the thing to do is go over to the amp and put your head there.") was sung by the heavy/death metal group, Megadeath. I wonder if I the real group Megadeath took their name from this revue. And on a personal note, when I was about 14, a few years before Megadeath even started, I wrote a sketch about a death metal band trying to come up with a name. After exhausting such names as Bring Out Your Death; Whole Lotta Death; Death, Death, Death, they finally came up with Megadeath.)

There are also some great bits in between. One of which is Chevy mimicking the Hell's Angels guy who flops out during the Stones concert at Altamont. It is one of the funniest things I have ever heard Chevy do. (Regrettably it's not included on the video.)

Unfortunately the video of this show is of really poor quality. But what's worse is it's obviously not the same show as the one they recorded the album from. The music on the CD was tighter and more refined. The audience of the show on the video doesn't really seem all that receptive and a lot of the bits seemed to go over their heads. There was a lot more audience laughter on the CD then the video. I would love to see this show remastered on DVD which included the entire show. It would be, if I may say, to die for.

I just found out about the Lemmings show in a book by Josh Karp that is mostly about Doug Kenney. I downloaded the mp3 version because the other forms are rare now. Shootin' up the highway on the roadmap of my wrist: farewell New York City. I like a great escape, and this is old enough now that the jokes are worth more than $14 trillion will be worth after the money is all spent.

The Pull the triggers song is on the Radio Dinner album, and is not from Lemmings.

Come for the comedy, STAY for the freakin' music! John Belushi, Christopher Guest and Chevy Chase hitting on ALL eight cylinders both comedically and musically. The one, the ONLY Woodstock Festival parody and probably the best comedy album Lampoon (or just about ANYONE) ever did. The music is absolutely amazing! Better than Woodstock! Better than most of the new stuff coming out now and the lyrics will have you laughing your ass off. Who needs Joe Cocker when you've got Belushi, as Cocker, singing, "Lonely At The Bottom Of A Barrel" I was talking to a guy just yesterday about this. He's in his thirties and he loves anything and everything John Belushi ever did yet he's never even heard of National Lampoon's Lemmings. HUH?! Do NOT make that same mistake. I just downloaded the MP3 Album from Amazon and you need to do so too. Damn funny and some damn fine, music. ENJOY!

To quote Belushi about halfway through the album, "And if your buddy's too stoned to off himself, roll him up in a sleeping bag and drag him over to where the tractors can run him over!"