364: Comedy

Wouldn’t it be funny if I ended this year of playlists by creating one that had no music, no distinct “cuts” even, and it would actually be easier to produce in real life than virtually? Well, that’s what I’m doing. I’m taking 20 of my favorite comedy LPs, and I’m imagining that I would drop the needle at any random place on each of these and record for three minutes apiece. “But what about continuity, or even understanding the bits?” you might say. I say “Dada is funny too.” So I’m just going to list the albums, and you can imagine me imagining myself dropping an imaginary needle on these real records over and over.

1. Rae Bourbon — Let Me Tell You About My Operation
2. Godfrey Cambridge — Them Cotton Pickin’ Days Is Over
3. George Carlin — A Place For My Stuff!
4. Cheech & Chong — Los Cochinos
5. Jerry Clower — Mouth Of Mississippi
6. Bill Cosby — To Russell, My Brother, Whom I Slept With
7. Sloppy Daniels — Laff Of The Party
8. Redd Foxx — The New Fugg
9. Dick Gregory — The Light Side: The Dark Side
10. Pigmeat Markham — Pigmeat At The Party
11. Bob & Doug McKenzie — Great White North
12. Bob Newhart — The Button-Down Mind Of Bob Newhart
13. LaWanda Page — Mutha Is Half A Word
14. Richard Pryor — “Craps!” After Hours
15. Rowan & Martin — Rowan & Martin’s Laugh In
16. The Smothers Brothers — Curb Your Tongue, Knave!
17. Robin Williams — Reality…What A Concept
18. Flip Wilson — You Devil You
19. Justin Wilson — Keep It Clean
20. Jonathan Winters — The Wonderful World Of Jonathan Winters

60:00

200: Good Sports

When I saw that list number 200 was coming up, I had a bit of a manufactured crisis in trying to decide what to do. I considered another numerical list, as I did with list number 100, but it’s been done and I don’t think there are that many songs mentioning the second hundred. I worked for a short time on a convoluted and mathematical “revisitation,” but it was too much for me. I thought that I could maybe list the 200th animal of the past month, but the tedium brought that idea crashing down. And then I thought “tedium…like the tedium of a sports lover’s mid-summer, when basketball and hockey playoffs have ended, baseball games hardly matter, and professional football of both types are only being practiced or exhibitioned; when Brits watch darts and Yanks watch Brits watching darts; when the public is so sports-starved that they actually rally behind the women’s national soccer team.” You know, that kind of tedium. So, to celebrate the commencement of the new sports year (football season!), I picked some of my favorite sports songs. Also, you three people that are still reading this are good sports.

1. The Zambonis — Here Comes The Zamboni
2. Camper Van Beethoven — Take The Skinheads Bowling
3. Bob Dylan — Hurricane
4. New Order — World In Motion
5. Suggs & Co. — Blue Day
6. Belle And Sebastian — I Don’t Want To Play Football
7. Meat Puppets — Touchdown King
8. Kurtis Blow — Basketball
9. Public Enemy — He Got Game
10. Cheech & Chong — Basketball Jones
11. Intruders — Love Is Like A Baseball Game
12. John Fogerty — Centerfield
13. Wavves — Baseball Cards
14. Ramones — Beat On The Brat
15. The Baseball Project — Ted Fucking Williams
16. Terry Cashman — Talkin’ Softball

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