Buy This Box or We'll Shoot This Dog: The Best Of The National Lampoon Radio Hour (3 Disks)

By request, "Night of the Living Monster Mash-up" is back up. 

I had a fine time when I recently spoke with M4M contributor James "DJ See" Carroll of Orange County, CA's KUCI on his "Radio Chimichanga" show. Mr. Carroll's most recent gift to us is this amazing document: 3 disks of audio shenanigans from the highly influential 1970s humor magazine. The radio show lasted from 1973 to 1975, when key members jumped ship to TV, joining the first cast of "Saturday Night Live." And indeed, there are some first-draft versions of future "SNL" skits here (not to mention the roots of "Spinal Tap"/"A Mighty Wind"). This collection features the amazing cast of Christopher Guest, John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, his brother Brian Doyle-Murray, Chevy Chase, Richard Belzer, Joe Flaherty (hey, we just featured "Count Floyd" on the "TV Horror Hosts" post), Billy Crystal, Michael O'Donoghue, and others, all in the crude early garage-band stage of their developments. 

It's not all purely of historical interest tho - there's still some great stuff here, esp. the spot-on music parodies. And some of those parodies are by one Tony Scheuren, whose musical satire career was sadly cut short by an early death. Scheuren had been in the crappy late '60s Boston band Chameleon Church. I'd never heard of them, but found their album in a thrift store. Wondering who they were, I looked at the back cover and there was Chevy Chase looking at me. He was their drummer. So I bought it, but it is so wimpy and low-key it makes Donovan look death-metal. Scheuren was in another Boston band that wasn't very good (whose album I also discovered whilst thrifting), Ultimate Spinach. But at least they used some weird instruments.

The Best Of The National Lampoon Radio Hour [Disc 1]
The Best Of The National Lampoon Radio Hour [Disc 2]
The Best Of The National Lampoon Radio Hour [Disc 3]

Tracklist/artist info HERE.

Apart from his mighty contributions to this blog, James Carroll is also the man behind the Lamposts band, whose album "Adolt Cartoon" is available on Bandcamp. Lets take a listen, shall we?  "f14" is most excellent punkabilly. "I Hate Cops" isn't the hardcore you'd expect, more like a jazz band covering Led Zeps' "How Many More Times."  "Skull tattoo" is agreeably trippy, and first part of "the process of discrimination" is great if weird funk-rock, before it moves into mopey George Harrison territory. Check it:

Lamposts - Adolt Cartoon

Thanks and praise to DJ See Lamposts!