Every month, Cosmik Debris brings you many CD and record reviews, but the writers manage to find a little time for other pursuits, like reading, going to movies and watching videos. That's where Everything Else In Review comes in.


CONCERT: Eric Idle Exploits Monty Python Live On Ice
Universal Amphitheater Los Angeles May 5, 2000
Reviewed by Rusty Pipes

I'm a huge Monty Python fan, so this Pythonesque vaudeville revue by the man who authored most of the troupe's songs was impossible to resist. But it wasn't exactly as advertised--where was the ice?

Eric did make his entrance out of a giant can of Spam though, complete with a Viking chorus. Assisted in the sketches by Peter Crabbe and Mark Ryan, you might say Eric gave us the full Monty, including renditions of several classics including The Bruces, Four Yorkshiremen, Nudge Nudge and The Argument; but mainly the show reprised musical favorites like "The Meaning of Life," "I Like Chinese," "The Money Song" and "Eric the Half a Bee." Idle was also accompanied by the talented Barbaras of Seville--Samantha Harris, Shawana Kemp, and Jennifer Julian--and the excellent Rutland Symphony Orchestra--John Du Prez conductor, Brian Otto on guitar, Joe Roland Shotwell on percussion, Anthony Pimenthal on bass, and Phil Moore on sax and clarinet. The Barbaras sang a terrific version of "The Life of Brian Theme" and co-starred in several skits. When Eric came out in drag as Dolly Taylor, they were the Vaginettes, singing "Isn't It Nice To Have A Pussy," a wonderful reversal of the short ditty on male genitalia Eric sang in The Meaning Of Life. I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition, but it was there too, flowing quite nicely into the song "Every Sperm Is Sacred." Phil Moore showed up as a sperm doing the song's sax solo, a fact I'm sure he puts at the top of his resume.

Python isn't ever coming back of course, due to the passing of one-time medical student Graham Chapman in 1989. Eric remembered him with a song whose lyrics consisted entirely of the formal terms for various venereal diseases. Eric also proved that he hasn't been, er, Idle by playing several recent songs, most notably one about all the lewd works of art at The Getty Center here in LA. Eric very pointedly told the Universal Amphitheater crowd that The Getty allowed him to record his recent concert there, but demanded this one song be removed from the CD. Note to The Getty: Humor is art too and some of your stuff IS rather cheeky. Lighten up!

Other bits included a short video salute to the Rutles--too bad no Rutles songs were done live, though--and later there was a real highlight when country star Clint Black came out to sing "The Galaxy Song" with Eric. And what exploitation of Python could be without "The Lumberjack Song" to wind things up?

All in all it was a terrific way celebrate Cinco de Mayo.


(C) 2000 - Rusty Pipes



Book: Carp Fishing On Valium
Author: Graham Parker
St. Martin's Press, ISBN 0-312-26485-2
227 pages, $22.95 US
Reviewed by Bill Holmes

Acerbic wit Graham Parker is one of the most underrated figures in rock and roll, having blasted onto the US airwaves almost twenty-five years ago with the one-two punch of Howling Wind and Heat Treatment. While continuing to author prolific musical output, he's also dazzled fans with his website diatribes under the heading of "The Thoughts Of Chairman Parker" and "Chairman Parker Answers Your Questions". These occasional blasts of fact and whimsy prove that Parker still suffers no fools, yet also sidesteps the pedestal many have tried to loft him onto.

It's this combination of humility and confidence that is truly appealing to the reader.

Carp Fishing On Valium is a collection of short stories that may or may not draw upon personal experiences; the main character throughout the vignettes is named Brian Porker, after all. If they are not autobiographical, at least he's drawn from that well before (compare the story "Aub" with the song "Soultime" from his album Human Soul). But although the book follows "Porker" from a young age through adulthood, the stories vary in tone from poignant to metaphorical to just plain laugh-out-loud funny. On its surface, "The Sheld-Duck Of The Basingstoke Canal" is about a boy yearning for acceptance, but in one quick action Parker deftly slides a morality lesson in without missing a beat. "Bad Nose" is Rod Serling-esque, and the hilarious "Me And The Stones" (where Porker meets Keith Richard to audition as the late Mick Jagger's replacement) is worth the price of the book by itself.

Parker has an strong ear for dialogue and an excellent grasp of pacing a story. While you sense that he could pick your intellectual pocket with half a brain tied behind his ego, Parker makes you feel like a fly on the wall in his life/imagination, and therefore a confidant if not an equal. What more could you ask from an author than that?


(C) 2000 - Bill Holmes



Book: David Bowie - We Could Be Heroes
Author: Chris Welch
Thunder's Mouth Press, ISBN 1-56025-209-X
144 pages, $22.95 US
Reviewed by Bill Holmes

Subtitled "The Stories Behind Every David Bowie Song," the information on the front and back cover is grossly misleading. First of all, this book covers only the decade of the 1970's, which obviously omits over twenty years of Bowie's career. The inside title-page does clarify this minor detail, but anyone grabbing a sealed copy or ordering via mail order or the Internet is going to be seriously pissed off. Secondly, many of these stories ultimately wind up being nothing more than the opinions of a Bowie fan--namely, author Chris Welch.

I was expecting to read firsthand explanations and/or well-researched revelations about some of Bowie's most diverse and engrossing material. Instead, the text itself alternates between using an assemblage of printed and solicited quotes to report on the era, and stringing together speculative and subjective tidbits to reach some sort of conclusion about Bowie's frame of mind and his motivation. Welch reaches for conclusions on a whim, makes some factual errors (a still photo from Bowie and Jagger's "Dancing In The Street" video shoot is captioned "Bowie on a date with Jagger--arguing about the bill?"), and overstates the obvious in the name of analysis. When Bowie utters "Let's make love" at the end of "Let's Spend The Night Together," Welch says that "this was clearly the object of his scheme to spend a night together with his partner." Gosh, thanks, Chris!

What the book does do fairly well is chronicle the most prolific, and maybe the best, decade of David Bowie's recording career. There's a lot of great photos, a discography and a timeline, but everything stops on a dime in 1980. Why? At first I thought it was an old title that was reprinted, but there are references to Tin Machine and the reissues on Rykodisc that would have had to been written no earlier than the nineties. An abandoned project? Possibly. That would explain the title, but there's no explanation in the press release or the book itself. I suggest they at least append the book's title ASAP.

Certainly, fans who want to read anything about Bowie will enjoy revisiting the era and, taken with a grain of salt, the stories. But We Could Be Heroes is only as authentic as you believe it to be. Much like the stranger who spins yarns at a party, Chris Welch might be spot on, or he might be full of shit.


(C) 2000 - Bill Holmes