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Member since:14.01.2003
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If you long for humour which doesn't depend on vitriol, swearing, sexual innuendo or childishness, this three CD set is just what you have been looking for.
Michael Flanders and Donald Swann were big stars in England in the late 1950 and early 1960s, also touring Canada, the USA and Australia. The wheelchair bound Flanders was the 'funny' man on vocals, with Swann 'the straight' man on the piano.
Their repertoire is marked by a gentle and wry humour, as opposed to the harshness, anger and archness which characterises so much contemporary humour. As Flanders says himself in one of his introductions in At the Drop of Another Hat, "the purpose of Satire, it has been rightly said, is to strip off the veneer of comforting illusion and cosy half-truth - and our job, as I see it, is to put it back again. "
There are some great examples of stoical British humour, such as "The Gas Man Cometh" and "A Song for the Weather". Flanders' wordplay is perhaps shown off best with the zeugmas in "Madeira M'Dear", which includes the line "when he asked what in heaven/she made no reply, up her mind and a dash for the door". It is also seen in "Ill Wind" which is a song of the travails of a French Horn player who wants to play Mozart's Horn Concerto in E flat.
Though dated by being contemporary observations of life before the permissive society hit and deference died, both At the Drop of a Hat, and At the Drop of Another Hat retain their freshness and a certain timeless innocence. "The Bedstead Men" has a certain surreal touch and various of the topical references still raise a smile to those familiar with early 60s Britain (reference to the Lord Chamberlain's regulations, Lord Denning, Profumo and De Gaulle).
What to my mind marks Flanders and Swann out most however is their animal songs. "The Hippo Song" (Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud) is the best known, but Flanders has a genius in getting inside what he imagines to be the mind of various animals. These range from the lovelorn "Warthog" to the whale with flu (Mopy Dick) to the hypochondriac amnesiac elephant to the sloth, convinced of his own genius who just lacks the time, or the Gnu "the g-nicest work of g-nature in the zoo". The Bestiary contains many of these songs, although being recorded in the studio it lacks some of the intimacy with the audience of the two live recordings on the other two discs.
All three discs give well over an hour of innocent, whimsical and funny entertainment, a welcome reminder of an England that has long since disappeared. Flanders and Swann were unmistakeably and irredeemably of their time, but that is their appeal. I heartily recommend them to anyone.
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