As a longtime Monty Python fanatic, I’ve often heard of the legendary Fawlty Towers, the British sitcom John Cleese co-created and starred in after Flying Circus had gone off the air. The show ranks high in the annals of sitcom lore, with Cleese singled out for his performance as Basil Fawlty, the co-owner of a small, English seaside hotel. For reasons I can’t come up with, I had never seen this revered show before it arrived on my doorstep in the form of a new BBC 30th Anniversary collector’s edition that contains every episode from its two seasons (1975 and 1979) painstakingly remastered. I was thrilled for the opportunity to finally see the show I’d heard so much about since I first began watching Python in my college dorm room, 20 years ago.
Cleese created the show with his then-wife, actress Connie Booth (who also co-stars). The show follows the exploits of Basil, one of the most cantankerous, put-upon, non-people persons you’d ever meet. If ever there was a man who shouldn’t be interacting with hotel guests, it’s Basil Fawlty. The character was based on a real hotel owner named Donald Sinclair. As the story goes, while the Pythons were on a film shoot in the early ’70s, they stayed at Sinclair’s hotel, only to check out after just one night’s stay. Sinclair was so rude that the actors couldn’t stand him. However, Cleese opted to stay behind and study the man, fascinated by his behavior. When the time came to pitch a series to the BBC, Booth suggested to her husband “What about that hotel owner?” The rest is history. (more…)
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Two of pop’s most studious classicists, Neil Hannon (The Divine Comedy) and Thomas Walsh (Pugwash), converge on what could only be considered a monumental summit for UK pop fans, bestowing on the listening public a concept album – about cricket. Not about some girl named Cricket, but the veddy European sport thereof.
So I had a great idea. An entire post about fake rock bands — groups made up for your cinematic pleasure that, in spite of not actually being real bands, managed to put out a couple decent tunes for the soundtrack. The definitions of real and fake in this super-sub-category are wishy-washy. Some of these actors actually play their music, others don’t and are lip-synching to studio performers. Some of the groups represented are meant as serious depictions, while others are strictly satirical. Some aren’t getting represented at all here (inferring that if the key member of the band is named something like 
, your crappy movie didn’t make the cut.) Yes, a great idea, and an original idea! No one on the Internet has dared to do anything like this, not even my colleague 
If we’re starting with the obvious, then we’re obviously starting with Spinal Tap, the metal band consisting of David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean,) Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) and Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer.) In the now ubiquitous mockumentary, the actors actually recorded their own tunes, which is a rarity. Then again, the songs weren’t meant to be taken all that seriously, but to be the foil for generational musical satire. Ranging from hippy-dippy psyche-folk with “Listen to the Flower People,” to Yardbirdsian skiffle rock with “
was meant to be a joke. (A point of irony — “Gimme Some Money” was actually used in an American Express commercial, before the credit market was revealed to be as bogus as some of these bands…)
. Sure, there was plenty of help from special guest musicians like Dweezil Zappa, Joe Satriani and Slash, but it was still Tap at its core, and still satirical. It would be hard to hear “