I was watching the broadcast of the final performance of the farewell Monty Python reunion show that aired a month or so back. During the intermission, Dara O’Briain was interviewing Martin Freeman and Lee Mack about what Monty Python meant to them growing up, and one of them said something that hit me like a ton of bricks: “Comedy was my music growing up”. It was a little epiphany - one of those moments when you realize that other people exist who understand you in some deep way that you didn’t even realize was missing.
You see, I’ve never been into music. At all. I hardly ever listen to it now, and I hardly ever did back in my teenage years. The bits I did find myself enjoying were well out of the mainstream, to say the least. I couldn’t tell you which bands were popular in my youth. When I look back on the “good old days”, there’s not a musical soundtrack; but what there IS is comedy. I never realized it, but for me, comedy filled the place where music seems to go for everyone else.
There were the Bill Cosby records my parents had - the only records in their collection I ever listened to, and I just about wore them out. There was that great day when I first saw Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Tom Lehrer. Weird Al. Dr. Demento - it was on every Sunday night at 10, and I’d stay up past my bedtime to secretly listen to it in bed, and nearly always fell asleep before it was over. Later, I began to tape the songs I liked off the show so I could always have them. The first album I ever purchase was Monty Python’s Contractual Obligation Album.
Later, there were the British comedies on PBS. I realize now how weak Are You Being Served? was, but I could still recite just about every episode. Saturdays were Red Dwarf and Black Adder. There was this sense of identity, of knowing something other people didn’t, because I was into these comedy shows that not a single other person I knew had even heard of.
I realize now that most kids were doing the same thing with music - establishing an identity, joining a group, whatever. I just never really fully made that connection.
I’m not sure what my point is - just something on my mind lately.
That’s interesting. Would you say that you have a lower-than-average ability to, say, carry a tune, or discern the sounds of instruments, tell major from minor keys, those sorts of things?
**JKellyMap **asks a good question - if you honestly just don’t “get” music, you might have amusia. Congenital amusia affects around 4% of the population.
I think that “comedy was my music” at least sort of applies to me as well. And for the record, I’m confident that I can sing better than 90% of the population (and I’m confident that several of my voice teachers agree with me on this).
To me, music is more like window dressing. It’s aesthetically pleasing, and it can enhance other works of art (e.g. the score of a film), but as a stand-alone art form it doesn’t really have enough going on to hold my interest (unless I’m the one singing). Most of the music I like is either musical comedy (Tim Minchin, Flight of the Conchords, Tom Lehrer, and so on) or something that’s fun to sing.
On the other hand, I’ll happily sit and watch stand-up comedy, sketch comedy, or sitcoms for hours.
You can do both. I did. I did a lot of the same stuff as the OP and also was very in to music. In college I sort of switched more heavily to comedy, then back to music, and am swinging back to comedy again now.
But the OP is talking about his own experience, so that’s why not both.
Not really. I was in the orchestra in high school (at my parents’ insistence I do something non-acadmeic), and while I was far from great, I could pull my weight. I really quite enjoyed it, to be honest. The pieces I played myself are among the few classical works that I still enjoy and occasionally listen to.
Not entirely, but note that in the early 60s, at least three comedy albums hit #1 on the album charts: The Button Down Mind of Bob Newhart, The First Family, and My Son the Folksinger (songs, but comedy songs). It wasn’t unusual to play comedy albums at parties instead of music.
I grew up on comedy albums and Broadway music. In college, I was just as likely to listen to the Firesign Theater as I would music.
Okay, thanks. I think (no stats to back up my hunch) this makes you even more unusual, then – a lack of interest in music (especially, in “what’s happening nowadays in the world of music”), but no amusia.
If you could find a few others like you (yet each with his/her own quirks), you might have the makings of a “Radiolab” episode! (You probably enjoy talk-heavy, well made radio programs.)
Oh, and “Contractual Obligation” has an unusual number of songs for a comedy album (Graham Chapman and Terry Jones pointed this out in an interview from when the album came out in the 70s). So, it’s interesting you loved it so much, but didn’t see it (half if it, anyway) as “music.” (True, “I Like Traffic Lights” is hardly great songwriting per se…but it is music.)
Do you, by chance, enjoy comedic music such as Weird Al? Someone else mentioned Allan Sherman. Or, some Prairie Home Companion musical sketches, back when they were funny. Or maybe Adam Sandler’s songs?