This week on A Prairie Home Companion, it's our annual joke show, jokes like Martha Stewart's new recipe for tuna casserole. It serves six to eight.
Single women are skinnier. Why? Because they come home, they see what's in the fridge, they go to bed.
Married women come home, they see what's in the bed, they go to the fridge.
Women use twice as many words every day as men do. Why? Because they have to repeat everything.
Those jokes and more this week on A Prairie Home Companion.
Saturday night at six on WUGA.
And now, Shickly Mix. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Shickley.
Wait a minute, wait a minute. I've got the wrong fader up here. Okay, here we go. Here's the theme.
Hello there, I'm Peter Shickley and this is Shickley Mix, a program dedicated to the proposition that all musics are created equal.
Or as Duke Ellington put it, if it sounds good, it is good.
And how good it is to acknowledge the fact that our bills are paid by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,
by the National Endowment for the Arts, and by this noble radio station whose commitment to excellence is firm,
yet flexible enough to accommodate me in one of its studios.
Long enough to produce this high aiming, yet charmingly vernacular slice of edutainment,
which is then distributed into the wild blue yonder by PRI, Public Radio International.
You know how employees often buy or make funny signs and hang them on their walls?
Certainly one of the classics is the cartoon you often see in copy centers.
It shows the staff rolling on the floor with laughter and it says, you want it when?
Well, another sign you see a lot says, we never make mistakes.
And mistakes is spelled M-I-S-T-E-A-K-S.
And that's the name of today's show, We Never Make Mistakes.
I know it's not such a great radio title because, you know, you can't see how the word is spelled over the radio.
But trust me, right here on this log, it's M-I-S-T-E-A-K-S.
What we're going to do is, we're going to check out some musical goofs,
ranging from the barely noticeable to the well-nigh incredible.
A few years ago, my son and I were wondering what the chord changes were
in the bridge of one of the early Beatles songs.
I can't remember why, but we got out the recording and listening very closely,
we discovered that R. Paulie plays the wrong bass note at one point.
I think the bridge happens twice and he does it correctly one time,
but the other time he plays a note that isn't in the chord and it's obvious that he didn't mean it.
You know, back at the beginning there, the Beatles would record a whole album in a couple of days.
But the point is that I had never noticed it before.
I suppose I might have thought that it sounded a bit muddy there or something.
Here's another example of what I'm sure was a slip-up,
but I'll bet almost nobody ever notices it.
This is the beginning of one of my favorite songs,
Nashville Cats by the Lovin' Spoonful.
It starts with the refrain.
Nashville cats play clean as country water Nashville cats play wild as Mountain Dew
Nashville cats been playin' since these babies
Nashville cats get work before they're two elders
Okay, now let's hear that refrain again,
and this time notice that the drummer stops for a beat at the end of each phrase.
On the words water, dew, babies, and two, he interrupts the rhythm and then continues.
Nashville cats play clean as country water Nashville cats play wild as Mountain Dew
Nashville cats been playin' since these babies
Nashville cats get work before they're two elders
Okay, that's the first time the refrain occurs.
Now here's the third time it occurs.
Same thing, the drummer stops at the end of each phrase.
And Nashville cats play clean as country water Nashville cats play wild as Mountain Dew
Nashville cats been playin' since these babies
Nashville cats get work before they're two pickets
Okay, now here's the second time the refrain occurs,
and this time the drummer forgets.
He plays right through the end of the first phrase and then he remembers
and does it right on the other three phrases.
Watch out, Mr. Drummer, you're on candid microphone.
And it was Nashville cats play clean as country water
Nashville cats play wild as Mountain Dew
Nashville cats been playin' since these babies
Nashville cats get work before they're two elders
Now that has got to be a goof.
You can't tell me that when they were working on that song in the studio,
somebody said, hey, I've got a great idea.
Out of the 12 times that thing happens in the song,
let's have the drums not stop just on the fifth time but do it on all the others.
Okay, so if I'm right, why did they leave it?
Were they out of recording time or nobody noticed or maybe they did notice but didn't care?
The Lovin' Spoonful played a real laid-back, good-timey kind of music,
and hey, as the saying goes, consistency is the hemoglobin of small minds.
Like I said, it's one of my favorite songs and I'll bet I heard it at least 50 times
before I ever noticed that little percussional lacuna.
Or actually it's the opposite of a lacuna.
A lacuna is a gap and the drummer was supposed to leave a gap but he didn't.
So it's more like an anti-lacuna, as in anti-matter or anti-pope or anti-mame.
Oh, alright, alright, there goes the irrelevancy alarm.
Can't even have a little fun around here.
Anyway, the bottom line is that it's a great cut.
Even if I'm right, that for a moment there the drummer fell asleep at the sticks, as it were.
Does it lessen your enjoyment of the song? Not mine.
Nashville cats play clean as country water
Nashville cats play wild as Mountain Dew
Nashville cats been playing since these babies
Nashville cats get work before they're two
There's 1352 guitar pickers in Nashville
And they can pick more notes than the number of ants on the Tennessee anthill
Yeah, there's 1352 guitar cases in Nashville
And anyone that unpacks his guitar can play twice as better than I will
Yes, I was just 13, you might say I was a musical proverbial knee high
When I heard a couple new sounding tunes on the tubes and they blasted me sky high
And the record man said everyone is a yellow sun record from Nashville
And up north here ain't nobody buys them, and I said but I will
And it was Nashville cats play clean as country water
Nashville cats play wild as Mountain Dew
Nashville cats been playing since these babies
Nashville cats get work before they're two
There's 16821 mothers from Nashville
All their friends play music and they ain't uptight if one of the kids will
Because it's custom made for any mother's son to be a guitar picker in Nashville
And I sure am glad I got a chance to say a word about the music and the mothers from Nashville
And Nashville cats play clean as country water
Nashville cats play wild as Mountain Dew
Nashville cats been playing since these babies
Nashville cats get work before they're two pickers
Nashville cats by the Lovin' Spoonful
You know I usually run into John Sebastian a couple times a year. I'm going to try to remember to ask him about that next time.
Here's another even more minute slip-up that I find quite endearing.
First let me play you the refrain of an old-fashioned song.
It's a little different from the old-fashioned song.
Here's another minute slip-up that I find quite endearing.
First let me play you the refrain of a song called Rainmaker done by members of the Solstice Assembly.
Notice that they sing the refrain twice.
Rainmaker, rainmaker, land is parched and dry
Rainmaker, rainmaker, make a rainfall from the sky
Rainmaker, rainmaker, crops are gonna die
Rainmaker, rainmaker, make the heavens cry
Some say I work miracles, some say I'm just insane
Okay, now here's that refrain later in the cut.
This time the guy singing bottom harmony forgets that they repeat the refrain.
So he's missing at the top of the repeat.
He comes in on the err of Rainmaker.
Listen to the guy on the bottom.
Rainmaker, rainmaker, land is parched and dry
Rainmaker, rainmaker, make a rainfall from the sky
Rainmaker, rainmaker, crops are gonna die
Rainmaker, rainmaker, make the heavens cry
Rainmaker, rainmaker, let the moon rise
What I love about that, and the reason I'm glad they left it in,
is that we've all been to concerts that feature harmony singing,
and the performers sort of wander around when they're not singing,
you know, particularly if they play the guitar or something like that.
And every once in a while, one of them all of a sudden goes like,
oops, and has to rush over to the mic, getting there just in time,
or maybe even two syllables late.
Let's hear the whole song.
Rainmaker, rainmaker, land is parched and dry
Rainmaker, rainmaker, make a rainfall from the sky
Rainmaker, rainmaker, crops are gonna die
Rainmaker, rainmaker, make the heavens cry
Rainmaker, rainmaker, try to make your living making it rain
You gotta put on a real good show, tell the people anything
You gotta get the Lord's attention any old way you can
Maybe His show a little mercy and start crying for the land
Rainmaker, rainmaker, land is parched and dry
Rainmaker, rainmaker, make a rainfall from the sky
Rainmaker, rainmaker, crops are gonna die
Rainmaker, rainmaker, make the heavens cry
Some say I work miracles, some say I'm just insane
Many a time I've lived my life, I could make it rain
One time I had a whole town beating drums and singing through the night
And we watched the morning sun come up without a rain cloud inside
I knew if I didn't make some weather and see them storm clouds gather
I'd be running out of town when the sun went down, covered up with tar and feather
Well I was on my knees and I raised my hands to the heavens high
I felt the rain like a sigh of relief coming pouring from the sky
Rainmaker, rainmaker, land is parched and dry
Rainmaker, rainmaker, make a rainfall from the sky
Rainmaker, rainmaker, crops are gonna die
Rainmaker, rainmaker, make the heavens cry
Let the cool little rain fall on down
Sometimes I don't know if it's a blessing or a curse
Too little rain's just not enough, too much just makes things worse
Well the good Lord promised me a miracle in this life with only one condition
He said take your money, get out of town and don't try and start another religion
Hey, hey, rainmaker, rainmaker, land is parched and dry
Rainmaker, rainmaker, make a rainfall from the sky
Hey, hey, rainmaker, rainmaker, crops are gonna die
Rainmaker, rainmaker, make the heavens cry
Rainmaker, rainmaker, rainmaker
I bet you guessed the name of that song. Rainmaker, performed by Ed Norman, John Newland, and Mona Scheiber,
members of the Solstice Assembly.
Now you may think that I'm nitpicking in pointing out these little mistakes, and of course I am.
But I hope I've made it clear that I'm not necessarily being critical.
All I'm saying is, even on recordings, you know, everybody thinks,
hey, they can edit so much on studio recordings that people can sound better or at least more consistent than they do live.
And it's true, especially something like a really out-of-tune note. They'd never want to leave that on a recording
because it would make you cringe to hear it.
But things do occasionally slip by, record makers.
It's particularly tricky with classical music, because no matter how much liberty a performer may take with rhythm,
and that's usually expected, nobody wants a piece to sound like a sewing machine,
the notes themselves are supposed to be what's on the paper, what's written in the score.
I know, sometimes soloists are expected to do some ornamentation,
but in general, you're supposed to play it like it's writ.
Here's part of the Spanish dance from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite.
This is Anserme and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande.
Sounds nice. But if you know the Nutcracker very well, you will have noticed that something's missing.
Here's another recording, Ashkenazi with the Royal Philharmonic, and I'm going to count out the measures.
I'll say one, two, three, and where I would say four, you'll hear the oboes go...
And then I'll say one, two, three...
Then both phrases repeat, although the orchestration makes it a bit harder to hear the oboes.
OK, now concentrate on those low oboes.
The first entrance is on the downbeat of the fourth bar, and the second is right after the downbeat of the third bar.
One, two, three...
Alright, now let's go back to the Anserme recording.
I'll count it out again, but you won't hear any oboes in that fourth bar, because they've miscounted their rests,
and when they do come in, they're a bar late, and they stay that way throughout the whole passage.
Now I'm going to only count the one, two, three bars the first time now, and if you listen carefully, you can hear those oboes being a bar late.
One, two, three...
If you don't know the piece that well, and I certainly wouldn't have noticed it if it hadn't been pointed out to me,
the mistake doesn't stand out, because as it happens, the notes the oboes play still fit in the harmony, even a bar later.
And also, the oboes in the Anserme recording aren't as present anyway, they're not as loud, so you don't notice it as much.
But it is surprising, not only that the goof wasn't caught, but also that it happened in such a warhorse,
a piece that you'd think the members of the orchestra had played a million times.
But here's a truly astounding one that got away.
This is part of a Beauchamp recording of Ein Heldenleben by Richard Strauss.
First we'll hear the CD reissue. Notice especially how the whole orchestra cuts off together at the exciting climax.
This is the first piece of the Ein Heldenleben recording.
The last piece of the Ein Heldenleben recording is the second piece of the Ein Heldenleben recording.
From A Hero's Life by Strauss on a CD reissue.
Now, let's listen to the same performance, the same place, the same performance, by Beauchamp and the Royal Philharmonic on the original LP issue.
The upper strings get a measure off early in the excerpt, resulting in some orchestration that is very thick even by Straussian standards,
and some very strange imitative writing, and some harmonies that seem decades ahead of their time.
And when it comes to the climactic cutoff, remember when the whole orchestra stops together?
The violins and violas saw away for a full measure after everybody else has stopped.
And this was released.
Now, let's listen to the Ein Heldenleben recording.
Oops!
Beauchamp and the Royal Philharmonic playing part of Strauss's Ein Heldenleben.
The one we just heard was the original LP, on which I assume some tape editor used the wrong take.
It's hard to imagine that being the only take.
Then when it was released on CD, they fixed it up.
Either they went back and used the proper take for that section, or who knows?
Certainly not me.
I'm Peter Shickely, and this show is Shickely Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
Now me, of course, I never make mistakes.
But when I do, I'm glad there are good tape editors around.
Mixing can be the performer's safety net, but as we've seen, it can also be the performer's nemesis.
I'm going to play two recordings of the prelude to Wagner's Tristan and Isolde.
This begins with one of the most famous phrases in 19th century music,
followed by a modified repetition a step higher.
I'll play both right from the top.
Here we go. First, a CD with Isolde in the Chicago.
Here we go.
And now, an LP of Reiner and the Chicago.
That's right. The whole first phrase is missing on the Reiner recording.
It's just not there.
Now there's no way that could have been Reiner's fault.
He didn't stand up there on the podium and say,
Listen gentlemen, these beginning phrases are so similar.
Let's just leave the first one out.
Here we go. Pick up to the fifth bar.
My theory is that in this piece, the rest, the silence,
between the first and second phrases is so long
that somebody who was working on the tape, perhaps the editor for instance,
got done with his work, rewound the tape with the gate half closed,
heard that silence, stopped the tape, put some leader on it and sent it off.
Still, it should have been caught somewhere down the line.
You know, if you listened to that opening with the volume way up,
I'll bet you could hear the sound of heads rolling.
Sometimes a performance is released that is so abysmally bad
that you have to wonder, did they only have time to do one take?
Or did the conductor feel that the orchestra had already reached the apogee of its abilities
and that a good performance, even a competent performance,
was a chimera that it would be fruitless, if not reckless, to pursue?
The Saber Dance by Katchaturian features an infamous tune
with a fast oompa, oompa, oompa, oompa, oompa accompaniment.
Now oompas are easy to do on the piano.
The left hand does the ooms and the right hand does the paws, oompa, oompa, oompa.
But in an orchestra it's usually split up with some instruments doing the ooms,
oomp, oomp, oomp, oomp, and the others doing the paws,
one, two, three, four, oompa, pa, pa, pa, pa, pa, pa,
which at fast tempos are much harder to play by themselves.
What happens in this performance is, well, it's sort of like a Steve Rice Shifting Phase piece.
The paws get closer and closer to the ooms until they're almost simultaneous.
And then, twice during the piece, there's this sort of lurch,
a sort of desperate gear shift as the orchestra tries to get back on track.
If you were going to do a car movie performance analogy,
it would be Edsel, Plan 9 from Outer Space, and this rendition of the Saber Dance.
The Saber Dance from the Ga�na Ballet Suite No. 2 by Katchaturian,
played by an orchestra under the baton of a conductor.
I'll withhold names to protect the guilty.
But hey, everybody makes the occasional mistake.
And the next one I'm going to trot out involves one of my favorite singers, John Ferrante.
He performed in PDQ Bach concerts for 20 years
and defined the sound of PDQ Bach's preferred vocal type, the Bargain Countertenor.
John is now in that great choir in the sky, but I can't resist telling a story on him,
even though he's not around to get back at me.
The second PDQ Bach album was recorded live in Carnegie Hall,
and just one performance was recorded, so there were no alternate takes available.
On one of the recitatives in the grand oratorio The Seasonings,
John's voice unexpectedly cracked on the word soothsayer.
And there were in the same country Shepherds pies
That lacked but one ingredient
And so the shepherd's chef sought out a soothsayer saying
Soothsayer, say unto me the soothsayer
Soothsayer
Now, every time I heard John Ferrante sing The Seasonings after that,
he cracked his voice at the same spot.
This artistic decision had a double benefit.
It got a laugh, and it made people who knew the recording
assume that he'd always done it on purpose.
Now, what about leaving imperfections on recordings?
It's not as easy an issue to decide as you might think.
If The Seasonings weren't comedy,
John would have been understandably distraught
at the lack of an opportunity to correct that place.
Extensive editing may lead to performances that are,
probably for most performers, unnaturally perfect,
and yet to leave major boo-boos in is not exactly honest either,
in this sense.
I used to have an old recording of the violist William Primrose
playing the Brahms E-flat major sonata,
and there was one glaringly out-of-tune note in it.
Now, if I listened to that recording 25 times,
that note was out of tune every single time.
But if I had gone to hear Primrose play that piece in concert 25 times,
it might have happened only once.
Of course, other things might have happened in other places,
but it's not unreasonable to want a recording
to represent the best you could ever perform the piece,
technically speaking.
I find myself reminded of A Hard Day's Night,
the Beatles' first movie.
In these days of grunge rock, it's easy to forget
that one of the things that made the Beatles so refreshing
was that they hadn't had their teeth capped.
They looked like real people.
Now, it was great that they didn't Hollywoodize themselves,
dentally wise speaking, but I think it's a safe bet
that if, on one of the days of shooting that movie,
John had shown up on the set with a huge pimple on his nose,
a pimple he didn't, after all, usually have,
he wouldn't have said no to a bit of makeup.
That has got to be one of the greatest analogies
in the history of musicology.
John Kirkpatrick once wrote about the Scarlatti harpsichord sonatas
with the incredibly virtuosic hand crossings.
He said that the sense of danger and effort
was an important part of the pieces, which it certainly is,
and that when he occasionally did a performance
in which he got every single one of those notes,
he felt a bit of a letdown.
Well, that may be true, but on the recordings I've heard
of Kirkpatrick playing Scarlatti, all the notes are right.
It is easier to accept mistakes, that is, to get used to them,
on live recordings where the audience is audibly present
than on studio recordings.
For tidbit time today, I've got an old recording fragment
that might be called A Singer's Worst Nightmare.
This serious rendition of an aria from La Boheme
has been circulating underground for years.
Several people have played it to me, and none of them knows who it is.
Though I know nothing of the provenance of this gem,
I'm convinced that it was not done for comedic purposes,
because I can't imagine any real singer
doing what you are about to hear to his voice.
This must be from the 1920s, anyway.
We're talking basement fidelity here, but be patient.
SINGING
A vocal train wreck of mythic proportions.
This can happen, you know, even to decent singers.
I've heard a more recent example that took place on a broadcast
from a major American opera house.
It has to do with going for it, I think,
like it's no accident that Babe Ruth, the king of home runs,
was also the king of strikeouts.
Maybe what I love best of all about this tape
is that the guy goes right on as if nothing has happened.
Let's hear it again, and I'll let it play a little bit farther this time.
SINGING
DRAMATIC MUSIC
Every time I hear that, it just, I mean, I dissolve, I fall apart.
And I think it's not only because it is so funny,
but also there's a nervousness, I think.
Any performer, I mean, that could be me.
I was climbing Tiwanot once,
one of the mountains in the Tetons in Wyoming with my father.
And I was above him, and he was on the rope.
I was belaying him.
You know, his weight wasn't on the rope, it's just for safety.
He dropped his glasses, and they fell so that they were lodged on the rope,
sort of between the rope and his shirt.
And the only way he could grab the glasses was to let go of the rock.
In other words, I was going to be having his weight on the rope.
And I can remember, he told me that,
and we talked about how we were going to do it.
It wasn't his full weight, but some of his weight.
And I can remember, I started laughing.
And I felt so embarrassed and so sort of ashamed,
but it was obviously the laughter of nervousness.
That was an unknown but immortal singer
steering his voice unsuccessfully
through the perilous shoals of Puccini's La Boheme.
Even if I did know his name, I'd probably withhold it.
But I'm afraid the FCC won't let me get away with that
when it comes to the host of this program.
His name is Peter Schickeli,
and the show is Schickeli Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
The drama critic John Lahr has written,
Great comedy is cruel, and therefore is written by the young.
Well, I'm not sure that it's always cruel,
nor that youth has a monopoly on cruelty.
It certainly is true that most of us will laugh
at somebody slipping on a banana peel,
only if we know that he's not really hurt.
The Marquis de Sade may have tapped into a primal place
that sex and violence have in common,
but if you find his books in the library at all,
they're not going to be in the section
with Dave Barry and Irma Baumbach.
Let's face it, though, it is funny
to see somebody get things hopelessly bollocksed up.
This suite has three numbers in it.
I call it the, if at first you don't succeed,
fail-fail-again suite, and I guarantee
that it will be ten of the silliest minutes you've ever spent.
One of the flay rods has gone out of skew,
apparently, on the treadle.
What on earth does that mean?
I don't know. Mr. Wentworth told me to come and say
there was trouble at the mill, that's all.
I didn't expect a kind of Spanish inquisition.
No one expects a Spanish inquisition.
Our weapon is supplies, supplies and fear.
Fear and supply are two weapons.
Our fear and supplies and the ruthless efficiency
are three weapons.
Our fear and supplies and the ruthless efficiency
has an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.
Amongst our weapons, our fear, supplies,
amongst our weaponry are such elements as...
I'll come in again.
I didn't expect a kind of Spanish inquisition.
Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition.
Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as...
a fear, a supplies, a ruthless efficiency,
an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope
and a night out with the naval...
It's no good, I'm sorry.
Cardinal Biggles? You'll have to say it.
What?
You'll have to say our chief of weapons are...
Could I even say that?
I didn't expect a kind of Spanish inquisition.
Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition.
In fact, those who do expect our chief weapon is...
Our chief weapon is...
...supplies and...
Stop, stop, stop there.
All right, all right.
Our chief weapon is supplies blah blah blah blah blah.
Now, Cardinal Fang, lead the charges.
One pound for a full sketch, 24p for a quickie.
What'll you have?
Sketch, please.
And the top of the morning to all of you out there
from all of us up here at WOOF, Hoople, North Dakota.
Now, I don't want to bore you with a lot of useless chitchat this morning
when I could be doing it with a lot of useless music,
so let's get started right away with some PDQ Bach.
And we like to do this number for Arthur and Bob and Cliff and David and Esther
and Fiona and Gerard and Herb and Irene and Josie and Catherine and Larry and Molly
and Norman and Olaf and Phil and Quentin and Ralph and Steve and Tom and Ursula
and Vince and Warren and Zeen and Yvonne and Zeke.
So let's listen now as we hear I virtuosi di Hoople
performing the echo sonata for two unfriendly groups of instruments by PDQ Bach.
Shickly number 9.
Excuse me, folks.
We seem to have the tape on backwards or something.
Let's give it another try.
All right, now we will hear the PDQ Bach echo sonata
for two unfriendly groups of instruments.
Well, that's better, but it still doesn't sound quite right.
Let's hear PDQ Bach's echo sonata for two unfriendly groups of instruments.
Well, folks, you have just heard PDQ.
Well, folks, I'm afraid the tape has broken on me here.
I'll have it fixed in just a jiffy.
This sure is a heck of a way to start the morning, isn't it?
Okay, now we're ready to hear PDQ Bach's echo sonata
for two unfriendly groups of instruments.
Hey, what's doing that?
What does that mean?
Maybe we need a station break in here.
Well, folks, we had a little trouble with one of our machines,
and the west wall has blown out,
so I think we'll have a word from our sponsor.
As the crowd roars to the center ring, steps our fractured baritone.
Are you in voice, Winstead?
I believe I am in voice.
Professor?
Oh, once I was wappy, once I was sappy, once I was sappy,
like an old goat.
Oh, no, not a goat.
That's an animal.
Like an old coat that is tornard and tat, teetered and tummed, tattered and tipped, tapped with a toupee, ripped.
Left in this wide world to sleep and to snore, to weep and to mourn,
be treed by a jade in her means.
No, be mean by a trade for some jeans.
I'll be jeaned by a teen with some jade.
I'll be treed by a maid in her teens.
Oh, he floats by his hair.
Oh, not by his hair.
That would hurt.
Speaking of hair, a man came up to me today and said,
Doodles, your hair is getting thinned.
And I said, well, who wants fat hair?
Tom Dankshiller.
He floats through the air with the latest of grease, with the latest of please, with plates full of cheese.
I don't know what the birds and the bees.
He can't miss.
The manny young bear, the daring young mare, he's not a horse.
That's silly.
He'd break his neck.
The fanny young bear, the danny young bear, he's an awful old ham.
He's a young fellow about my age.
You know, a funny thing happened.
A man came up to me and said, Doodles, did you leave home?
I said, I left home.
He said, did you put the cat out?
I said, I didn't know he was on fire.
I said, killer.
The daring young man on the flapping trapeze, a treasing try flaps, a trying flip flip,
a flipping tripe, a fapping tripe, a horizontal bar.
His grations are axial, no, his actions are horrible.
No, he's very good.
All girls heed the pleas.
But my wove, he hath lowness stay.
No, the doves and the hay loft away.
No, I'm on the road, the man away.
No, hey, hey, hey.
No, no.
Did you hear about the owl who married a goat?
They had a hoot nanny.
Ha, Dankshiller.
He's the man on the flying trapeze.
The if at first you don't succeed, fail, fail again suite.
Monty Python and the Spanish Inquisition.
The echo sonata for two unfriendly groups of instruments by P.D.Q. Bach.
And Doodles Weaver trying to make it through the man on the flying trapeze with the help of Spike Jones.
You know, sometimes when I wonder how anybody can be as silly as I am,
I listen to some of those old Spike Jones sides and look at some of those old 40s movies.
Those were silly times.
Doodles Weaver, you know, I mentioned on another edition of Shickly Mix,
and it was said sort of jokingly that Doodles Weaver was related to Sigourney Weaver,
but I think that's true. I think I read that someplace.
So Sigourney, if you're listening, please get in touch with me about that.
I'd be curious.
Meanwhile, you know, we've had a lot of short little snippets on this show,
ferreting out these stupid little mistakes that nobody would have noticed if I hadn't pointed them out.
So let's go out with a nice chunk here.
We heard a little bit of a nutcracker in one of the trickiest-to-hear mistakes before,
where you had to just really be able to zero in on those oboes.
Let's hear the waltz of the flowers to go out on. What do you say?
We'll hear that with the Ashkenazi version, Vladimir Ashkenazi conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
And that's Shickly Mix for this week.
Our program is made possible with funds provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,
by the National Endowment for the Arts, and by this radio station and its members.
Thank you, members.
And not only that, our program is distributed by PRI, Public Radio International.
And special thanks to Ken Jeane and Leslie Gerber for their recordings.
We'll tell you in a moment how you can get an official playlist of all the music on today's program,
with album numbers and everything.
Just refer to the program number. This is program number 113.
And this is Peter Shickly saying goodbye and reminding you that it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that certain je ne sais quoi.
You're looking good. See you next week.
Thank you.
If you'd like a copy of that playlist I mentioned, send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to Shickly Mix.
That's S-C-H-I-C-K-E-L-E, Shickly Mix.
Care of Public Radio International.
100 North 6th Street, Suite 900A, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55403.
PRI Public Radio International.