Saturday, May 09, 2015

Barry Cryer: "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick" sung to "Girl from Ipanema"

Imagine singing the lyrics of one famous song…to the music of another.

That's one of the familiar stunts on the long running (since 1972) radio series "Sorry, I Haven't a Clue," which bills itself as "the antidote to panel games."

Below, it's Ian Dury's "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick" mated to Astrud Gilberto's "Girl from Ipanema." And the singer…legendary British comedian Barry Cryer.

Don't worry, it'll all be over in just one minute. This is not a 45 rpm, but a radio moment digitized especially for the blog and your entertainment. Or confusion.

The show's stunts, musical friskiness, wordplay and mockery of popular book and film titles are all scripted in advance, of course, for each six-episode season. The segment where the stars sing lyrics over totally different music has been such a popular category, the studio audience greets the start with a half-hearted cry of "Yaayyyy." That cry is repeated for other gruesome comic tricks. These include accompanying a song with a kazoo and a slide whistle, or the "game" of singing to a track, then lowering the sound and seeing, 20 or 30 seconds later, if the karaoke singer will still be matched to the music when the sound is brought back up. Are we having fun yet? That's why samples of those two bits aren't included here.

Cryer, as you can guess from the photo, is one of the veterans, along with Tim Brooke-Taylor and Graeme Garden. They were involved in the earlier radio series "I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again."

For some anti-Nazi fun, the show's theme song is "The Schickel Shamble," which starts with the familiarly ominous "Deutschland Uber Alles" chords before degenerating into a nauseating oom-pah band piece. Requests for it will be ignored. Because I don't have it.

PS, apparently "Deutschland Uber Alles" is nearly-banned in Germany. At least, it would be very unlikely that you'd hear those infamous Nazi-linked opening 8 notes should a German win an Olympic event or enter the ring or a boxing match. The "German National Anthem" these days, so I was told, borrows from the obscure third verse. Which I guess would be like, if Americans had lost the war, "Oh say can you see by the dawn's early light" being eliminated. Or something like that. But I digress…

So, HIT ME…

Hit Me To the Tune of Girl from Ipanema Barry Cryer

Instant download or listen on line. No moron's name for a Password. No link using a stinking Kim Dotcom Mega turd "cloud" that wants you to buy a premium membership.

2 comments:

Brian Prebble said...

This cheered me up a bit due to it's absurd nature and hearing those lyrics paired with that tune. It actually works quite well.

Barry Cryer's one of those odd guys that's been around a long time... never really a major name but has played quite a part in British comedy circles over the last 55 years or so largely as a writer. Yet he tried to be a pop singer as a trio of singles on Fontana in 1958 and 1959 demonstrates to... well... ghastly effect. Just listening to his cover of "Purple People Eater" and it's bloody awful. His attempt to sing something more serious "Angelina" is just as ghastly and unconvincing!

The British public agreed - they didn't buy them and on those grounds today, why isn't he now Prime Minister instead of Herr Cameron since 64% of Brits didn't vote for him? ;)

(Jeez... just had to pick two pictures of a Burrito to prove I'm not a robot... Google sure have some strange ideas... Hans would had been baffled wondering where Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman were!)

Ill Folks said...

Thanks for the info...and for reminding me about Barry's "Purple People Eater" (which I just posted for all to, ah, enjoy.) You've inspired me. Mostly because it gave me a chance to mess with Barry's face and make it an "ill-ustrated" entry. Maybe I could do that with "Angelina" sometime. Gad.

Yes, I get this "I'm not a robot" captcha thing even when responding to posts on my own blog. I wonder if they have custom-ones: "I'm not a fat useless Dutch Douche," or "I'm not about to write stupid shit about walking my dog Muffin."