Transportation Is a Big Responsibility

Unknown show, taped from radio.

Enjoy!

-R

From The King Biscuit Flour Hour, taped from radio.

Enjoy!

-R

Side One:

Side Two:

1. Batman Theme
2. The Strider Brothers

Side One:

1. Secret Affair – Only Madmen Laugh
2. The Ruts – West One Shine on Me
3. Ultravox – Sleepwalk
4. Overtones – Calhoun Surf (Twin/Tone)
5. David Byrne – Under Heavy Manners
6. Killing Joke – Requiem
7. Rockpile – Heart
8. Rockpile – When I Wrote the Book
9. Liliput – Split
10. Dislocation Dance – It’s So Difficult

Side Two:

1. Yoko Ono – Kiss Kiss Kiss
2. The Slits –
3. Gen X – Dance with Myself
4. Pauline Murray & the Invisible Girls – Mr. X
5. The Revillos -Secret of the Shadow
6. The Revillos – Rev Up
7. The Gentrys – Keep on Dancin’
8. The Modettes – Fandango
9. Gruppo Sportivo – Girls Never Kno
10. The Revillos – Rockaboom
11. The Ventures – 007-11
12. Blondie – Little Girl Lies

Enjoy!

-R

Side One:

1. B-52’s – 53 Miles West of Venus
2. Magazine – Sweetheart Contract
3. Herman’s Hermits – No Milk Today
4. The Distractions – Dream
5. Dangerous Girls – Don’t Wait to Eat
6. Kate Bush – Babooshka
7. The Fleshtones – Shadow Line
8. Madness – Baggy Trousers
9. David Bowie – Ragazzo Solo, Ragazza Sola

Side Two:

• The Fleshtones – Shadow Line
• Code Blue – Paint by Numbers
• Young Marble Giants – Cake Walking
• The Flamin’ O’s – Every Day
• Ultravox – Western Promise
• The Outcasts – School Teacher
• Iggy Pop – I’m Bored
• Rich Rebarber [Madison artist] – Teenage Lament
• The Cure – Saturday Night

Enjoy!

-R

Side One:

1. Bad Manners – Lip Up Fatty
2. Androids of Mu – Bored Housewives
3. Sandy Posey – Born a Woman
4. Nick Lowe – Born a Woman
5. Nina Hagen – [Indescribably Feminine]
6. The Ramones – I’m Affected
7. The Sound – I Can’t Escape Myself
8. The Comsat Angels – Monkey Pilot
9. Bauhaus – Saint Vitus Dance

Side Two (live stuff):

• Rod Stewart – You’re in My Heart
• Dolly Parton – Here You Come Again (The Tonight Show)
• Dolly Parton – Two Doors Down (The Tonight Show)
• Elvis Costello – Radio Radio (Saturday Night Live)
• Meatloaf – All Revved Up with No Place to Go
• Meatloaf – Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad
• Talking Heads – Take Me to the River (Saturday Night Live)
• Talking Heads – Artists Only (Saturday Night Live)

Enjoy!

-R

“The Onion Brothers at College?” That sounds like a really bad movie, but unfortunately, it’s true.

It seems that a fan of the New Comedy Wave had seen the Onion Brothers’ one-time only performance at the Jewish Clockworkers’ Association Annual Ball and recommended them to one of his professors at the Comedy College of New Rochelle, NY. “Comedy College” sounds even crazier, but google it if you don’t believe it!

Unfortunately, there are no video or audio recordings of the symposium they did at CC, just mimeographed notes that were handed out to the students beforehand. So this is a recreation, based on literally hours of research, from the notes and recollections of the student audience, many of whom had to be reminded that they were there.

Karl walked on stage, dressed only in lederhosen. He placed a flip chart on the provided stand. “Comedy is like an onion. On the outside of an onion is a paper-like skin.” (at which point he used his pointer and tapped dramatically at the first, blank page of the flip chart.)

Karl: “But peel back that skin, and what do you find?”

At this point he ripped off the first page of the flip chart and flung it behind him.

“More paper.”

“But then you dig deeper.”

Then, faster and faster, and more and more frantically, he tore off each sheet from the flip chart, throwing them all over the stage.

When he got to the back of the flip chart he stopped.

“Just when you think you’ve gotten to the root of comedy…………..”

He loosened the belt of his lederhosen, and they dropped to his ankles.

He wasn’t wearing underwear.

Now the students started to a laugh. A chuckle here, a chuckle there. Then a more general wave of laughter, as Karl walked off the stage.

From the mimeographed notes: “If you chop an onion into small pieces, it will make you cry. If you chop your life into small pieces, that will make you cry too.”

“Comedy, like root vegetables, is sweeter in the winter.”

-R

They were only on TV once, but the performance (a solo by Karl) is legendary, and did as much as other appearances to solidify their reputation as forward-looking comic geniuses.

All three Onion Brothers grew up in central Wisconsin, isolated from external influences that would have perverted the development of their ground-breaking, radical humor, in a small town where there was no TV studio — but some 16 miles away is the town of Marshfield (so named because it’s located in a field between Weedy Marsh and Bubbly Marsh), which did have a TV station.

Remember, this was in the 1970’s, and back then, some TV stations only broadcast a few hours a day. Such was MFTV, with their most (and to be perfectly honest, only) popular show “The Morning Marsh” and their unforgettable tag line “We’re Marshing Towards Entertainment for You!”

The circumstances are unclear, but as legend has it, Karl’s 18-y.o. uncle, younger than he was, was shtupping the hostess of “The Morning Marsh” and promised her that Karl was a great cook and would do a great cooking segment. She didn’t believe that a boy could cook, but somehow Rob convinced her.

Karl, dressed in a conservative blue suit and bowtie, lugged a blender onto the picnic table that served center stage for the cooking segments. “Is there an outlet for my creativity?” he asked, and when no one responded, found an outlet and plugged the blender in.

After the on-camera introductions, Marylou, the hostess, seemed a little flustered, but winked at him and said, “I hear you’re quite a good cook for a boy. What are you going to prepare for us today?”

Karl: “The death of bourgeois humor.”

Marylou, more flustered: “Ah? … ? ……..Should I chop some parsley?”

Karl didn’t respond, and instead took a large onion, placed it in the blender, and started the blender on “puree.”. I think there must have been a technical glitch, because the camera stayed on the blender for like a minute, only briefly cutting away to Marylou.

Then Karl took the blender and downed its contents in a very long gulp, and started retching.

This time the cameraman was on his toes and cut away to a shot of Marylou.

Legend has it that Karl continued to puke for several minutes after having been carried off stage, all the while muttering “Bob Hope, Bob Hope.”

-R

Shortly before the U.S. joined WWII, the Onion Brothers were given their travel orders (Destination: Europe) with their new assignments (“Entertainment of foreign troops.”)

At this point in time, the USO was very strict about travel orders, so despite the fact that someone by the name of “Colonel Pussy” had struck out “Europe” and replaced it with “anywhere but here,” they found themselves cantonned in the small town of Trou-de-ma-Mer on the Brittany Coast.

And what a show they put on! It’s thanks to a young theater enthusiast that their performance was preserved on 16mm film. And what a performance it was…it has gone down in famy and has been cited by many comic luminaries.

From the viewpoint of the 21st century, their performance seems crude. But keep in mind that during WW2, there was no gas for the gaslights, and stages had been systematically disassembled, plank by plank, and shipped off so French soldiers could use them as weapons.

The Onion Brothers’ performance began with Karl walking to the center of the stage, where he stood for a good two minutes, until the crowd hushed down.

“You want magic?” he asked, flourishing a wand brought out from his right sleeve. “Then so you shall have!!!”

By some unknown effect, images of the dead from WW1 began to appear behind him on the screen, and at the same time, from his wand appeared a banner, “Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it.”

Unfortunately, the German translator had made a mistake, and what the banner actually said was “Those who forget history are condemned to be jelly doughnuts.”

Luckily they were in France so no one noticed.

This is the only one of the pre-WW2 Onion Brothers’ performances that has survived until present.

-R

So this seems unlikely, but the Onion Brothers almost had a cookbook published, and it involves some Eastern European communist intrigue!

Well, sort of. One of the brothers knew someone who had a cousin in Berlin. This was back in ’88, shortly before the Berlin Wall came down.

Their cousin worked for the East German Food Publishing Concern (Die OestenDeutschenEssenWieSoPublizionenGezellSchaft or ODPGS), who were doing a series of vegetable cookbooks, but were running out of titles. When she heard the name ZwiebelBrueder (Onion Brothers), she was hooked!

So the Onion Brothers provided her with a lot of recipes, most of which she rejected as being impractical (“1. Kill a goose. 2. Reject bourgeois humor. 3. Sauté one tablespoon of chopped onion in a spoonful of the goose fat….”).

But then the Wall came down, and several months later, the successors of ODPGS, The New East German Food Publishing Concern (Die NeueOestenDeutschenEssenWieSoPublizionenKonzern) or NODPK, cancelled the cookbook. Only a few test editions survive. Some of these have the original illustrations, but most don’t.

And just as Communism was defeated, many of the Onion Brothers’ best recipes were lost. Here is one you might want to try:

BAKED SWEET ONIONS

Ingredients:
4 large sweet onions
Salt and pepper to taste
4 teaspoons butter

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 250 degrees F. Place onions into a baking dish with approximately 1 inch of water. Bake, uncovered, 2 hours or until onions are soft when you squeeze them.

Remove from oven and place onto a cutting board; pull back brown skins and cut them off at the roots. Transfer onto a serving platter and season each with salt, pepper and 1 teaspoon butter.

Makes 4 servings.

-R