Not-So-Great Snakes

MONTY PYTHON'S NEW album has three Side Twos and that's a hint that it's not one of their masterpieces. They advertise it as a "free record" you get for buying a "matching tie and handkerchief," which turns out to be a large piece of colored paper with a picture of what looks like John Mitchell strangled in his own tie. That's another hint.

Monty Python's Flying Circus started on a comedy show on BBC-TV and have begun recording their material only in the last two years. Their first two records, "Another Monty Python Record," and "Monty Python's Previous Record" contained now-classic routines like "Spam," "The Death of Mary Queen of Scots," "The Spanish Inquisition," "The Argument Clinic," and "Eric the Halfabee," but there's nothing like that on this album. The best scene is an Oscar Wilde party where each guest insults the Prince of Wales and then claims someone else made the remark. "Your majesty is like a stream of bat piss," James MacNeill Whistler comments, and Wilde is forced to explain: "I simply meant, your majesty, that when all is dark, you shine out like a shaft of gold." And the Monty Python stand-by of snappy answers to stupid questions is still occasionally successful. A customer in a cheese store asks without success for every variety of cheese you or your cow ever heard of, until he bursts out: "Do you really have any cheese at all?" "No," the proprietor answers with a smile, "I was deliberately trying to waste your time, sir."

Long stretches of the album are really bad. The ideas must have sounded good on the drawing board, but they come off as silly and boring when performed. Professors sing lectures on medieval agrarian history against a background of rock music; a panel of experts is asked, "What changes would you make if you were Hitler?"; and a pet shop specializes in turning dogs into cats, fish and parakeets with just a little scissors-and-paste.

If the content of the album isn't up to Monty Python's usual standards, the packaging is even better than the cover of the first album--which was an actual jacket for Beethoven's Seventh with the Brueghel print scratched out in black crayon and "Monty Python" scrawled across it. There really are two Side Twos on the second side of this new album, and you have to drop your needle down a few times at random to discover them. Once you've figured this out, though, the thrill is gone forever.