Happy Mondays: The Greatest Hits (4)

Toward the end of the eighties, the well-known British indie band, Happy Mondays, also added a keyboardist / multi-instrumentalist to their line-up, in the person of Bill Bailey. This, however, was not a very successful and long-lasting collaboration - mostly because it never happened.

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Bill Bailey did, however, happen  (and is still happening); and his keyboard/ guitar/ theremin/ glockenspiel ("Er spielt mit glocken!") skills are very real, as well. The reason why he merits the inclusion in this series of posts is twofold: his narrative comedic style, and his ability to find and to create humor in and through music.

On the first aspect, I would say that in Bailey's case we encounter a combination of attributes not unlike the one that we enjoyed in Dylan Moran's case - wit and intelligence, a fairly well-read and informed mind, and an artistic imagination that is able to roam freely, making connections on the fly, with a special propensity for the surreal and the paradoxical. It is especially this dimension of creativity - not being afraid to go wherever imagination and the feel for the comedic may take you - that sets his narrative comedy apart, and makes it interesting and (let's say) literate. Because, just like in Moran's case, what Bailey is doing is in fact "writing" - but, on the spot, with and for an audience, and through the means of orality. Stand-up comedians are, in fact, writers (most of them) - whether they pick up a pen or a laptop, or not.

The second aspect refers to the way in which Bill Bailey incorporates music as a comedic field, medium and instrument. This means finding the humorous (paradoxical, surprising, incongruous) within music itself, and also being able to express oneself comedically through music. But no, this does not mean some half-baked, three-cord "funny songs;" that would be appalling (unless, of course, it is intentionally stupid). Bill Bailey's musical knowledge and skills are in fact of quite a high level and wide ranging - style-wise, from classical to dub-step; and instrument-wise, from the keyboard to the (aforementioned) theremin (see his special, the Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra, which follows in the very noble and British tradition of Benjamin Britten's The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra) - which is why his "musical comedy" is also intelligent and interesting.

Now, "Bill Bailey" (which, of course, is not his real name, but a stage name inspired by that famous song) at times also brings other parts of his persona to his comedic work - the persona of the aged hippie, of the nature- and animal-lover (perhaps a bit too much so), of a spiritually interested (with the usual Eastern leanings) but now probably agnostic (or a-religious) bloke - all in all, with all the good and the bad (blind spots, prejudices, some cultural clichés) of his time (born in 1965) and of his place (Brit mainstream culture). But this is where a mature consumer of art should be able to make certain differentiations - between a person's high level artistry (in one domain), and the same person's less than impressive show-up in other domains.

As a side note, it is a peculiar - if understandable - weakness to look at famous people (who are famous because of a particular skill, or simply because of the mechanisms of the market) and to try to see them as life models (fame does not translate to wisdom, and more often than not their private lives are miserable).

So I selected Bill Bailey for this series of posts on excellent comedy - because of his superior, intelligent, and creative comedic artistry. And, since nowadays we have all those commands at our disposal - of Play, Rewind, Fast Forward, Pause, Skip - let us press "Play" for the following bits of baileian comedy:














Speaking of Bill Bailey and Dylan Moran, the two of them (whom I consider to be the two top British - and not only - stand-ups of the 2000s) also worked together in a wonderfully creative, bleak, funny, and smart sitcom (written by Moran & co.), Black Books - which featured the bohemian trio of a misanthropic Irish bookstore owner (Moran), his half-gnomic hippie aid (Bailey), and their perpetually lost and searching, caring yet acerbic woman friend (Tamsin Greig).