The Smiley Smile Message Board

hey, i need help, can someone tell me what rutles songs are being referrenced in All you need is cash? is cant buy me lunch worth buying?

The comp. of the stuff from the first movie is fine.  Depends on how much you like the movie.  I think it wears thing pretty fast and the music is the obvious strong point.  I pull out the CD every now and then.  If you like it a lot more than me, it's probably worth your time.

DON'T BUY All You Need Is Lunch. A horrid ripoff that almost made me dislike the classic original.

The DVD of "All you need is Cash is" ...well.... all you need.

so can anyone elaborate on what Rutles songs are being referred to? I know Get up and go is Get Back and I am the waitress is I am the Walrus...did anyone else read the track listing to Tragical History tour album?: -Fool on the Pill, Lying, Blue Bay Way, You mother should Go....good stuff...

my fav moments in the movie: Bob Dylan introduced them to a substance that would influence their writing.....TEA!
and Eric Idle on a boat saying: "here in Liverpool" then looks back and he's not in Liverpool at all.  ;D

Well, I assume the Rutles songs mentioned are the ones being referred to.  Do you mean what are the Beatles songs each Rutles song is based on?

exactly!  :D

Some are clearly based on one song, some reference a few beatle tunes.

Number one= Twist and Shout
Goose Step Mama- Some other Guy ( i reckon)
Hold My Hand- All My Loving with a bit of IWanna HYH lyrically
I must be in love- Hard Days night bongo's  Ticket to ride style intro a real mixture this one
With A girl Like you=If I Fell
Living In Hope- Don' Pass me by with a dash of What goes on
Ouch=Help
It's Looking good- I Don't wanna spoil the party/ I'm looking Through you...
Double BAck Alley=Penny Lane
Good Times Roll= Lucy In The Sky....
Nevertheless-Within You Without you/Love You To
Love Life- All you need is love
Piggy in the middle-I Am The Walrus
Another Day- Martha My Dear
Cheese And Onions-A Day In The Life
Get up and Go- Get BAck
Let's be natural- Dear Prudence


I'm sure there are bits of other songs in them too.
No way Neil Innes should have had to forfit his royalties to Northern  Songs though  >:(

I'll try this from memory:

"Goose-Step Mama" -- "I Saw Her Standing There"
"Number One" -- "Twist and Shout"
"Baby Let Me Be" -- (can't remember this song)
"Hold My Hand" -- "I Want to Hold Your Hand," "Please Please Me"
"Blue Suede Sherbert" -- (don't remember it)
"I Must Be In Love" -- "Ticket to Ride," maybe a little "Hard Day's Night" or "Eight Days..."
"With a Girl Like You" -- "If I Fell"
"Between Us" -- "I Love Her"?  Not quite as dark as that song, but...
"Living in Hope" -- "Act Naturally," "Don't Pass Me By"
"Ouch!" -- Guess!
"It's Looking Good" -- "I'm Down"
"Double Back Alley" -- "Penny Lane"
"Good Times Roll" -- I think this is an Indian tune, so "Inner Light," etc.
"Nevertheless" -- don't remember it
"Love Life" -- "All You Need is Love"
"Piggy in the Middle" -- "I Am the Walrus"
"Another Day" -- Probably some McCartney sh*t.
"Cheese and Onions" -- "Strawberry Fields Forever," "Across the Universe"
"Get Up and Go" -- "Get Back"
"Let's Be Natural" -- I think this is "Let it Be"

A, Rich, you just beat me.

thank you very much! I actually dont dig the songs too wel, but I do like let's be Natural

I played the Rutles for my daughter who had become a Beatles fan.  She recognized every musical joke almost immediately.  It all does wear thin pretty quick, as someone mentioned.

I agree.

I was massively disappointed with the sequel.

Hello,my first post here.Anyone interested in The Rutles should visit this page: http://downinthegroove.blogspot.com/

 I love the  Ruttles... and  So  did  Geroge Harrison.. haha...

Ripp off mang  isnt that the point..


" Stop wastin my time you  know what I want, you know what I need..  Gimmie some money" same  idea is in not?


I dunno if they do serious sh*t or not....

suga

They could have gone so much further.  There are so many other Beatles satires that are really deep, and when you think of even what the Monkees did to themselves with Head you just wonder why the Rutles thing isn't as good as it could be.  "Shabby Road"???

 Man... I  is it the song content that bothers ya or what... cause I think the point is to be funny which they are  and there for they succeded........

xoxo
suga

It could have been so much funnier.

yeah but thats like sayin spinal tap could have been funnier, which it probably could have as well but the suceeded in the enital point of makin folks laugh...

xoxo
suga

Good, but not good enough for me. Which is all that matters to me.

Actually, the songs are about the only part I like anymore.  There are other good parts or gags, but not many.  The songs work because they're decent tunes -- especially since so many are lifted directly.  But the film suffers from poor pacing, poor ordering, and not taking apart the Beatles myth as much as they could.  The cover to Meet the Residents does more than that entire film.

I don't think they were that funny.  Like I was saying: "Shabby Road."  That's a joke?  An eight year old would say that to make fun of the album.  Once you've absorbed the movie you realize it's mostly a punch of lame puns that really have nothing to do with the Beatles.  Every now and then they hit the right now, like when one of the Rutles sues himself.  That was hilarious.  But those moments are too few.


Exactly.  And you could say that about a lot, but the Beatles are a huge subject.  It seems like it would be hard to f*** up unless you're not really that talented to begin with.  Their history gives you so much to work with.


Oh Christ, yes.  It's better than the Rutles, but I barely laugh at that one too.  I think part of the problem is that the characters are undeniably caricatures.  They'd work great as sketch characters, even in multiple sketches, but trying to do a whole movie doesn't work that well.  You don't care enough to follow them, and after a while the great gags are too few and far between.  And I don't deny that there are great gags in there ("...It goes to 11."), but you get the impression that those two movies originate because the writer(s) came up with a few gags and was thought they could do a whole film based on them.  With Spinal Tap you can at least argue that a lot of its audience is professional musicians.  I might relate more and laugh more if I was familiar with that lifestyle from personal experience.  But the Rutles' audience is Beatles fans, and it seems to me they would be let down the most.  The more you know, the more you see what's missing.

I kinda agree. Except I like lame puns. But I guess I have to acknowledge that they're lame.

A great parody band to me is Stillwater, from Almost Famous. They're Spinal Tap, without easy jokes, in a way.

I dunno, I didn't think of Stillwater as a parody but more of a genuine referential thing. Crowe was gonna have the band be English but he realized that would have been way Tap-esque. I think if Crowe could have reasonably had the band be Zeppelin he would have.

Lame puns can be funny, but the Rutles thing seems to focus on them too much.  That was all I meant.  I can't really knock lame puns, I like Rocky and Bullwinkle.

Yeah, I know, "parody" was pushing the term a bit, I guess. But still, they have a song called "Fever Dog".  ;D

It's just as Allmans as Zep in a way.

I cannot fathom a universe where The Rutles AND Spinal Tap are being poo-pooed as not being funny. This absolutely astonishes me. I have to weigh in at great length lest these opinions be the only ones standing.


No, you don't. I hate the notion, and will never, ever accept it, that there are "higher" and "lower" forms of comedy, and that to have an, ahem, "refined" sense of humor you have to only laugh at the "higher" forms of comedy and have to turn your nose up at the "lower" forms i.e. slapstick, punning, etc. "Shabby Road" -- maybe a bad pun, but "Let It Rot," released simultaneously as an album, a movie, and a lawsuit? That's funny. On several levels. Some of the puns are stupid -- "Tragical History Tour" is pretty lame, granted -- but some are dead on, i.e. the song / movie / idea behind "Ouch." The pun portion of the affair hits and it misses.

I disagree heartily that the humor in the movie could be somehow "more satirical" or "appeal more to Beatles fans" -- there are an insane amount of dead-on moments of parody and/or satire, and I'd argue it goes maybe a little TOO deep for some cursory Beatle fans. Examples: Like or hate Yoko, and I love her deeply, the depiction of nazi-uniform-clad Chastity, obsessed with dropping art from airplanes, is right on. The character of Leggy Mountbatten, while not really anything remotely like Brian Epstein, satirizes him on several levels -- the obsession with trousers, the sad, tragic move to Australia which causes Nasty to be shocked and stunned, the failed attempts at other groups (including Arthur Hodgson and the Kneecaps). Leggy's mom -- best moment in the film, the pinched, severe performance given there. ALL the music is tremendous, and Neil Innes does a masterful job re-writing the Beatles songs, with a few of them -- "Doubleback Alley" particularly -- almost standing alone as songs. And the entire last section where the group are suing each other, one of them pretends to be dead for a tax dodge, and Ron Decline comes in to take over the group's finance hits at the heart of the demise of the group. Its dead on.

Oh yeah -- the scene where Dirk McQuickly is attempting to write a song for his wife, played by Bianca Jagger -- slays. Totally unfairly but hysterically nails Paul as a ditty-writer. "I love...I love you....It's YOU I love...today is our wedding day...."

Add in Eric Idle's hysterical narrator character -- and I'm not going to subscribe to the "Eric Idle Has Proven Himself To Be An Ass Therefore We Must Hate Everything He's Ever Done" thing, either, he's absolutely a riot when he's explaining how the various Rutles met -- and some righteously deadpan performances from Halsey and Fataar, not to mention some great cameos from Ron Wood, Mick Jagger (whose interview segment is also very enthusiastic and funny), and you've got a movie chock full not only of great parody but just some killer comedy moments. I myself laughed until I puked on a recent viewing, and that's after having seen it 100+ times.

And I shouldn't even need to mention the amazing visit to New Orleans -- "Where did Rutle music originate?" "Next door. At the Ruttling Orange Peel." Who of course is lying. He's always lying. Last week, he said he started the Everly Brothers.

God, the great lines are too many to count:

"They persuaded him to change his name, to save time, and his haircut, to save brylcream. He became simply....Barry Wom."
"I'd like to be a hairdresser. Or two. I'd like to be two hairdressers."
"Come with me inside, or as they say in Hamburg...'mit mir gekommen....inside.'"
"His left hand didn't know who his right hand was doing."
"The press, as usual, grabbed the wrong end of the stick and proceeded to beat about the bush with it."
"I think it was the trousers. Well, they were so....tight..."
"Even as the quiet one, Stig O'Hara hadn't spoken a word since 1965."
"Their first album took two hours to make. Their second took even longer."

And the best bit: Barry Wom's haunting balled "When You Find The Girl Of Your Dreams In The Arms Of Some Scotsmen From Hull."

I could keep going. The thing isn't anything like a masterpiece, but is one of the funniest rock movies I've ever seen, certainly, and DEFINITELY holds up to repeated viewings. There are so many hysterical bits and insanely right-on moments of satire, and some just plain funny writing and directing. Comedy gold.

This wasn't what I meant. I have no trouble with "low" comedy. In fact, "low" comedy is often my favourite. The point was quite the opposite, I laugh my arse off of puns I personally think are bad, and I am fully aware of it. (And to bring up Shabby Road, I even think that's funny. But lame.)  Neither do I think The Rutles is particularly "low" - using those terms - it's filled with references and allusions making it more "refined" and "elevated" than a lot of other comedy.

That's what I said, though.  Some of the stuff is dead on, especially "Let it Rot," but some really don't have much to do with what they're making fun of: i.e., "Tragical History Tour," which you admit isn't that good.

I don't care about high and low comedy either, but sometimes stuff sucks and sometimes it doesn't.  And sometimes comedy sucks when certain tricks are overused.

I like pretty much every part of The Rutles that you pointed out, but I still think a lot of it isn't that funny.  There are good ideas spread throughout, as I said before.  Maybe it's more the execution that I don't like.  I did mention that the pacing and organization of the film bothered me.  One example is the Hamburg scene that you mentioned.  Most of that is so slow and tedious, especially the "Cellar of rats...seller of rats" bit.

The National Lampoon nailed that one better with their "Magical Misery Tour" ballad of John and Yoko

I do agree with Old Rake about the high laugh quotient of The Rutles...but there's something fatally unfocused and resolved in the satire overall, I find. As in whether or not the concept is really a satirical one in the first place or closer to whimsical homage. I applaud the disrespect and mockery bordering on out and out contempt for the Fabs and their fan-driven-mythology and p.r. machinery which sometimes characterizes their approach. It reminds me of the long running series of gags, fake Melody Maker articles, cartoons that appeared in the old Brit satircal magazine Private Eye back in the sixties about superduper group "The Turds" an incredibly cruel, funny amalgam of the stupidest traits of both Beatles and Stones.

Rutles projects sometimes jab and roast this way, but more often pull their punches. Maybe they sensed that George (not to mention Beatles fans) would get angry if they went too far?

I dunno, but I'm not quite satisfied. BUT I love some of the music (as well many of the jokes, performances etc.). I Must Be in Love is perfect as a satire of Merseybeat at its most simpleminded AND as an example of great, mindless Merseybeat, as good as  Dave Clark 5. better than anything by Freddie and the Dreamers (both units actually closer to what's being poked fun at than the Beatles: I don't think the Fabs ever composed or performed anything this dopey, much too smart and cool for that from the start)

   

I *almost* pointed out the whole movie!

The Powerpuff Girls episode with the Beatles references throughout was about a thousand times smarter and funny. In only a half hour.

15 minutes.

 ;D

Oooh! I want to see that, I love the Powerpuff Girls, but I haven't seen that one.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00005MEP9/102-1293623-9627313?v=glance

It's worth the purchase. I watch it a lot, cracks me up.

I liked The Rutles once when I was a hardcore Beatles fan. They made me laugh. Now, they leave me cold. I don't enjoy them anymore. Spinal Tap is WAY better.

I'm a Fabulous Stains man.

http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/28/fabulousstains.html

Thanks, Ian! I spy a dvd edition there too. I might buy that. Or I might just hope for the best when I watch Cartoon Network, the Girls are on there all the time.

rutles vs. spinal tap...apples vs.oranges

Yeah, Ive got a tape of that Beat Alls episode. It's freaking great.