Rhino Comedy Hour: These People Sure Do Sing Funny

If we were playing a round of pop culture word association and we said, “Rhino,” odds are that you’d say “music,” and that would not be unreasonable – it’s not like we don’t have plenty of the stuff around these parts – but every once in a blue moon, we like to clear our throats and offer a casual reminder that we’ve got quite a lot of comedy stored in our vaults as well.

As a matter of fact, we started going through the archives the other day, and, frankly, even we were a little surprised at some of the stuff we found. Take Martin Mull’s Near Perfect/Perfect, for instance: not that we didn’t know he was a funny guy and a formidable musician – “Dueling Tubas,” anyone? – but this album in particular was one we’d almost forgotten about. Sure, it was his only release for Elektra, and he hasn’t put out a studio album since, but neither of those bits of information change the fact that it’s a great record and a pretty hilarious one, too.

This brings us to the first installment in a feature we’ve decided to call Rhino Comedy Hour.

(Actually, it lasts a bit longer than an hour, but after we put together a tentative list of inclusions and checked the run time, we weighed our options and decided that it was less important to be chronologically exact than it was to guarantee a cheap laugh by having it last for 69 minutes.)

Since we know it could prove to be a bit jarring for those of you who’ve conditioned yourself to find music when you visit Rhino, we decided to help make the transition to comedy a bit easier by compiling 20 tracks worth of music from comedians, but we think you might be surprised at the amount of diversity we’ve put in the mix.

Some of the songs are covers, like Sam Kinison’s take on The Troggs’ “Wild Thing” and Peter Sellers’ unique spin on the Beatles’ “She Loves You.” Others are most definitely original numbers, such as Cheech & Chong’s “Basketball Jones,” the aforementioned Mr. Mull’s “Bernie Don’t Disco,” or Gilda Radner performing Michael O’Donoghue’s unforgettable “Let’s Talk Dirty to the Animals.” There are also a couple of the obligatory “let’s take my comedy catch phrase and write a song around it” songs, including Jeff Foxworthy’s “Pure Bred Redneck” and Bill Engvall’s “Here’s Your Sign,” along with one which appears to be a “just sample a couple of my jokes, slap some beats on that shit, and leave me the hell alone” song…but, really, what other attitude would you expect from Chris Rock? (Seriously, go listen to “The Rib Man” and tell us we haven’t hit the nail right on the head with this assessment.)

So give it a listen, sing along if you feel the urge, and tune in next week for another installment of the Rhino Comedy Hour!