A few years ago, I remember reading an interview with REM prior to them setting off on a world tour. The interviewer asked if they were going to play 'Shiny Happy People' and one of the band replied along the lines of 'If The Beatles reformed and toured, would you expect them to play 'Yellow Submarine'?" You can see what they are getting at can't you? (apart from audaciously equating themselves with The Beatles); the idea that both these songs stand outside of their respective canons like lepers and should be hidden away like the idiot son in the attic.
Which reasoning leads me nicely to 'My Ding-A-Ling'; there's no doubt that this too stands apart from anything else Berry has ever recorded, and it's ability to wind up the critics is legendary. And you can see why - while it's a fact that Berry has never been above injecting a little humour into his songs, it's generally in the form of wry observations on American teen life rather than the entendre laden ribaldry of 'My Ding-A-Ling', a song that makes the humour of the Carry On team look positively Rabelaisian.
To be fair, he didn't write it and, on this live recording, Berry sounds like he's having a right old time playing the fool and goading an audience who are in turn happy to play along and laugh like drains at the various fates that befall his ding a ling. And that's just it - I guess you had to be there to appreciate the yuks properly because on record the one dimensional joke soon wears anorexically thin until you're willing it to wrap itself up and be done with.
Unlike the audience, we suffer the song in isolation and don't have 'Reelin' And Rockin' and 'Johnny B Goode' sandwiching it to deaden the pain that the audience had. Though in saying that, singles buyers should be grateful - the full version that Berry played at that concert (and which appears on the parent "The London Chuck Berry Sessions" album) is, at eleven minutes, three times longer than this edited version. This does not in any way make the experience any more enjoyable, but even then rather that than 'Shiny Happy People'.
Which reasoning leads me nicely to 'My Ding-A-Ling'; there's no doubt that this too stands apart from anything else Berry has ever recorded, and it's ability to wind up the critics is legendary. And you can see why - while it's a fact that Berry has never been above injecting a little humour into his songs, it's generally in the form of wry observations on American teen life rather than the entendre laden ribaldry of 'My Ding-A-Ling', a song that makes the humour of the Carry On team look positively Rabelaisian.
To be fair, he didn't write it and, on this live recording, Berry sounds like he's having a right old time playing the fool and goading an audience who are in turn happy to play along and laugh like drains at the various fates that befall his ding a ling. And that's just it - I guess you had to be there to appreciate the yuks properly because on record the one dimensional joke soon wears anorexically thin until you're willing it to wrap itself up and be done with.
Unlike the audience, we suffer the song in isolation and don't have 'Reelin' And Rockin' and 'Johnny B Goode' sandwiching it to deaden the pain that the audience had. Though in saying that, singles buyers should be grateful - the full version that Berry played at that concert (and which appears on the parent "The London Chuck Berry Sessions" album) is, at eleven minutes, three times longer than this edited version. This does not in any way make the experience any more enjoyable, but even then rather that than 'Shiny Happy People'.
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