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Happy Birthday Bob Elliot

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Today is the birthday of one half of the Bob and Ray radio comedy team, Bob.

Bob and Ray were a very influential influence for me, personally, in my earlier radio days. Their comedy was word-based absurdism, which is a well-known genre of humor I just made up a moment ago. They didn’t tell jokes as much as they created a series of offbeat and inherently comical situations – realistic tableaus populated by fictional characters who might be described as having very little self-awareness. Unless they could be described as having too much self-awareness. Either situation could be made to work and would get a laugh thanks to the contradiction built into the character’s persona. That is to say, a Bob and Ray character could be both down-to-earth and puffed up at the same time. They could be heard embellishing their enunciations with meaningless flourishes such as “that is to say” and “influential influence,” in a fruitless attempt to seem more serious and accomplished than they really are. Or were.

That approach is not so comical when you read my tortured description of it, but things get better when you sit back and just listen.

Bob and Ray are an acquired taste, comedically speaking. But acquiring it is definitely worth the effort.

What sort of artistic expression do you “get” that many of those around you simply do not?

48 thoughts on “Happy Birthday Bob Elliot”

  1. Good morning. In the early sixties a lot of jazz recordings were produced and some of them were very “far out”. During those years I became very interested in jazz and bought a lot of jazz records. I also kept up with the latest developments in Jazz by reading Down Beat and some other magazines that covered jazz. During that time some jazz musicians started experimenting with free jazz where they tried to go beyond the usual approaches to playing jazz.

    At first free jazz sounded very strange to many jazz fans and some of the jazz critics didn’t like it. I think some of the pioneers of free jazz, such as Ornette Coleman, are now considered to be among the most outstanding jazz musicians, but they didn’t have many fans when they first started playing free jazz.. Because of my great interest in jazz during the early 60s, I spent a lot of time listening to a few of the recordings of the free jazz preformers and learned to appreciate them when many people still thought they were not going in a good direction.

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    1. jim. i was a 60’s jazz fan too. miles was my favorite but i listened to a lot of folks who were in the free jazz mode. some gifted some hiding behind free jazz as an excuse for poor ability. ornette coleman was wonderful

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      1. Learning about jazz widened my view on life leading me outside the narrow view of life that most people I knew seemed to follow, Actually it was rock and roll that lead me to Jazz. Although rock and roll was great, many people enjoyed that music. Jazz required me to stretch out into music that wasn’t as widely understood, although there were enough fans to support a fairly large group of outstanding jazz performers in those days. I’m talking about modern jazz. Big band jazz from the swing era was better know than modern jazz and I also liked those bands.

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  2. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    My taste for artists, music, radio stations, is often slightly off-beat–I don’t care for most commercial radio stations with the ads and the glitz. I would rather listen to the public radio plugs for money combined with the volunteer voices; I love folk music that lives on the edge of jazz (i.e. Claudia Schmidt); I love art that is really quirky. As a vacation spot and place to ride out winter in my old age, I like Savannah, GA because of the coolish winter weather and the beauty there, but also the people who inhabit the place who are just downright quirky (“We don’t call it the Civil War, we refer to that as the War of Northern Aggression”).

    I no longer want to work for a soul-sucking non-profit organization. I would rather go it alone and take the risks to preserve the true creativity of what I do for a living. In the words of Popeye, “I yam what I yam.”

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      1. I agree with you about the B and R clip, Jacque, and also wish to thank Dale for putting it up. I guess B and R could be thought of as slightly off-beat, as you say you are, Jacque. Being slightly off-beat might be one of the main characteristics of most of the regulars on this blog with Dale as our leader.

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        1. Jim, that’s just what I was going to say. I think we’d find that Baboons are on the same page for most offbeat stuff. (except – (proving the rule) – I don’t get or enjoy free jazz)

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  4. I’m with Jim. I get jazz improvisation more than most people. It is incredibly easy to do badly (speaking from personal experience), incredibly hard to do well, takes a unique sort of mind, and the experts make truly great, inspired improv sound ridiculously easy.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  6. Because of our relative isolation out here, people have to make a real effort to get exposure to the less popular forms of artistic expression. I like folk music, jazz, classical music, and abstract expressionist art, and I have to work pretty hard to find it out here. That is why I was so delighted a several years ago to find I could live-stream MPR. I know that the people I work with would absolutely love the music on Radio Heartland, but it is hard to explain and harder to access than most people are willing to put up with. I would love to sneak into work some weekend and put Radio Heartland on the sound system in the waiting rooms to great people on Monday morning.

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    2. which abstract expressionists do you enjoy? i was at the minneapolis instatute of art this past weekend and had a chance to go through the modern area and the abstract expressionists were calling out loud and clear. i didnt see the pollack,rothko or the hoffman they have in their collection but the dekooning, and others were wonderful.

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      1. All of the above who you mention, as well s Emil Nolde, who is probably more expressionist than abstract. Perhaps PJ is also familiar with him, since he identified himself as a Dane.

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  7. I have to make a quick reply today. Although my tastes in most things are mostly traditional, and although I run in terror from things labeled “avant garde,” my very favorite musician is a performance artist whose stuff is extremely modern and experimental. My daughter shares my tastes in music to an amazing degree, but she only calls Laurie Anderson–whom I adore–“that weird woman.”

    Happy birthday, BiR.

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  8. Opera. Carmen is a favorite (much to my Puccini-loving best friend’s chagrin). The music, the sets, costumes, dance, the over-the-top pageantry…love it. Having to think through another language to get the story. Just listening to opera is not quite the same – but watching and experiencing, love it love it love it.

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  9. Now that Dale is working at KFAI, I have been checking out that station which I can get online. There is wide range of many kinds of music there that is not too widely heard. I am impressed with the good quality of the many different hosts of shows featuring a wide range of types of music. The various news shows are also good.

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  10. Happy Birthday BiR and Bob Elliot! I’ve been a big fan of Bob & Ray for years. One of my favorite CD’s is a two-disc live performance of Bob & Ray at Carnegie Hall with some of their classic sketches. Here’s a video of a terrific pair of Bob & Ray interview sketches on The Tonight Show from Friday, March 13th, 1981. (Check out Doug ‘Magiiiiic’ Henning sitting next to them on Johnny’s couch.)

    I think there’s a bit of a predisposition to all of us being a little ‘off-center’ based on being listeners of TLGMS. I’ve always enjoyed making people get that ‘wrinkled forehead’ look.

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  12. Happy Birthday, Barbara!
    It’s hard to know exactly how to answer the question. I don’t know what anyone else “gets.” Does it count if they “get ” it but still don’t like it or does “get” imply “like”? Now if you were to turn the question around and ask, “What seemingly popular elements of popular culture completely escape you?” I’d be on firmer ground.
    That said, here’s someone I like, someone I’ve never heard anyone else reference. Do I “get” him? Who knows?

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  13. Made it to 65, and I share a birthday with Bob Elliot. Thanks, Baboons.

    Full day, gotta run, will read and blog later.

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  14. I’m with bill, I’d be on a lot firmer ground if the question were turned around. Especially today. I had oral surgery yesterday, and today the left side of my jaw hurts so bad that I can’t see straight; literally, to say nothing of eat or chew anything. I do know that I enjoy and get this:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEFXj00Gou4

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        1. I’m glad that least the oral surgery is behind you, PJ – may the pain subside soon.

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  15. Hey everyone–
    Flew back yesterday from a wedding in South Carolina– and boy are my arms tired. Had a great time even though it rained and the groom had his wallet stolen. But it was family and quality time and very nice.
    I think a lot of humor is really just for myself. Often I am out simply to amuse myself. And if I have to explain it to you it wouldn’t be funny… but my family gets me so that’s all that matters.
    And had a train ride on our Honeymoon; flew out to Seattle and took the train back.

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  16. S&h reminded of me of another form of artistic expression we are extremely fond of that we really can’t discuss with almost anyone we know: B.R, Chopra’s Mahabharat-very Bollywood.

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    1. You said it! I am so mad about it I could spit. it will all end up costing lots of money and lots of anxiety when it could have been avoided with the stroke of a pen.

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  18. I think Jim said it well: “Being slightly off-beat might be one of the main characteristics of most of the regulars on this blog with Dale as our leader.” My music tastes are off-beat with the rest of the world, but not here…

    As a teenager Joel used to call us “weird”, and we’d say “thank you.” Now I can’t think of exactly what he was referring to, but I think this quote pretty much sums up my outlook:
    Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for, in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house that you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it. Of course, we too did all of that at one point, but I still like recognizing that it’s a little strange.

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  19. Art doesn’t have to matter to a lot of people to matter a lot.
    – Jeb Dickerson

    Happy birthday, BiR. Feel better, PJ.

    Did anybody see that big ol’ dinner plate moon tonight? Perfection.

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