The Judge
RAVES!
Date: 10/08/10
Mason Williams - "Classical Gas" (x2)
I'll just throw this in here quickly before I go to bed.
It's 1968. I am about six years old. If I have been a good boy, my mother lets me take her brand-new Marconiphone transistor radio up to bed with me for an hour or so (so it would be around eight o'clock).
I listen mostly to Radio Luxembourg. A particularly catchy record is getting what would later be termed 'heavy rotation'. There are no lyrics; just a tune on an acoustic guitar with a lively orchestral accompaniment.
It is some years later before I find out that the piece is called Classical Gas, and was composed and performed by one Mason Williams, an American musician and comedy writer.
Over forty years on from when I first heard it (complete with the legendary 'Luxembourg Fade'), I still think it's a wonderful piece.
In the first clip below, you can see Williams and orchestra performing it on an edition of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (for which he was chief writer), with the familiar Mike Post arrangement.
Then, as a bonus, the second clip features a purely acoustic version which Williams recorded for his 1970 album Hand Made. It provides for an interesting contrast with the recording which many of us have known and loved for much of our lives.
