Various Artists - Best of the National Lampoon Radio Hour

All Music Guide

In the mid-'70s, the National Lampoon's syndicated radio hour brought the magazine's irreverent humor to the airwaves in the form of sketches, fake commercials and public-service announcements, and pop-music parodies. It also gave exposure to several comedians who would soon become famous as cast members of Saturday Night Live (John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Chevy Chase), as well as other top acts such as Richard Belzer and Christopher Guest. This three-CD box set has over three hours of material originally broadcast between 1973 and 1975. For all its influence on American humor via Saturday Night Live and other post-Lampoon projects of the writers and performers, it's really not all that funny. Much of it's geared toward stoned teenagers and college students whose outrage threshold, at least in the mid-'70s, was presumably pretty low. Decades later, there aren't nearly as many taboos associated with satires of bad standup comedians (a particularly insistent theme here), drug... pushers, Marlon Brando, talk radio hosts, hippies, and homosexuals. There are some genuinely funny moments here and there, and the musical parodies (of Otis Redding, James Taylor, Pete Seeger, Neil Young, and others) are often dead-on, particularly the savage Joni Mitchell spoof, "You Put Me Thru Hell." But if you and your pals have long retired that bong to the back recesses of the closet, it won't sound nearly as thigh-slapping as it used to. Others might well wonder what exactly was so funny about most of this stuff in the first place. - Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide Read more Less