I was immersed in popular songs of the time, of the '30s and '40s. I was writing songs, making fun of the attitudes of those songs, in the musical style of the songs themselves; love songs, folk songs, marches, football.
Get ready for 'Les Mis 2'... I'm playing 'Fat Cosette.'
I even done a doo-wop version of the Mickey Mouse march.
Music can be witty, but it's not funny unless it's conceptually funny.
I've just watched the whole series of 'Flight of the Conchords'. I absolutely love it - the humour, the actors, everything about it.
I'm doing a pilot for Comedy Central with the band Steel Panther. They're faux heavy metal. They started as kind of a tribute band out here, or a cover band, and they're funny guys, and they just sort of morphed into their own thing.
How do I put this? 'Glee' is like 'High School Musical' if 'High School Musical' had its stomach punched and its lunch money stolen.
I mean the fun part about when Andy Bernard sings on The Office is he usually embellishes the songs in fun, stupid ways. That's just something that I do in life, like in the shower or whatever. So a lot of that stuff is pretty spontaneous.
In 'Spinal Tap,' there's the fake historical quality of 'Stonehenge.' It's something the musicians look at with a mystical reverence. In folk music, it's the seriousness with which these people approach their 'art.'
When uncle Eddie does his impression of 'Like a Virgin' it's like Madonna is coming out of his body!' Christ what an image.
Whenever I do a parody it's not meant to make you hate anybody's music really.
I would say, generally speaking, though it is not always the case, comedy is probably the least gratifying for most composers because it is more specific about what the music needs to do.
When Frank the Pug is singing I Will Survive, the only reason it's funny is that Will is in that shot trying not to get angry. A shot of a dog singing I Will Survive on its own will not get a laugh.
It's very difficult to be funny musically. I think I achieved It with 'The Pink Panther.'
There's been so many different types of musicals, and it's a funny genre because there's a fine line between clever and stupid. It really takes a genius to know how to do it.
I want to be taken seriously as the type of musician that plays stuff like an electric rake. I mean, how seriously do you take someone like Spike Jones? They take him pretty seriously - a really good musician who made a great contribution in terms of humor, which is part of what I try to do too.
We thought Queen were quite tongue in cheek.
The idea of a Chicago band that wanted to sing songs about California is really funny. Having never been to California.
Cheech and I used to call ourselves musicians; we never called ourselves comedians. We were musicians that were funny.
Like all teenagers in the early '60s, I put down my hockey stick when the Beatles got big and picked up a guitar. We all thought we'd be rock stars. Then I got into comedy, but I'd always find a way to use my guitar, such as writing songs and doing musical parodies.
Hopefully after a year or two of touring around eventually we'll just be The Blanks. We do pretty much everything we do on 'Scrubs' in our show, but it's not presented as Ted's Band.
It is easy to misunderstand what a comedy song is, or what its potential is. I'm used to musical comedy being maligned as an easy artform.
There are a lot of songs that would ostensibly be a good candidate for parody, yet I can't think of a clever enough idea.
There's a long tradition - certainly with country, but in all kinds of genres of music - to have humorous lyrics. Certainly with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention and, if you look at country, Roger Miller and Jim Stafford.
