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captainsblogI worked through most of the rest of Joe Queenan's memoir last night, and among its many close-to-the-bone observations was a reference to a comedy album from the 60s which I'd just thought of earlier in the day: The First Family, a vinyl capturing of a moment in time forever lost to us after November of 1963. The cut on the record I remember best was "Economy Lunch," which featured most of the world leaders of the day at a hypothetical cost-cutting feast at the White House. Someone was nice enough to preserve it youtubily right here:
While I can still quote much of that album from memory, all these years later (and Eleanor, who grew up with it as well, will still occasionally initiate the Chiang Kai-Shek joke about mayo- "please, not to mention that name!"- when one of us brings out the Hellmans), I didn't know one truly antiserendipitous fact about it until I read it in Queenan's book:
The First Family was the fastest-selling record in American history, and only the fourth to sell a million copies. Forty years later, I flew out to Monterey, California, to interview the man who had dreamed up the concept. From him I learned that the album had been recorded in front of a live audience the night JFK went on television and warned the Soviet Union that if they did not pull their nuclear missiles out of Cuba, the United States was prepared to go to war. The sequestered audience, entirely oblivious to Kennedy's speech, was laughing quite enthusiatically at the First Family's foibles. They were probably the only people in the United States of America who were laughing enthusiastically that evening.
Queenan goes on to note the datedness of the record's comedy, and quotes the equally sad quote from Lenny Bruce from right after the assassination which Eleanor and I had both heard before ("Boy, is Vaughn Meader fucked!"), but that connection to the Cuban Missile Crisis really floored me. At least, unlike the spokeswoman for the last Washington Administration, I was conversant with what the Cuban Missile Crisis actually was.
Wow. I guess that's heavy enough to put me in a mood to get back to work today.
While I can still quote much of that album from memory, all these years later (and Eleanor, who grew up with it as well, will still occasionally initiate the Chiang Kai-Shek joke about mayo- "please, not to mention that name!"- when one of us brings out the Hellmans), I didn't know one truly antiserendipitous fact about it until I read it in Queenan's book:
The First Family was the fastest-selling record in American history, and only the fourth to sell a million copies. Forty years later, I flew out to Monterey, California, to interview the man who had dreamed up the concept. From him I learned that the album had been recorded in front of a live audience the night JFK went on television and warned the Soviet Union that if they did not pull their nuclear missiles out of Cuba, the United States was prepared to go to war. The sequestered audience, entirely oblivious to Kennedy's speech, was laughing quite enthusiatically at the First Family's foibles. They were probably the only people in the United States of America who were laughing enthusiastically that evening.
Queenan goes on to note the datedness of the record's comedy, and quotes the equally sad quote from Lenny Bruce from right after the assassination which Eleanor and I had both heard before ("Boy, is Vaughn Meader fucked!"), but that connection to the Cuban Missile Crisis really floored me. At least, unlike the spokeswoman for the last Washington Administration, I was conversant with what the Cuban Missile Crisis actually was.
Wow. I guess that's heavy enough to put me in a mood to get back to work today.