The Congress of Wonders

The Congress of Wonders was a comedy group from the late 60s and early 70s in San Francisco. They only recorded two albums--Sophomoric and Revolting--but they were extraordinary, even for their time and place. Their albums are long out of print, but if you look, you can find them in both LP and re-released CD form. There's a rumor of a DVD with clips that I'd dearly love to find, but I'll have to dig around later.

One of the things that that always set their presentation apart was that they'd frequently speak their sound effects for actions ("No one will notice if I shove you down this laundry chute. Che-BLONK!") They had fast snappy dialog and very funny material, much of which is still screamingly funny today.

Some of the great lines that come to mind are:

From Sylvia Davenport:
"List' to the starboard tale of Sylvia Davenport, whose noblesse exceeded her oblige."
"The twine of her life unravelled by the kittens of destiny."
"The passionate turtle of romance was stewed in the soup of despair."

From Health Man:
"Say, fella, where do you eat?" "Oh, I'll have a Grimsburger every now and then, but I usually eat at McBarnyard's Golden Starches, or Colonel Bucket's Chicken Blasphemy."

From the Stoned Ranger:
"A cloud of hooves... a speed of dust... and a hearty cry of "Ohio River!!!" "That not your line!"

From Star Trip:
"Stardate 3.1415... oh, the heck with it!"

In the course of looking for some online references, I struck a huge vein of gold: downloadable Real Player clips of many of these cuts, but, even better, a number of UNRELEASED BITS that I've never heard!!!! So there's good to be had from blogging.

The Congress of Wonders