Phew, for a minute there I lost myself

Browsing the Internet late at night is an odd thing. You never know quite where you'll end up or why or indeed how. In my case, tonight, I ended up coming across a screengrab from a National Lampoon film with the Griswolds running over Thom Yorke while singing a Radiohead song.

This is the story of how I got there.

Last night I'd sought out the full version of theme tune to Community, which is "At Least It Was Here" by The 88. Now we all know that YouTube comments are absolutely, blindingly insane. But even a great TV show with a dedicated fanbase has some utter nutters on related videos:

I love your comment, it's funny and the best is you mentioned TV which I own one of!

As Chevy Chase stars in Community - or did in its first four seasons, anyway - I was briefly reminded of the video for Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al", which stars Chevy lip-syncing to the words instead of Paul. It's an amusing video and, when I saw it as a child, I of course assumed that Chevy Chase was Paul Simon. But as a child born in the 1990s I will have seen that video about twice, ever, so it wasn't exactly a huge shock to the system to discover the truth. Besides, Chevy Chase was popping up in all sorts of music videos in the 1980s...

Chevy, you're not even in that film!

But I only got around to watching You Can Call Me Al tonight - one of those brief midnight moments of realisation of "huh, I was going to do that...". Usually these happen when you're trying to fall asleep, which is at least one good reason to push through sleepiness and stay staring at your computer screen FOREVER.

Also staring at their computer screens until their heads explode were the YouTube commenting brigade on You Can Call Me Al:

There were also a few comments suggesting that the video was so cheap-looking because this double act had been spending so much money on cocaine. Obviously, this isn't true - it's more likely cheap-looking because this is the second video Paul Simon shot for the song. I don't know exactly how bad the first one was but I'm glad he took the universal advice of "if it sucks, get Chevy Chase in to spice things up". A ploy that Chuck pulled off with aplomb - alongside the "if it sucks, get Scott Bakula in to spice things up" rule that they learnt from Enterprise.

Not knowing if Chevy Chase had been quite the cocaine-fiend as painted by the peers of David Shingles and sickoftramps I decided to check out his Wikipedia page. Normally, I'm against doing this because you should never find out information about celebrities you like. You will more often than not end up disappointed. Yes, I love Roger Moore... but did he have to say he liked David Cameron? Kelsey Grammer's cool... but why did he support Michelle Bachmann?! And so on.

Chevy's Wikipedia page made no mention of cocaine. Or coke. Or drugs. But it does reveals that his real name is Cornelius, a fact that is somehow both disappointing and fantastic. More worthy of note, however, is the revelation that he

released a self-titled record album, co-produced by Chase and Tom Scott, with novelty and cover versions of songs by Randy Newman, Barry White, Bob Marley, the Beatles, Donna Summer, Tennessee Ernie Ford, The Troggs, and the Sugarhill Gang

Naturally, my first thought on comprehending the idea of Chevy Chase singing The Troggs was "is this on iTunes and can I get it right now?" There seemed to be no mention of the album's name, unfortunately, but at the bottom of the page was a very tantalising link entitled "Discography".

That's right.

No mere disc for Chevy Chase, he has a whole damn ography! Multiple albums! Does he sing The Troggs on all of them? (Probably not seeing as you'd run out of marketable material after "Love Is All Around".)

It led to a page that is - thankfully - archived on the Wayback Machine. There have been a few times I've looked for an old Geocities page on the Wayback Machine only to find it never got around to archiving it. And when you're looking for a Clangers/Stargate fanfiction that's a real shame. But I digress.

On this marvellous page I read that Chevy has done four albums! That's more than, say, The Script. His first one is "typical of the drug crazed era", which doesn't sound like the Troggs-athon I'm after. Next up was a soundtrack album for National Lampoon's Lemmings - no Barry White, there, I'd wager. The third album is one of those stand-up albums that comics do, titled Saturday Night Live. PASS.

Then, finally, there's his self-titled album with a cover that makes Robin Thicke's advances look subtle. (A reference that will date this blog post severely in about a month's time.)

So here it is, the album for which I have been searching for literally minutes. All is good - until disaster strikes! This review says of the songs: "some are funny, but most, sadly, are just plain BAD". It "could of [sic] been a masterpiece and made Chevy a musical star" but the record label didn't care about it enough.

Then, at the bottom of the page, is the Radiohead picture and a warning to "NEVER compare Chevy to Thom Yorke again", referencing a recent website update... which of course I can't access because the website is no longer around.

Fortunately, though, I manage to find this Chevy Chase fansite's homepage on the Wayback Machine, and navigate my way to its updates page from there. There are notices that readers have sent in informaton that "shines a bit more light on the mystery that surrounds Chevy’s long-lost album", including a track list of the self-titled album.

Here I find that Chevy was actually singing "Wild Thing" by The Troggs, which is a left-turn I didn't expect. On a more relevant note, however, is that the first track is called National Anthem. Which leads the head of this Chevy Chase fansite to ask: "Was his "Nat'l Anthem" anything like Radiohead's?"

I think it's probably safe to say No, Of Course Not.

But the reviewer of four Chevy Chase albums was not in the mood for a quick dismissal. In fact, he has fired the first shot in what will become the Internet's biggest war - fans of Chevy Chase versus fans of Radiohead. There can only be one glorious winner. But when the battlefields of messageboards and hashtags are soaked with the blood of a thousand trolls, an innocent child will ask how it ever came to this.

And somebody will show him that this is what you get...

This is what you get when you mess with Chevy Chase fans.

If you still want proof, here's the review page and here's the updates.