A Good Beat--and You Can Laugh to It : Singers Who Mix Music and Comedy Are Chuckling All the Way Up the Charts

“All you have to do is get on stage with a piece of foam on your head and act like an idiot.”

That’s the secret of pop success of rock ‘n’ roll’s latest living cartoon--Green Jelly, according to lead singer Bill Manspeaker. The group’s album “Cereal Killer” has gone gold and made the Top 25 on the national sales chart. The video for Jelly’s comic retelling of “The Three Little Pigs” is played constantly on MTV. And audiences across the country have howled at the band’s live shows, during which Manspeaker wears costumes as a sacred cow, a pumpkin and Fred Flintstone, among others.

At the same time Jelly is wobbling toward stardom, the lines between what’s funny and what’s music are blurring elsewhere.

Comic Denis Leary has given himself a boost in the career with a scabrous ditty called “Asshole.” College-radio rockers King Missile have earned fans with an ode to convenient dismemberment called “Detachable Penis.” Rock trio Primus, who is part of this year’s “Lollapalooza” bill, temper their impressive technical chops with deadpan silliness on their current Top 10 album, “Pork Soda.”

The message--loud, clear and lowbrow--has been renewed: It’s OK for music to be funny.

The mix of music and comedy has been around as long as there have been songs, jokes and willing entertainers, and the novelty tune has been a staple of American pop culture at least since the madcap work of Spike Jones and his City Slickers in the 1940s. Since then, comics like Allan Sherman, Victor Borge, the Smothers Brothers, Cheech & Chong and Steve Martin (remember “King Tut”?) have all achieved some degree of success by mixing song and shtick.

This hybrid entertainment was reinvigorated with a rock ‘n’ roll edge in the mid-’80s thanks to the success of Spinal Tap’s head-banging send-up of soft-headed heavy metallers, and the late Sam Kinison’s comic obliteration of the rock chestnut “Wild Thing.”

Weird Al Yankovic has been warbling his amiably sarcastic pop parodies and off-the-wall originals for 10 years. Last year, his “Smells Like Nirvana” song and video--a dead-on spoof of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”--helped garner the two-time winner his sixth Grammy nomination for best comedy album. But when Weird Al started out in 1983 by turning the Knack’s “My Sharona” into “My Bologna,” he was hardly thinking about gold records and Grammy Awards.

“I never thought I’d be able to do this for a living,” says the enthusiastic accordionist. “When you’re 10 years old, in the bathroom with a hairbrush for a microphone, doing rock star poses in the mirror, you imagine all sorts of things. . . . I’ve always loved music and comedy, and I could never be a serious rock star. I do enjoy some of the trappings of a bona fide rock star--I ride on a bus and get deli trays backstage.”

Frank Zappa and his Mothers of Invention were one of the early rock ‘n’ rollers to work dark, barbed comedy into their music, on albums like “Freak Out” and “We’re Only in It for the Money.” Zappa has influenced a generation of rock satirists, including his sons, Dweezil and Ahmet. Their band Z recently released its debut album, “Shampoohorn,” and has a Top 20 hit in Europe--a twisted love song called “Doomed to Be Together.”

“We like to entertain people,” says Dweezil Zappa. “We’re not asking our crowds to dig any ‘serious-message’ songs. We have something to say, but in performance we want people to be able to laugh and be entertained. When people say they enjoy our stuff, we wonder what’s wrong with them, but it makes us very happy.”

Rap music’s sense of humor has been showcased in the films “CB4” and “Who’s the Man” (the latter’s attendant soundtrack album is currently riding the pop charts). “Saturday Night Live’s” Chris Rock co-wrote, co-produced and starred in the Spinal Tap-inspired “CB4,” and considered having the CB4 group or ersatz-rappers tour as an opening act on real rap bills this summer. Rock chose instead to pursue another film project, but feels that working as a musician would have been an easier gig.

“It’s simple,” he says. “You’ve got music and costumes and you know your lines. There’s a set list. What could be easier than that? Comedy’s hard. You can’t say, ‘Give the drummer some’ when you’re doing straight comedy. It’s a lot easier to be funny with the music.”

There are some funny people who aren’t singing strictly for laughs. Actor Woody Harrelson toured nationally last year with his band, Manly Moondog and the Three Cool Cats, delivering some straightforward rock ‘n’ roll with a sense of fun rather than from an urge to be funny. And Eddie Murphy began his singing career with comedic novelties like “Boogie in Your Butt,” but has since attempted to earn some respect as a serious pop singer. The video for “Whatzupwitu,” his duet with Michael Jackson from last year’s “Love’s Alright,” is in rotation on MTV.

Producer David Allen Jones vouches for Murphy’s dedication to the music and his desire to leave the punch lines for other projects.

“Eddie’s gotten more and more serious about his pop career. At first, he did a lot of songs where the comedy snuck in, and it started to sound a little too much like a big joke to some people. A music consumer wants to know what they’re listening to. If it’s a joke they want to know it so that they know it’s all right to laugh. They don’t want the joke to be on them. You can’t take the comedian out of Eddie Murphy, but you’ll see less and less comedy in his music.”

Comedian Kevin Meany uses wicked parodies of crooning lounge singers as one of the highlights of his act.

“When I start singing, I actually see people in the audience cringing,” he explains. “Which is great because then the comedy is working on a couple of levels. Some people get it, and some aren’t sure whether or not I really think I’m a great lounge singer. Well, I do. But whether the crowd is laughing with me or at me, at least they’re laughing. And I get to sing my heart out.”

Musical laughs can be a tricky proposition. Bill Manspeaker’s test for the entertainment value of Green Jelly’s material is a bit more personal.

“I’ll put on a costume and stand in front of a mirror. If I laugh like a crazy person, I know the song will be a success.”

Dr. Demento, the musical archivist and radio host who may be the foremost authority on songs sung, is happy to see the renewed interest in humorous music, but he says there’s still no formula for a successful mix of tunes and chuckles.

“Some songs work because the lyrics are enormously funny. Others can be entertaining because it’s a funny person singing, like Kinison’s ‘Wild Thing.’ Some musicians have an easy time being funny, and some comics are better at putting a song across. If it’s funny and entertaining, it works. There are no rules.”