Neil Hamburger Pays Tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales

(PPR-24 | 1997) Thank you eBay! After about a decade of digging through smelly old 45’s whenever I per chanced across a used record store, I’ve got my hands on this great Neil Hamburger single.

This is classic Neil Hamburger. Lately, Neil Hamburger has almost become the very thing he mocked in these earlier recordings—a sort of sad SNL skit character, with an overly affected voice and a predictable shtick. This is not to say he’s no longer hilarious. It’s just that nowadays the humor comes from a different place. On this recording we have what I would consider the much funnier, timid Neil who tries his best at stand-up comic clichés and ends up failing miserably. We are laughing at you Neil, not with you... and that used to be the point.

The first side is a series of jokes about the paparazzi and the death of Diana. When these jokes don’t work with the crowd, he falls back on his "classic" zipper shtick—with a little Lady Di flair thrown in for thematic continuity.

Side two is, quite litterally, a moment of silence for our fallen angel, Princess Diana. And yes, I ripped all four minutes of silence into my iTunes library. My copy of the 45 skips about two-thirds the way into the track, which could very well have been intentional. I sat there for about two minutes before I realized it was skipping.

The record label on side two contains the message, "NOTE: For maximun tribute, please play the Moment of Silence at 45 rpm. This track can be adapted as a Moment of Silence for Sonny Bono by playing at 78 rpm." This single, like The Sounds of the San Francisco Adult Bookstores single, includes a tissue in case you become too overwhelmed and emotional during the Moment of Silence.