LISTEN UP: Classic 'Tonight Show' parody from The Credibility Gap

Ed McMahon's second banana work on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show is now a distant memory -- he and Carson left the show in 1992 -- leaving younger viewers to wonder what the big deal was about when the talkfest cohost died this week at age 86.

Wonder no more. We've got a classic distillation of Ed, and Johnny, from their late-night heyday. This straight-from-the-original-LP treat comes from an obscure comedy group called The Credibility Gap, who made dead-on pop culture parody records in the 1970s. And it's no wonder there, either.

Here's the group's makeup:

Harry Shearer -- who'd break out in This Is Spinal Tap and Saturday Night Live, become a reliable source of voices for The Simpsons, and spout off about everything in the world on his weekly public radio monologue, Le Show.

Michael McKean -- soon to be Laverne & Shirley neighbor Lenny, then another Spinal Tap constituent, and a voice on Dinosaurs, and finally a regular in pal Christopher Guest's satire films Best in Show and A Mighty Wind.

David L. Lander -- L&S partner-in-doofusdum Squiggy, before weirding out in David Lynch's Twin Peaks and On the Air, and rampant voice work.

Richard Beebe -- the Pete Best of the bunch.

They're all amazing here, capturing every Carson Tonight Show nuance, whether it's Johnny's "accidental" double entrendres or Ed's obsequious chortling. Enjoy their sendup of Don Rickles, too, and a so-old-it's-new segment on gays in the military. There's even the final-credits promo cut-off, as the network's affiliate stations cut away too soon for local content. They nailed it all, from beginning to end.

If you want a complete taste of the legendary Tonight Show, this is as close an approximation as you'll ever get, in 15 sharp-satire minutes.

And The Credibility Gap has more. The album that holds the Tonight parody, 1974's A Great Gift Idea on Warner Bros., is a feast of '70s sendups -- a hilarious "blaxploitation" trailer (Kingpin, basically casting Martin Luther King as Shaft), a moody-goopy pop culture poem-to-music a la then-trendy Rod McKuen, a greatest-hits record mail-order ad from the screaming K-Tel school, a student-aimed "educational" school film on social diseases, and more.

Buy the whole album here, finally out on CD after a 35-year wait. Or download it even cheaper on MP3.

Just don't expect A Funny Animal Segment.