Searching for the New Sound...
In "The Priest and the Beast", Howard and Vince are suffering from a creative drought in their electro band. They have a meeting with the CEO of Pie Faced Records at 9 AM tomorrow, but they haven't written any songs. To help them out and get them to leave him alone, Naboo tells them the story of how Rudi and the Spider found the New Sound (he was their dealer back in The '70s).Rudi and the Spider, a psychedelic fusion duo, journey to a desert in search of The New Sound, but a personal dispute causes the Spider to leave to try to join Santana. While on the phone, he gets waylaid by an attractive woman and follows her to her all-female town. Rudi soon ends up there as well.
While the Spider parties with the ladies, Rudi learns that the town is haunted by the Betamax Bandit, a vengeful outdated format who has killed all the men in the village. Rudi and the Spider get over their differences, and after the Spider gains some psychic powers, they team up to defeat the Betamax Bandit, and find the New Sound in the process.
The Mighty Boosh episode "The Priest and the Beast" contains these tropes:
- '70s Hair: Exaggerated. Rudi sports an afro several feet in diameter, while the Spider has a similarly comically oversized mane of blonde dreadlocks.
- All Drummers Are Animals: The Spider, the band's bongo player, is referred to as "The Beast" and is associated with spiders. At one point, he even says he's nothing but an animal who's fit for nothing but playing the bongos, getting drunk, and sleeping with women.
- Animal Motifs: The Spider is a human, but he's called that because he has eight dicks.
- Birds of a Feather: Rudi and Monkey, who are both considered strange and uncool by their friends, show hints of attraction to each other.
- Brownface: Julian Barratt in brown face paint and a giant afro wig in a costume clearly modeled after Micheal Carabello as Rudi van di Sarzio. Despite the sterotypical appearance, the character is otherwise somewhat racially ambiguous, with a multi-ethnic name and a stick-in-the-mud personality similar to Howard's. Noel has a slightly more understated costume (at least above the waist) as Spider Dijon, but the accent and makeup is clearly intended to portray him as Latino.
- The Casanova: The Spider can get any woman to sleep with him. He manages to get at least eight different women hanging on to him with a village, and he's also slept with a number of people's wives, including Rudi's. When he drunkenly encounters Rudi in a dark room, he immediately starts humping him, assuming he's a woman.
- Carpet of Virility: Ladies' Man the Spider has a thick brown shag rug of hair on his chest.
- Celibate Hero: Rudi, a priest of the Psychedelic Monks, swears off female contact for the whole episode, in contrast to the sexual escapades of the Spider, though he has hints of a chaste romance with Monkey. He's the main protagonist of the vignette.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Monkey is shunned by the other villagers for her bizarre habits, which include dressing in layered sweaters and a strange cowl, being in love with her pig, drinking her own urine, and smearing herself with peanut butter. The last one at least makes some sense, as the Betamax Bandit is allergic to peanuts.
- Cowboy Episode: Although the heroes are musicians rather than cowboys, the plot of the episode is otherwise a classic Western plot, where some heroic outsiders show up to save a South of the Border village from an evil bandit.
- Dance Party Ending: The story about Rudi and the Spider ends with everyone in the village dancing in the town square to the New Sound.
- Emasculated Cuckold: The Betamax Bandit's villainous motivation is that the Spider slept with his wife. The feeling of inadequacy this gave him caused him to swear revenge on all men, and he killed every man in the town.
- Expy Coexistence: Rudi and the Spider are clearly modeled after Santana (they play similar psychedelic-latin fusion rock with bongos and Rudi looks just like Michael Carabello), but Santana also exists in-universe and are their biggest rivals.
- Funny Afro: Rudi's comically-oversized afro wig, which completes his over-the-top 70's look and compliments his stick-in-the-mud, ostensibly-hip but in reality uncool persona. It's so big, it has a magical door in it!
- Insistent Terminology: Rudi insists that the long purple thing he's wearing isn't a dress, as most onlookers assume, but the robe of the order of the Psychedelic Monks.
- It Was with You All Along: The one place Rudi and the Spider forgot to look for the New Sound... was inside their own minds. Once they do that, they find it.
- Lady Land: The village is only occupied by women, who are very eager for a man to join them.
- Latin Lover: Spider Dijon seems to be some sort of Hispanic, judging by his accent, makeup, and musical tastes, and has quite a way with the ladies.
- Let Me Tell You a Story: Vince and Howard turn to Naboo desperate for something to help them make musical progress. Naboo decides to tell them a story about Rudi and the Spider, who faced a similar predicament and whose personalities are exaggerated versions of Howard and Vince's. Unfortunately, the lesson from the story doesn't help them much.
- Lost Aesop: Naboo tells Vince and Howard a story that's supposed to help them find their sound, but it's not clear what message they're supposed to take away from it other than "work together" and "be creative", which won't help them come up with a song in five minutes. Vince and Howard don't take away any moral from the story, and beg Naboo for magical help. He gives them a fake magic potion to get them to go away.
- Lower-Deck Episode: The episode focuses on minor characters that were only alluded to in previous episodes in the series.
- New Sound Album: Rudi and the Spider go on a quest to find the New Sound. They find it (within themselves), and make an album out of it called La Sonida Nueva (The New Sound in Spanish).
- The Power of Friendship: Rudi and the Spider must overcome their differences and team up with both Rudi's guitar skills and the Spider's psychic powers (which he gained through loyalty to Rudi) to defeat the Betamax Bandit.
- Power Makeover: Once the Spider gains a mind-door that gives him the psychic powers of the Psychedelic Monks, he transforms into a purple dress just like Rudi's.
- The Power of Rock: Rudi deals a devastating blow to the Betamax Bandit using his fusion riffs. Unfortunately, it's not enough and he needs the Spider's help.
- Secret Test of Character: Rudi, using his mind-door, offers the Spider tickets to a Santana concert in Brazil, giving him the opportunity to leave him in a tight spot and have a good time. The Spider refuses, proving his loyalty to Rudi. This selfless act allows him to attain enlightenment and gain a mind-door like Rudi's.
- South of the Border: The story takes place in a stereotypical Mexican Western setting, a desert with adobe villages, chiles everywhere, and saucy women in big skirts and white blouses.
- Speed Sex: Rudi goes on a rant about how the spiritual compromise of sexual relations isn't worth the one and a half minutes of pleasure it brings.
- Third Eye: Rudi has a door in his forehead where the third eye usually is, which serves as a portal to other dimensions and allows him psychic powers.
- What the Hell Is That Accent?: The Spider has what sounds like a rather poor Mexican Spanish accent, while Rudi's slides all over from American to vaguely Latino to Howard Moon's usual accent.
