OC Review: Tim and Eric Awesome Tour, First Night

“Was it what you expected?”

“Yeah. Well, I don’t know what I expected.”

That exchange between two fans walking out of T.T. the Bear’s last night pretty much explains the first show on the first night of Tim and Eric’s Awesome Tour, which is, of course, based on the Adult Swim show Tim and Eric: Awesome Show, Great Job! The TV show is strange enough, an eleven-and-a-half-minute blast of absurdity, flashing lights, disturbing images of hairy babies, and awkward dancing that attacks viewers brains every Sunday night. (You can read more about it in a piece I wrote for the Boston Globe here).

There were a few starts and stops at the beginning. After a quick set from DJ Dougpound, the music came back up for what seemed like a long time. Then the music stopped for what seemed like a ling time, and, being good fans, the crowd remained silent. After all, this was Tim and Eric, and having fans stare at a blank movie screen that barely fit on a stage made for rowdy pub rock may have been part of an opening joke. It wasn’t. But no one seemed to mind. They shouted things like “Brule’s Rules!” referring to John C. Reilly’s recurring character on the show, and “Jeff Goldblum!” who was also on the show. The good thing about presenting a creative, free-thinking show is that you can count on your audience to entertain themselves for a couple of minutes while they wait for you.

When the screen lit up with the image of show regular David Leibe Hart, demanding the crowd pray for Tim and Eric (and, kindly enough, for Robin Williams), everyone recognized him and cheered. Then came a planned false start, with a video of Tim and Eric backstage. They finally made it to the stage for the opening musical dance number about ball swinging, and it was off to the races from there.

The big question for people who hadn’t seen Tim and Eric live would have been, can these guys take material meant for an eleven-and-a-half minute late night sketch show and make a funny, engaging hour-and-a-half live show?

They can, although over that hour and a half, the audience has a bit more time to step back and question what they’re watching. And when your comedy is so particular and strange, not everything is going to hit the audience the same way at the same time. At some point during the show, more individuals probably stopped for a moment to say, what the hell am I watching? But then Tim and Eric would pelt the audience with pizza or hot dogs, or better yet, videos like “Quilting with Will” starring Will Forte and other previews from Season Three, which is still in the middle of production. And they never lost the crowd of clearly devoted fans.

“Casey and his brother” is fascinating live, because the onscreen version uses a lot of awkward close-ups and animation. But Tim’s red-faced, squeaky-voiced, compulsively spitting Casey is just as frightening live, probably because T.T.’s is small enough that most everyone, save those crowding over near the bar, has a clear view of every pained facial expression. Then, of course, there’s Eric playing a toy saxophone or dancing in a hamburger suit. Which is where the comedy nerd in me could reference commedia dell’arte or theatre of the absurd, or I could just admit that seeing a man Eric’s size furiously pumping his knees in time to cheesy music while dressed as ground chuck makes me giggle like a moron.

There was a quick encore, consisting mainly of the “James Quall Dance Contest” and Tim and Eric addressing the crowd as their surprisingly earnest, laid-back selves.

An odd bit of trivia – Tim and Eric were supposed to play Boston last year, but had to cancel the date because of their association with Adult Swim during the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Mooninite bomb scare. Both said they were happy to have finally made it to Boston, apologizing to the crowd for having to have cancelled last year’s show.

After the show, I asked Eric what he thought of the venue and the show. His response?

“Awesome.”

I should have expected that.

OC Interview: The Daily Show's John Oliver

John Oliver rarely gets a break from his job as a correspondent for The Daily Show to do stand-up, but last November, I was lucky enough to catch him at Boston's Comedy Connection. The election cycle was already in full swing then – the field of candidates hadn’t been winnowed down much, and multi-candidate debates seemed to be springing up every week. Oliver studied English at Oxford before striking out to write comedy for the BBC and test his hand at stand-up. But he was always interested in politics and comedy, including American political satire. He admired Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce, but never got to see America firsthand until he was hired by The Daily Show. And it’s all been a strange trip since then.

Oliver’s hour-long stand-up special, Terrifying Times, debuts tonight on Comedy Central, so I thought I would give an almost full transcript of our interview for the Boston Globe (you can see the full article here). Only a few boring bits were left out. Those were mostly my fault. Oliver is an engaging fellow, and based on his show at the Connection, I’m looking forward to a thoughtful and incisive special tonight.

Have you played America much as a stand-up?

Yeah, I guess, that was my job before I came here. And so, when I can, which is maybe not that often. I’ve done college gigs and clubs in and around the east coast.

Had you played America before the Daily Show gig?

I’d never been to America before The Daily Show. I’d never even visited. So it happened pretty fast. It was quite a major life change.

I know when they were auditioning people, they were looking a lot of different places and they didn’t know exactly what direction they were going to go.

To be honest, I’m still not entirely sure what happened. You always have imposter syndrome with stuff like this and I’ve deliberately not asked how it came about out of fear that something went wrong. I don’t want to highlight the mistake and have them go, "Oh, oh yeah, that’s not who we meant at all." So I don’t really know entirely what happened or what they were looking for or why they were looking abroad.

Did you audition or did they know of your work and hire you that way?

They asked me send a tape. I don’t know how they knew who I was. They asked me to send a tape, I think it was maybe through, Ricky Gervais met Jon and said, "you might want to look at this person." But I don’t really know. I sent the tape and then got invited over, and then it all moved very quick. It was a pretty amazing experience.

Did you get any time to adjust before you were thrown on the job?

No. I got in really late Sunday night and thought, I guess they’ll break me into work slowly. I got in Monday morning, having woken up on the sofa, and they said, "All right, you’re on tonight." Bush had said something to Blair. It probably worked out best because I didn’t have time to realize how scared I was. It worked out pretty well. I had absolutely no time to acclimatize to either America or this show. It’s really knee-deep in both.

Have you gotten time to look around and explore at all?

America? No. The only way I’m able to travel is through work, so I guess it’s going to get worse as the year goes on, especially once we get to the twelve-month countdown for the election. The traveling I’ve done has usually been for field pieces. So it’s either been to things like the presidential debates – we’re going down to Baltimore tonight for the Morgan State Republican Black Debates, that only half of them are bothering to turn up to. And then I guess big places in the middle of nowhere where the classic field piece crazies are, the middle of Colorado or Ohio. So yeah, I haven’t gotten to see much.

Do you think you’re getting a strange view of America?

It’s really warped. Also what makes no to me, the first time I flew to the west coast, as a European, it makes no sense to me to fly for five hours and land in the same country. That just makes no sense. You couldn’t even be on the same continent where I’m from. To see the same flags, it’s something like that that really brings home how enormous this country is.

What was your expectation before you got here?

Of what? Of the country?

Of the country or of New York. I realize it may be way too broad of a question, but I wanted to get a sense of what you thought you may be coming to.

I had no idea, really. It all happened fast, and this was my favorite program when I was back home. I kind of knew it pretty well. But that comes with being sort of intimidated as well. I had absolutely no idea what to expect. Obviously the European perspective on American politics is relatively negative. I’ve always been very interested. I’ve always followed American politics, I like politics. So it’s been interesting to delve slightly closer, in more detail.

Have you been surprised about anything you’ve found about American policy?

Not really. We know quite a lot about American policy in Europe because it has significant effect on how we live our lives. So there’s no real way to not, unless you really stick your head in the sand, but American policy is largely our policy as well. Both the European and even more so in the British sense because of our incredibly special relationship, which we’re very grateful for, don’t get us wrong. Don’t listen to what anyone says. We’re very lucky to have you.

I think it goes beyond politics in that way, I think that at a certain point, the populace of England and America sort of realize, or at least I hope they do, that whoever’s in office isn’t necessarily your country.

Yeah. That is the big thing, I think. That is the big problem with the way America is perceived in Europe is that America is presented to us as a united front, you see the news footage is very much people standing behind their country. And I think it’s easy to forget that you’re looking at a president who, at whatever time, who is usually dotting the margins in terms of votes, you know, 51/49. You’ve easily got half the country unhappy with whoever’s there. And that is not presented to us.

It’s probably similar here, in that people probably look to the prime minister and that’s largely what they think of the politics in that country.

I think so. It’s convenient that way. It’s convenient to ignore significant dissent, which people do to other countries and governments do to the people in their own countries, as well.

Do you think that’s changing at all? It seems there’s an acknowledgment of the opposition as something other than that umbrella description of them – prime minister and opposition. Now it seems a little more varied.

Sure. Partisan politics, I don’t think is ever going to be particularly healthy. Although you always want a strong opposition. It doesn’t do anyone any good to have the opposition party in chaos. But the way that America is at the moment, it’s a fascinating time to have no incumbent and some relatively significant choices which the electorate is going to make in terms of where they want their country to go and how America will be perceived worldwide. Because there’s no doubt that either a woman or a black man will have enormous repercussions straight away in terms of how America is perceived abroad, if we go down that road.

Have you gotten to know many of the candidates, not necessarily personally, but –

Not personally, very much not personally. I’m watching closely, but…What’s more odd is them knowing what you’re doing. When we turned up to the first debate in Simi Valley, you just see them out of the corner of their eyes going, ‘Uh-oh.’ How can you know? I’m sure they’ve not watched but they’re clearly briefed, that’s ‘The Daily Show’ over there, they’ll be coming over here and asking ludicrous questions.

Is "The Daily Show" printed on the camera or anything so they sort of know?

Yeah, you have to say at the start. If it’s the spin room you have to say who you are. But it is amazing. It’s I guess the key difference in terms of American and British politics is the role of religion, where it seems impossible for any candidate to campaign with anything other than an overt faith in god. Whereas the opposite is the case, Blair was a devout Catholic and he could never talk about that. He’d never be photographed going to a church because people would be suspicious of that. You should serve the country, not any idea of what is right in a Biblical sense. And that’s taken a lot of getting used to.

That first debate when Huckabee and two others put their hands up for, "Who here doesn’t believe in evolution," I think that’s ludicrous. He cannot surely be a credible candidate now, but his approval ratings are going up. That’s absolutely insane.

I’d imagine that doesn’t speak well for us abroad. I know that in Europe they’re familiar with policy, but do things like this get play on the news, on the BBC.

People are concerned, I think. The worried thing was ’04. You kind of get cut slack electing someone once and then not knowing how they’re going to behave. But to reelect, that was troublesome.


Do you think you have to work harder to get an American audience to except political humor or your critiques of America?

Not really. I don’t know. The places I’ve tended to play at the moment around this east coast area, just for geographical simplicity, are probably areas that are not big fans of this administration anyway. And also of course, the people coming to see me are ‘Daily Show’ fans. So there’s an element of preaching to the choir, as well. But I would certainly want to go and do stand-up elsewhere, a place where people would not be happy to hear you insult the commander-in-chief, let along a Brit, who they successfully kicked out of the country a hundred and fifty years ago.

Yeah, not really, I’ve not had any problems with it. Also, I tend to talk, as well, to balance that out, I tend to talk about how, you have no idea what it’s like to be British. We’ve done terrible things to the world, and you’re not even getting close to our record. You watch the news, there’s trouble in Kashmir and Iraq, that’s essentially our fault. Take it any distance of time back, we did that. We did all that. We’ll be sitting back here, doing absolutely nothing about it now.

Is there any sort of recognition of that do you think in general in England when they look at what America is doing now? Is there resonance?

That depends. If you want to take a black and white lazy view of the world, you get a lot of idiotic British people saying, yeah, well, they’re history tends to start from the second world war onwards because it’s a lot more convenient. But I would hope that people have an awareness of the shame which is flecked across British history. It’s certainly more interesting that way.

You look at the historical view of it, it’s easy to get discouraged, looking at the people in charge now. But then you take a historical view of it, if you read Candide, the world wasn’t much better off then, and you wonder, well, should you just ignore all of this and hope the world is going to be okay just like it was?

That’s the thing, it’s like with the Candide thing, you’ve just got to have some half-hopeful voice saying, let’s hope our gardens grow at the end of the day. That’s pretty much all you can hope for.

I’ve labeled myself an optimistic curmudgeon.

I think that’s the best way to be, though. That’s the only to balance it out. There’s no point in being cynical all the time. But equally, blind optimism just seems willfully inappropriate.

If you can’t let yourself laugh at a fart joke –

That is why I’ve always been, this comedy offering’s always been about more serious issues, I guess. I guess that has always been my coping strategy with the world. If I can’t laugh at something, I don’t really know how to relate to it. That’s kind of got even more entrenched working here. Because now, when you see the news, something terrible, it’s the same awful things. And my instinct is always no, oh, that could be funny. There’s something funny in that. Well, wait a minute, let’s just let the gravity of the reality sink in. Then we can trivialize it.

Were you always a political comic or did that evolve later?

Pretty much. As I got better as a stand-up, I became better, that’s the way it works, I became better at talking about the things I was interested in. As I moved into my twenties I got interested in kind of single-issue protest politics rather than party politics. From then on, I became very interested in it. And it’s what I think is most funny.

Where did you start as a comic?

I left university and worked as a comedy writer, and I started doing stand-up around the same time. And I went to the Edinburgh Festival every year, and that’s really how I learned how to do it and how to get better.

You were a writer for BBC radio shows?

Lots of stuff. I guess I did three series of this show called The Department which was this fictitious government think tank that was solving a different world problem every week. That was a substantial project. That took a long time to write each series.

What made you move on to stand-up from that?

I was always doing stand-up at the same time. I’d get really bored of one, or frustrated at one thing. So I like to do both all the time. I would get bored of stand-up and want to do writing.

You said on your Web site that people might have seen you looking bored on Mock the Week. Do you find that the political shows on the BBC don’t offer you as much as The Daily Show does?

They’re terrible. Absolutely universally appalling. Panel shows are not the way to go about political satire because you have to have a kind of uniform voice to it. That’s where The Daily Show works, it’s all based around Jon Stewart’s voice. So, we’re all pulling in the same direction. But when you have six disparate comedians, it’s just going to become a macho jokefest where usually the quickest and the most lukewarm style of comedy is going win out. That particular show isn’t being particularly political now. It’s just kind of about the news in general, not a political element of the news.

Do you find the American and British traditions of political stand-up comedy terribly different?

Not really, I think they’re pretty similar. Both have their best practitioners, I guess Jon Stewart being one of the best here, and Colbert. The you have Armando Iannucci and Chris Morris back in England. Political people who were just stand-ups but who were extremely good.

I know this is the standard hack question, but who influenced you as a comic?

Oh, a lot. In terms of stand-up in England, Stewart Lee I think was amazing, and Tommy Ginn. And I wrote with a guy named Andy Saltzman. We learned a lot from each other. All of the stuff that Armando Iannucci did on radio and TV was fantastic. And I was also really into American comedy, as well. In terms of stand-up, again, obviously Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce, but also I really loved Dennis Miller. I loved his way with words. I’m a comedy nerd, really. I’ve always loved it.

There ought to be an organization for comedy nerds. I write the comedy column every week for the Globe and my wife gets tired of me dragging her to comedy sometimes.

There is no doubt I have invested throughout my life far more importance than is appropriate. And so, a lot of ex-girlfriends in the past, just the despair that crosses their face when I run into someone who also has an overblown sense of its importance, and has to sit back as two people yabber away about something that is really just supposed to instigate laughter.

I got lucky that my wife is a Monty Python fan.

Oh, wow. Great. You did get lucky.

We went to Spamalot together and she actually enjoyed it more than I did. I was nitpicking.

Wow. That’s fantastic.

Do you do anything similar on The Daily Show that you got to do on the BBC?

No, the BBC shows were more panel shows. So they weren’t a kind of sppof news program like this is where you’re kind of playing a correspondent, or being a correspondent. So no, not really similar to this.

Do you find people back home are watching more now that you’re on the show?

Oh, no. I doubt that. If anything, I would imagine less so. If anything, I’ve damaged the ratings rather than advanced them at home. You’re talking a very small digital channel. So I think it only gets a hundred thousand people watching. And I wouldn’t be surprised if that went down to 90 after my first appearance. The show is ruined now. It’s ruined.

I’ve especially enjoyed the Wilmore/Oliver Investigates clips.

Oh, great. We’re going down to this debate tonight, it’s on tomorrow night. That should be fun.

You guys have a really good chemistry. It seems pretty natural, like you’ve been working together for a while.

It’s pretty weird, obviously we’d never met each other and then with the ‘N’ word piece, we just… All I had was this idea of, every time I needed to say the word I would point at Larry in the interview, and from that point it was very odd. It was like being a married couple. We were able to kind of weave in and out of each other’s sentences. But also, in terms of a technique for an interview, it makes it very hard for the interviewee because we change our points of view all the time. And it’s just completely unfair, you just get blindsided. That’s what we’re planning to do tomorrow.

Is it tough to pull off? It seems to me there’s a dynamic at work where you have to make yourself the butt of the joke and still pull off intelligent satire.

That’s right. It’s a balance. It just takes constant thought, really, so you just think, what is this? Is it clear enough that the joke’s on me?

I read your comment about how you can’t listen to Bush anymore when you see him on TV. There’s a political satirist by the name of Barry Crimmins out of Boston who said that that’s what’s been saving Bush, that no sane person can listen to him for more than fifteen seconds.

When he did that Vietnam comment, we were all in the office walking past TVs, you could hear people say, ‘Did he just really say it was like Vietnam in a good way? Is that my mind rearranging stuff? Oh, he did actually say that and he’s not winking? That’s terrifying.’

Is there any similar sort of dissatisfaction with politicians in England? I mean, I know that there is, but is it the same sort of screaming at the TV frustration?

Absolutely. Blair was loathed. People will never ever forgive him for what he did. It’s very sad. And inexplicable. I will be really interested to know what he thinks he did, whether he regrets it at all.

It seems he had a real chance to bring people together.

Yeah. The biggest democratic mandate we’ve had in years. His first term he played very safe when he really could have been much more bold with the majority that he had. And for a man so obsessed with his legacy, Iraq just makes no sense. I have no idea what he was thinking.

Are you surprised at the amount of handicapping that goes on in political races here, especially on network TV?

Of course.

I saw one local station that put the names of the candidates on horses, and when they answered certain questions, would put them farther ahead on the track.

We’re getting closer to that. Our last election, it was talk of a landslide, so they decided we’re going to have this graphic, they’d be walking along, the candidates, and then land would gradually collapse on top of them. How old are you people? How bored is your graphics department.

Fox is always trying to downplay The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, saying they don’t get many viewers and it’s just a basic cable show. Have you seen that criticism?

They got it right. We are on basic cable, we don’t get many viewers. They may have inadvertently stumbled upon a fact there.

How do you go from [studying] English to political satire?

I wasn’t that interested in the ins and outs of my degree. I did footlights and was writing comedy while I was at University and quickly decided that was what I wanted to do, rather than analyze Chaucer, to the significant distress of my tutors. I don’t really know how. It seemed like a natural progression to me.

Do you expect to do more as a stand-up? I know the election cycle will probably be hellacious for you.

I think I’m going to do an hour special for Comedy Central for Indecision. But otherwise, next year I’ll be doing almost nothing but working on this show. It’ll be great. I’m not saying that in a bad way. But I don’t think I’ll be able to do much stand-up.

Do you think audiences will be surprised at who you are as a stand-up as opposed to who you are on The Daily Show?

I don’t know, really. It’s probably pretty similar. I’m not going to come out with a bag of props like Carrot Top.

Kids in the Hall: Reunion Tour May Lead to More

The new Kids in the Hall reunion tour has been a pleasant surprise for me. I had enjoyed their previous post-television tours in 2000 and 2002, and I didn’t know a new tour had been planned until I saw an ad for their show at the Wang Theatre for April 17. I reviewed that show for the Boston Globe (you can find it in today’s edition here), and spoke with them backstage at the Wang afterwards.

It was a mellow, friendly atmosphere backstage, or, more appropriately, in the mazelike basement-level dressing rooms under the Wang. Mark McKinney, Bruce McCulloch, Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald, and Scott Thompson were winding down after a little over an hour and a half of new sketch comedy, with a few old favorite characters like Thompson’s Buddy Cole and McCulloch’s Gavin thrown in. The not-quite-sold-out but sizeable crowd had reacted warmly and enthusiastically to everything, old and new, and there was a palpable sense of gratification amongst the Kids, possibly even a sense of relief that they had been welcomed back so readily.

The Kids had reunited last year for the Just for Laughs festival in Montreal, and had been kicking around the idea of getting together again, but never quite found the time. Earlier this year, they finally found a break. “The writer’s strike did the impossible and freed us all up for a week,” said McKinney.

Rather than just dust off old sketches from the television show or previous tours, the Kids set out to write as much new material as possible. According to Foley, this meant doing a series of surprise club shows in L.A. on short notice. “It was an exercise to see if we could write a 90-miute show in three days,” he said.

Again according to Foley, they were surprised both by how well they wrote together and how much they enjoyed performing together. The new sketches were strong, and there were a couple new short films, most notably an odd, lewd bit about “carfuckers,” that hit the mark (McCulloch, who has been busy directing the sitcom Carpoolers, mentioned he has been working the Russo brothers, of Arrested Development fame, on some film shorts). Everyone seemed to agree that there is some momentum building, which should mean another project of some sort when the tour ends in June, most probably a film.

Right now, somewhere...

It's a strange world out there. And while you sit here reading, right now, somewhere...

* The Pope is looking at his watch and saying, "Sheesh, look at the time."

* One of your relatives is thinking about how much of an asshole you are.

* A fat, naked man is sitting in front of his computer fantasizing about Japanese cartoons.

* Someone is watching a VHS copy of Mariah Carey’s Glitter, and loving it.

* A powerful world leader is tapping his toes to the Toby Keith song playing in his head trying to look like he is paying attention to a meeting of his chief advisors.

* Your parents are listening to Poco and making out on the couch.

* Boston city planners are thinking of what to do when the Big Dig becomes outdated.

* New parents have settled on the name Eugene for their first born, setting forth a chain of events that will either lead to indictment or a career in folk music.

* A Hollywood executive is planning a Saturday morning cartoon based on Brett Easton Ellis’s “American Psycho.” Elsewhere, another executive is making plans to bring “Straw Dogs: The Musical” to Broadway.

* Your doctor is listening to P-Funk, staring at the office aquarium, smoking a big fattie.

* Your cat is humping your favorite bed pillow.

OC-Ed: Late Night Humor vs. Democracy

The topic of Michael Crook’s A Funny Guy blog over at TheLedger.com – “Does Political Comedy Undermine Democracy” – was preposterous to me when it came up on my Google alert. It seemed like one of those inherently flawed questions that people like me in the media often ask to try to get provocative answers and stir up some kind of debate, which is usually about as nuanced and useful as a metal geek slap fight over VH1’s “Top 100 Guitar Solos of the 80s.”

But it turns out, the premise was neither Crook’s not Stevenson Swanson, who wrote the article for the Chicago Tribune that Crook reprinted for his blog. The idea actually belongs to University of Iowa professor Russell Peterson, who has written a book called Strange Bedfellows: How Late-Night Comedy Turns Democracy into a Joke. Peterson, the story notes, tried his hand at stand-up comedy in the early 1990s and has also worked as a political cartoonist. And there are a couple of interesting side notes to his premise.

You can read the piece yourself on the Tribune site here, or, if that link stops functioning, at Crook’s blog here.

To be fair, I haven’t read Peterson’s book, so you’ll have to take any criticism of his premise with a grain of salt. But if his thesis has been presented correctly in the Tribune article, Peterson believes that late night comedians are a threat to the American system of democracy because they promote the belief that it makes no difference who you vote for, that every candidate is equally bad, and there’s no point in engaging in the process.

"I really do think that this sort of belief, that it doesn't matter, is one of the most damaging beliefs that a democracy can harbor,” Peterson is quoted in the Tribune as saying, adding later, "I don't think comedy invented that belief, but it's one of the most important avenues through which it is expressed."

I was about ready to tap out at that point. Certainly the rampant corruption at the presidential level on down for the past twenty-five years and the general disrespect that politicians show for each other and sometimes their own office has to be the more pressing problem here.

Watergate, Iran-Contra, the Lewinski affair, and the current administration’s bumbling of everything from the so-called “War On Terror” to the hiring and firing practices at the Attorney General’s office – the list is long, inglorious, and stretches back to around the time I was actually conceived. I love political comedy, especially the hardest hitting stuff by firebrands like Barry Crimmins and Bill Hicks and the above-the-fray perspective Mort Sahl is still offering, if you can catch him. But as much as I admire someone who can connect with a solid swing of satire, these people are generally only pointing out the damage politicians have done to themselves.

In that respect, if you are going to blame comedians for undermining democracy, you have to put them fairly far down on the list of the indicted, with the politicians themselves first on the list, and anyone who actually tells us what they’re doing second. It’s like arresting a guy for arson when he calls 9-1-1 about a burning building.

But that’s when the story got interesting. Apparently, part of Peterson’s thesis is the idea that late night comedians are helping to create an indifferent attitude toward the system because they are not dealing with substantive issues. In other words, their very inertness makes them dangerous.

Stevenson summarizes the idea thusly: “Political comedy, at least as it's practiced on the Leno, Letterman and O'Brien shows, tends to focus relentlessly on personality flaws, such as Bush's verbal gaffes or former President Bill Clinton's skirt-chasing, instead of on questions of political policy.”

This is the difference between topical comedy and satire, which is not often discussed, since it is admittedly a bit of comedy nerd hair-splitting. But there is a difference. Some comedians have gotten credit as satirists simply because they told a blow job joke about Bill Clinton or dared to call George W. Bush dumb. The jokes might be funny, depending on the skill of the particular comic, but they don’t tend to delve too deep into the details.

According to the story, Peterson finds Leno and Letterman are going for cheap laughs, and gives a bit more credit to Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, and Stephen Colbert for bending more toward the satirical. There’s a decent argument there, especially considering that Leno and Letterman, both on network television, have a much larger audience to please than Stewart, Maher, and Colbert, whose shows air on cable. Leno has professed a sort of fast food philosophy to writing for the Tonight Show (you can find the exact quote if you can find his 2004 appearance on Inside the Actor’s Studio), and when you’re in a ratings war, you’re going to have a hard time doing anything edgy or potentially alienating, a concept to which the Tribune article also alludes.

But even if you accept the premise that the glib nature of Leno and Letterman’s topical humor make for lower standards, it’s a tough leap to say that makes them dangerous. And it’s a bit of a logic puzzle, at least in terms of Peterson’s argument, to think that the more satirical comics are less dangerous than more inert comics because they might actual damage a politician’s reputation in the minds of their audience by dealing with more substantive issues. Start picking at details like that, and suddenly you’re trapped on M.C. Escher’s stairmaster.

Ultimately, it’s a classic straw man argument. If late night television disappeared right now, democracy wouldn’t suddenly regain its buoyancy with a flood of informed participation. I’m fairly sure that’s not Peterson’s argument, but if not, what could possibly be filling all those pages in a book called Strange Bedfellows: How Late-Night Comedy Turns Democracy into a Joke?

I’ll report back if I get my hands on it. If anyone has read it, please comment on this post and let us know what you think.

OC Interview/Review: Go See Gary Louris!

On April 1, Gary Louris and Vetiver put on a fantastic show at the Somerville Theatre for about fifty people. I had mixed feelings, enjoying such a great night of music, wondering why one of America’s best songwriters can’t draw more people on the strength of his catalogue with the Jayhawks, not to mention Golden Smog, and with a solid, tuneful solo album – his first – in stores for a couple of months.

Louis and company started out with “Omaha Nights” from the new Vagabonds album, and meandered through Louris’s considerable history all night long. Jayhawks classics “I’d Run Away,” “Blue,” and “Waiting for the Sun” pleased longtime fans, as did the lost nugget “Everybody Gets By.” But no one got antsy during the new stuff, either. The traditional country of “She Only Calls Me On Sundays” and the delicate “D.C. Blues” were much enhanced by Eric Heywood’s ace pedal steel playing. “To Die a Happy Man” and “Vagabonds” fit well with one-offs like the Dixie Chicks co-write “Everybody Knows” and the pure pop joy of “Every Word” from the movie Wordplay. “I Wanna Get High” went from psychedelic folk to blistering acid rock.

Louris was relaxed and in good humor throughout, pointing out his in-laws in the audience (his wife is from Worcester). He came back out for a solo encore, introducing the Golden Smog song “Listen Joe” by saying it was a happy little tune, and now every time he says “surprise, surprise” his young son replies, “everyone dies.”

I had tried to see Louris with a friend of mine a couple of weeks prior when I was visiting L.A., but his gig at the El Rey was canceled due to poor ticket sales. In light of that and what I saw, I would urge any Louris fans to see this tour. Vetiver is a more than capable backing band, and their nimble, earnest folk rock set is a perfect opener to the show.

To familiarize you a bit with the new album, here is an interview I did with Louris last October, while he was still mixing Vagabonds. Part of this wound up in an article for Harp Magazine (which, sadly, just ceased publication). I had only gotten to listen to a few unmixed tracks, e-mailed to me by Rykodisc so I could ask more specific questions. I was more than pleased with the final version, once I got a hold of it a month or so later. New Seasons, the album he produced with the Sadies last year, is also well worth picking up. And I look forward to the new Louris/Mark Olson record, due out within the next few months, which Louris also talks about here.

Has it been strange to be in the studio without the Jayhawks?

It wasn’t. I’ve been in enough other situations in recording studios with different people. Maybe that was part of the reason I was surrounded by some friends on this session. With Chris Robinson, I felt comfortable. Some of the guys in the band I had known before. So there was already a camaraderie built up.

Who are the other players on the album?

A guy named Otto Hauser, he plays in bands like Vetiver, and I believe Espers and bands like that. A guy named Jonathan Wilson who’s kind of an L.A. friend of mine who kind of hosts the infamous Wednesday night jam sessions up in Laurel Canyon every Wednesday which really has become kind of a clearing house for a lot of L.A. musicians and people who are passing through. Any night, there might be like four different drummers, three different keyboard players, different singers, guitar players, and bass players. Everybody from Maroon 5 to Beachwood Sparks to anything. There are a lot of different people who go up there. That’s kind of how I got to know a lot of people who play on the record.

And also Adam MacDougal, keyboards. Jonathan Wilson played bass and guitar. Josh Grange played pedal steel. And then we had this group of people who sang depending on the song. There were a few songs where everybody sang, and it was like Jenny Lewis, Susanna Hoffs, Chris Robinson, Jonathan Rice, and Andy Kick-Havic, he’s the lead singer in Vetiver. The Chapin sisters. I’m trying to remember who else. That’s mainly the main voices on it.

It’s amazing how that Laurel Canyon scene persists, going back to the days of Frank Zappa and all those folks.

Yeah, I was just at a party last night at Frank Zappa’s house, the famous log cabin. I thought it burned down, but I guess it didn’t. Yeah, it persists, you know, because it was such a magical time and a convergence of all different kinds of musicians. It’s hard to let go of. IT appeals to me just because of the music that came out of it. And you know I just found it’s just really a great group of people. They’re into the music, there’s not a lot of posturing that sometimes you get in rock bands. People just want to play and hang out and I’ve made some real good friends.

Do you live around there?

No, I live in Minneapolis. I still live in Minneapolic, but I come out here. I love it out here, actually.

Where was the album recorded, mostly?

It was all recorded at a place called Sage and Sound in LA. It’s a little kind of old school LA studio right near Ocean Way off Sunset.

Is there any particular reason behind choosing that spot?

Chris Robinson had been aware of it and I had actually been there in the 90s when we were recording at Ocean Way. I walked in and remembered it. It was a good deal, and had a vibey-ness to it. Those two things worked for us.

How did you collaborate with Chris? Who did what?

Well, Chris was kind of the executive producer dude. I trust his musical ear, because I don’t know anyone who’s more into music than Chris, and who’s been a supporter of mine since the early nineties. So there’s a trust factor you have to have with a producer and I just had it with Chris. And I didn’t need anybody to tell me necessarily how to record, because I’d been in enough and I’ve produced things on my own. I just needed somebody who would get the vibe going, you know, who I could lean on if I was unsure of a song or whatever.

Chris basically helped me sift through the numerous songs and kind of whittle it down and kind of helped to assemble the band. And Thom Monahan, who was the engineer and really kind of co-producer was brought on board through Chris. He assembled a lot of the players and helped me sift the songs. I can be somewhat unsure and a little bit negative and he was always a positive energy in the studio. He’s a high energy guy, you know? And I think that was good for me.

Did you share a producing credit on the album?

No, I think it was really Chris and I think Thom might have some production credit on it. I’m not sure how that works.

Did producing the Sadies make you approach this album differently?

No, not really. I’d done things in the past, production-wise. I suppose there are things that creep in. I know just from producing bands that I try to walk the walk, you know? If I tell them I believe in something and tell them that’s the way it should be done then when I go in and make my own record I should really do it. In this case, I really wanted to do it in as much of a live situation as possible. I just feel like, if that can be done, that’s the best way to do it. It’s the peak of creativity. If you get people playing together and off of each other, you get that synergy or synchronicity or whatever you want to call it, I think it makes the most important music. Obviously you can spend two years like Brian Wilson with ‘Good Vibrations’ trying to make something magical if you have the players at your disposal. But otherwise, if you can make it live and quick, it’s the most inspired kind of music.

Was most or all of the album recorded live with everybody playing in the same room?

Yeah. I’d say 90%. My lead vocal and guitar, the steel guitar, keyboard, drums, and bass were all live. And then the choir, I call them the choir, but the background vocals, were overdubbed. Percussion or occasional guitar parts or keyboards were overdubbed. But I’d say 90% was recorded live.

Is that the way you’ve generally recorded in the past, with the Jayhawks and other bands you’ve produced?

Not always. I think starting with – Sound of Lies I don’t remember. A lot of that was live. But Rainy Day Music was when I was working with Ethan Johns and he really convinced me that I can do it, that you can sing and play and keep it. You don’t have to lay down a scratch and go back. You can do it. When play at the same time as you sing, you sing around your guitar playing and you play your guitar around your vocal naturally. If you overdub it, you kind of mainline everything. It’s very solid, but the dynamics aren’t as good. So I kind of try to do that with whoever I can whenever I’m producing. But it doesn’t always work. With the Sadies we didn’t do it that way. It just wasn’t the way they wanted to do it. And it worked out great. You know, there’s many ways to skin a cat. When possible I like to do it live. But the early Jayhawks records weren’t that way. They were all overdubbed.

Hollywood Town Hall and --

Hollywood Town Hall, Tomorrow the Green Grass. Those were all done where you just go out and sing scratches and you keep the bass and drums and not much else and you build back up.

Did you feel any pressure, either internally or externally, to make this record sound any different than the Jayhawks?

I did want it to sound different but I think it wasn’t a pressure situation. It was just that I was just in a different mode of working and songwriting. I think most people who have heard the stuff think it sounds like me but doesn’t necessarily sound like the Jayhawks. I guess that’s a testament to the Jayhawks, to the other members, that they just couldn’t be replaced. It’s me and it still has a Jayhawks element because I was a large part of the Jayhawks, but different at the same time.

And the other reason to use that studio and Chris was because I’d made a record in January of last year with Mark Olson. To do that, we really wanted to get somebody who would make us feel comfortable in the studio because we hadn’t played together in a long time. And Chris was just a friend and he got us in Sage and Sound and everything went so well. And that’s when I thought, well, I think I could do my own record with Chris also, in this studio.

I have about five tracks that were sent to me today, so if my grasp of isn’t so deep, I apologize. But your voice is a lot more up front on this without quite as much harmony. That’s what impressed me about the songs I’ve heard so far. Was that purposeful, or was that just a function of this being your record as opposed to a band record?

It wasn’t really purposeful, it just came naturally out of what I was writing and feeling more like a solo guy. I know that a good friend of mine who’s a musician came in and listened to what we were doing as we were doing it, and he said, it’s you but it’s different. It doesn’t sound like we’re waiting for the guy to come in and sing his harmony on it like a Jayhawks song. It doesn’t sound like that, it doesn’t sound like we’re waiting on that other track that you sang on to make it that dual harmony thing. And I did that, Mark Olson and I did that total duo harmony thing and it was great and I still love it. But for this record, I was embracing the singer/songwriter dude in me, I guess.

I haven’t put my finger on what’s different exactly, yet. I have “To Die a Happy Man,” and that’s more delicate maybe than what I’ve heard in the past. I can’t put a better description on it just yet, I have to listen to it a bit more to get the vibe.

I think part of it was I got into the finger-picking, kind of the English and straight folk finger-picking and some alternate tunings. I don’t think there is on that song, but on a couple of other songs. I think that changes the feel. I’ve never done that before on any Jayhawks record, where we actually got the real folky finger-picking.

“She Only Calls Me on Sundays” was a bit more traditional country. Was that something you were eager to explore?

I guess I’ve always felt like we have touched on it, but I think that’s probably the most traditional country song I’ve ever written. It wasn’t like, I’m finally going to get to do this or that, it wasn’t that kind of approach. Just kind of happened. I wrote these songs, and these were the ones that made the final cut. There were a lot of other ones, maybe some sounded like the old Jayhawks that didn’t make it. I didn’t sit down and plan it. Although I did plan for kind of a more folky approach. It ended up becoming a bit more of a rock record than it had originally planned to be. Just naturally kind of grew out of it once the band started playing together. But I didn’t even really have a band until a week before I showed up to record. I came out a week early and we had a few days with the bass player and the drummer, and the keyboard player joined us a few days after that. And the last day the steel player joined us for rehearsal. So after four or five days we kind of coalesced as a band kind of organically. Put it that way.

Should I say there are plans to tour?

There are plans to tour. In today’s world if you want to sell any records you kind of have to get out there. I don’t think I’ll be one of those guys who tours ten months out of the year. But I miss playing and I’d like to do a fair share. And I’d also like to do a little bit more where I go out on my own, like a one-man person – [laughs] a one-man person – like a solo show kind of thing once in a while, too. That’s something I’d like to develop. A lot of these songs, I was in an isolation booth, and if you just put those two mics on, it’s just me and the guitar, a lot of those songs work that way. Si I’m hoping to do some things like that, I hope.

The things that I’ve heard so far seem like they would adapt well to a one-person sort of environment.

That’s how they were written and they weren’t demoed into big productions. I have some songs that we didn’t record with the band that I demoed. They’re a little stranger, a little more experimental. Those I might use as bonus tracks or b-sides that I just played in my basement.

Were any of these songs you had kicking around for a while that didn’t quite fit other projects?

None of them have are old enough to have been around for a Jayhawks thing. They’re all things that I’ve written in the past year or two. Nothing was like leftover from a Golden Smog thing or a co-write. These are all things I wrote for this record.

Are there any more electric tunes on the album?

Not knowing what you got already… I didn’t play a lot of electric guitar. There’s only a couple of songs I actually played electric guitar on. And maybe on the next record I’ll do something where I become more of a lead player again. But right now I wanted to be the guy singing the song with the acoustic guitar. That was my vision at the time. It still rocks, but it wasn’t intended to be a rock record.

Was that with an eye toward doing solo shows?

I think I really started getting the bug for it when I went out with Olson on some tours and just the simplicity of being a guy with a guitar, just showing up. It’s not out of laziness, but at times, it’s just a great way to tour. It’s really rewarding to play without having a wall of sound. And also, I just found over the years, I don’t have a loud voice. I don’t have a rock voice. I have a softer voice and sometimes it’s been hard over the years for people to hear me. And I think this approach is going to be better for the singing. And that’s my own damn fault, because I used to be the loudest guy onstage with the electric guitar. And I’m not saying I don’t want to do any of that, but I do like the idea of, I think my strength is my singing and songwriting in a quieter form.

Was that maybe how the Jayhawks style formed, with the harmonies being so prominent? You felt your voice wasn’t quite loud enough to handle it by itself?

No. I don’t think that was it. I think it was just a natural progression or the kind of music that we were listening to, the fact that Mark and I found we could sing well together and we complimented each other. It wasn’t anything to do with volume. Mark had a pretty good voice, and as long as I was singing up high, it kind of cut through. But as far as the lead male voice, sometimes it was a struggle to hear me.

That’s something I hadn’t thought of, that I hear more of your lower register on this. Is that where you’re more comfortable singing?

No, I think I have a higher voice, and that’s where I get my power. But when it’s quiet, I can get down there and people can hear it. I think it’s a range that some people aren’t really familiar with me singing. That’s what maybe people are finding makes it sound so much different from the Jayhawks.

Do you enjoy singing down there a bit more?

I like being all over, but there’s nothing like hitting the high notes for me because that’s where I can really push it. The low notes have to be very breathy and kind of almost spoken because I’m not naturally a low singer. But that just seems to be how my songs work. You have the low verse and the high chorus kind of thing.

Did you do anything in the studio this time that was a huge departure from what you’d done before?

Only the fact that I was playing with a bunch of people I hadn’t played with, it wasn’t a Jayhawks situation. On Rainy Day Music on that song “Madman,” we really got kind of a group ensemble playing all at once. On this record, all the songs were like that. And I think the players all kind of rose to the occasion. When I listen to it, I’m just amazed at what good parts everybody came up with and how they played off of each other. “Rainy Day Music” we played it mostly live but it was mostly just the three of us, and then we augmented it with overdubs afterwards. This is more of a pretty much the song was done almost when we took off the headphones and walked into the control room, the song was 90% there or complete. Other than that, we had just a little bit more instruments that you might hear on an English folk record or a psych-folk record. Harmoniums and some weird kind of ear candy kind of celestes and things. But we didn’t do anything really bizarrely experimental as far as the recording goes.

Seems like with your solo album and the new album with Mark Olson, it would be tough to avoid the shadow of the Jayhawks. Especially with the duo album.

That’s okay, I’m not trying to totally escape. I’m really proud of who we were and I’m not going to be one of those guys who never plays a Jayhawks song because that’s kind of silly. I don’t want to hide from it, I don’t want to confuse people, either. If you feel like making a record with a guy who used to be in your band, you just can’t worry about those things. It’s just something we wanted to do. If that confuses people, then so be it.

But it was deliberate that you wanted it to come out after your solo album was out?

Well, it wasn’t my idea so much as the label’s. I think they wanted to, again, not confuse people and say, this is Gary’s thing, and then there’s also Mark and Gary. But I think they wanted to the first thing that comes out post-Jayhaks to be my solo record. And Mark has his record out, which is a great record. So he’s doing his thing and I’m doing my thing, and then we’re going to join up.

For me, part of the reason that I got out of the Jayhawks was to be able to be free to kind of move around and do a number of things and not be beholden to other people. When you’re in a band, you have to do things as a group, you have to consider other members, if they want to play shows or tour, and I just couldn’t do that anymore. I needed to spend more time at home and those sorts of things. And have more time to work with some different people, even it’s somebody I had worked with in the past, or produce somebody. I just wanted to have that freedom. There was no real problem with the band itself.

So you don’t see either the solo stuff or any other albums as sort of your main gig.

I think I see my record as being a bit more of my focus. But the Olson/Louris record is also very important to me.

I mean past that, I mean down the road, from here on out, seeing yourself more as a solo player.

Yes. I think that’s fair to say. I still like a band situation, and if I can float in and out of some band situations I would still do that, too. I just can’t be in one thing, doing the same thing over and over again.

Barry Crimmins Interview on MediaBistro.com

MediaBistro contacted political satirist Barry Crimmins for his thoughts on the recent Randi Rhodes story. Short but insightful. Take a look.