Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Mean Creek -- The Definition of Sound


The best way to Mean Creek’s sound is simply to listen to them. It’s easy to forget the obvious as a writer, always trying to find whatever perfect key is going to unlock the correct feelings in a reader about music they’ve never heard. Back in August, I wrote about Mean Creek for an item in the Boston Globe’s Sidekick section. I got their debut album, Around the Bend, and three-song EP in time to listen through exactly once before I had to describe their sound. This is what I came up with – “Mean Creek's folksy Simon & Garfunkel harmonies anchor a sound that alternates between jangling and overdriven guitars.”

But once I saw them at the gig I had previewed, I realized there was a lot more to them. There is a hyper-emotive, atmospheric aspect that remind me of the Shins. There are droning guitars like the shoe-gazers, and elements pulled from a multitude of other sources that, taken together, make for an original sound. It seems Spin had to invent a word for them in their review of a show with Straylight Express. They called them “country-core,” which sounds to me like Gwar in overalls playing electric banjos. If you’re reading this on Tuesday, November 6, you’re in luck. You can go see them open for Sea Wolf at the Middle East Upstairs and describe their sound for yourself.

I caught up with Chris Keene (vocals, guitar) and Aurore Ounjian (vocals, guitar, harmonica) by e-mail about the show.

I never heard the term “country-core” until the Spin.com review. Do you identify with that? I hear elements of folk, especially in the harmonies, guitar-centric indie rock like Built to Spill, alt.country.

The term "country-core" is new to us. We're definitely influenced equally by folk music like Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and Pete Seeger, as well as rock bands like Nirvana, The Pixies, and Buffalo Tom.

Are you a different band from gig to gig? Seems like you’d be equally comfortable on a bill with heavier bands or doing an acoustic set in a listening room.

I think we're the same band gig to gig. Live we get really excited about playing and it can get really loud and energetic. Our songs fluctuate a lot between being really soft and really loud. We hope the diversity is a good thing. We love playing with really heavy bands, and really soft bands, and will hopefully continue to be able to play with both.

Do you consider yourselves a political band? You don’t necessarily make that obvious, but you can hear it in songs like “Not to Dream.”

We definitely don't consider ourselves a political band. Songs like "Not To Dream" are really just personal songs just like all our other songs. Whenever we sing about anything that is remotely political its main purpose is to express how our environment makes us feel, and how it affects us, not so much trying to send some sort of political message.

Is the new EP part of a larger project you’re working on?

Originally it was going to be released as a 3 song EP, but we will be recording more new songs before the end of the year and we're in the process of figuring out the next step, and what makes the most sense to do with all our new material.

What kind of response have you gotten opening up for Straylight Run?

All our shows with Straylight Run have been absolutely incredible. They are a great band, and their fans are absolutely amazing. It's mostly a teenage crowd and they are unbelievably supportive of every band that plays. They come to the show early and go right to the front of the stage as soon as they get into the club. When we toured the UK with them we sold out of every copy of our album we brought with us. It's inspiring to see people that excited about music.

Do you think the Sea Wolf gig will open up a new audience for you in Boston?

We really hope so. That's the main reason we like supporting national touring bands in Boston, and just in general playing with all different kinds of bands. In the past its worked out well, so hopefully it will continue to be that way.

Saturday, November 3, 2007

OC-Ed: Random Thoughts

I try to stay away from random thoughts on this blog, but here are a couple of things I’ve been thinking about the past week.

If I have the story straight, Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey isn’t sure that waterboarding is illegal torture. That seems dumb enough on the face of it – the worlds are mutually inclusive – but it gets worse.

President Bush and others in the Republican camp don’t think it’s fair to grill Mukasey about it because he hasn’t been briefed about it, so he can’t know if it’s torture or not. So, to sum up the administration’s official position on waterboarding and torture in general:

1. We’re not torturing anyone.
2. Only people with high level clearance can be briefed on whether or not waterboarding is torture. By the way, we’re not doing it, but only people with high level clearance to official U.S. policy will have access to the specifics of how waterboarding is done.
3. In other words, we know it’s torture, but Mukasey can’t possibly know until we tell him what we’ve (not) been doing and he reads how it’s (not) been done in great detail in the official record, so it’s unfair to ask him about it.

There you have it, clear as day. Stop asking Mukasey about waterboarding.

On a completely different note, I heard something during Game Three of the World Series that amused and puzzled me. I’m a fan of Warren Zevon’s music – the dark sense of humor, the grasp of history, the baritone to falsetto dripping with sarcasm. So anytime I happen upon a Zevon song in an unexpected place, it’s a pleasant surprise. His words are important. He was good at words, had a folkie’s appreciation for them and paid attention to them.

But I’m convinced no one has ever listened to the words of “Excitable Boy,” seemingly one of the more popular tunes marketers and programmers have taken out of context to use as background music. I’ve heard it as musak. I’ve heard it as incidental music. And during the Series, it was outro music behind a quick interview on the way to a commercial, conveniently cutting out before the vocals started. So before it winds up in a Burger King commercial, here are the lyrics, for your consideration:

Excitable Boy
Warren Zevon & LeRoy P. Marinell

Well, he went down to dinner in his Sunday best
Excitable boy, they all said
And he rubbed the pot roast all over his chest
Excitable boy, they all said

He took in the four a.m. show at the Clark
Excitable boy, they all said
And he bit the usherette's leg in the dark
Excitable boy, they all said

Well, he's just an excitable boy

He took little Suzie to the Junior Prom
Excitable boy, they all said
And he raped her and killed her, then he took her home
Excitable boy, they all said

Well, he's just an excitable boy

After ten long years they let him out of the home
Excitable boy, they all said
And he dug up her grave and built a cage with her bones
Excitable boy, they all said

Well, he's just an excitable boy

Friday, October 26, 2007

Howard Frank Mosher -- An American Writer


Howard Frank Mosher is, in the best sense, an American writer. He captures the thrill of the frontier and the bitter friction between progress and tradition with a keen sense of his characters’ emotion and their place in a historical timeline. And he takes a particular setting, his beloved Vermont, and paints a visceral, nuanced picture in the imagination in his novels and short stories, including his latest, On Kingdom Mountain. Three of his novels have been made into films by director and fellow Vermonter Jay Craven, the latest being Disappearances starring Kris Kristofferson. I caught up with him by e-mail to talk about his extraordinary body of work.

You set up a lot of early expectations for a sort of feel-good rural anti-authority story in the beginning of On Kingdom Mountain and twist them all the way through. To some extent, that’s just what any author does to create a good story, but you seem to be purposefully destroying clichés (from the resolution of Kingdom Mountain road dispute to Henry Satterfield’s fate).

First and foremost, I’ve always regarded myself as a storyteller. In order to keep the story and characters of On Kingdom Mountain from being eclipsed by the preservationist theme of the book, I set the story in 1930, long before the term “preservationist” existed, and left the resolution of the story open-ended.

The level of historical detail is amazing in many of your stories. I’m thinking of things like measuring off dam partitions or how the Duchess’s gun functions. How much of this do you know from direct experience and how much do you have to research?

I’m an avid outdoorsman, and I’ve worked in the woods as a logger, on farms,
and for newspapers and magazines. Along the way, I’ve picked up a lot of information that has been useful. While I’ve done a fair amount of historical research on topics ranging from the great New England log drives to the Lewis and Clark Expedition, I like to write the early drafts of my books first, then incorporate the research later, in order to fit the research to the story instead of the story to the historical details. Also, I invent a lot of history-much to the dismay of my historian friends.

How much of the Vermont timeline (floods, political movements, treaties, etc) is true to life in the books?

Most of the Vermont timeline – the Great Flood of 1927 in Where the Rivers Flow North; the Prohibition-era rumrunning in Disappearances; and the French Canadian immigration in Marie Blythe – is fairly accurate. That stated, I’m an inveterate inventor. For instance, in On Kingdom Mountain I move the famous “St. Albans Raid” of 1864, in which 21 Confederate soldiers rode out of Canada and stole nearly $100,000 from several banks in St. Albans, Vermont, 50 miles to the northeast, and recreate the raid in my fictional Kingdom County.

You reuse a lot of names, Covilles and Kinnesons. In your mind, do all of these characters exist in the same setting? I could imagine, for example, Pilgrim, lost in On Kingdom Mountain, wandering into another of your short stories.

The Covilles, Kittredges, Kinnesons, Allens, and a host of other “Kingdom
County” characters from my stories do all exist in the same setting. Pilgrim Kinneson, Miss Jane’s uncle in On Kingdom Mountain, missing in action in the Civil War, will reappear in my next novel, Walking to Gatlinburg.

Are you trying to get to everyone’s story in the state eventually?

I’m trying to get to the story of as many of the great Northeast Kingdom (Kingdom County) individualists, whom I met and knew back in the 1960s and who dated back to the Depression and Prohibition eras, as possible.

When were you first inspired by Vermont?


I was first inspired by Vermont on the day my wife and I arrived in Orleans, about twelve miles south of the Canadian border. We had driven here from central New York to interview for a couple of teaching jobs. It was the last day of April, 1964, and we were just 21. Right in the middle of the main street were two guys having a fist fight, which they suspended to let us by. When I rolled down the car window and asked them for directions to the high school, they piled into the back seat and directed us there – then they got out and resumed their fight in the middle of School Street. We knew we’d come to a frontier.

Are people surprised by the mix of culture in Vermont – the French-Canadian influence, the traditional blue bloods, the rural traditions all battling within Vermont society. Not sure what comes to mind when the rest of the country thinks of Vermont.


There’s a wonderful mix of culture in Vermont, but also an insidious tradition of latent racism and xenophobia. In 1968, a black family moved to Irasburg, where we live – the first African American to settle in the town. Their home was attacked by nightriders with shotguns, and they were driven out of town. It was the kind of event I would have expected to happen in Mississippi in the 1930s but not Vermont in the 1960s. The racist attack inspired my fifth novel, A Stranger in the Kingdom. What’s more, until quite recently, there was a great deal of prejudice against French Canadians in the Kingdom. I think much of the country regards Vermont as picture-postcard perfect. What I’ve learned, over my 43 years in the Kingdom, is that racism and xenophobia are, sadly, universal.

Do you ever hear from people who visit Vermont because of your books?

Occasionally, readers from elsewhere in America do visit Vermont to see where my stories take place. Usually they’re baffled. The geography is quite different from the settings in my books. Not long ago, I visited Faulkner’s home in Oxford, Mississippi. Suddenly, the tables were turned. When I looked for Faulkner’s town and countryside, and didn’t really find them, I realized that the only place they really exist is in his books. The same is true about my literary locale.

No question so I’ll ask my own. Who are your favorite writers? Answer: Shakespeare, Dickens, Mark Twain, Jane Austen.

Do you collaborate with Jay Craven on the film versions of your work?

Jay Craven has consulted me closely about each of his films based on my stories. I love his movies. His vision, however, is entirely his own. I believe he is unexcelled at casting his films, directing them, and exploring the complex relationships between the characters.

Are you and Mr. Craven neighbors? I know he does a lot of filming within a few miles of his house.

Yes, Jay and I are Northeast Kingdom neighbors.

I don’t see a lot of writers capturing the sense of wonder and adventure that you capture so well. Do you think a lot of writers stay away from that?

With the notable exception of first-rate suspense writers like James Lee Burke andElmore Leonard, many “post-modern” American writers concentrate on exploring the inner lives of their characters. I’m a bit more of a traditional storyteller. Books I love best – Lonesome Dove, Cold Mountain, Richard Russo’s just released masterpiece, Bridge of Sighs, in which, for a whole town, the great American dream goes about as wrong as it possibly can yet still seems worth pursuing – tell a great story and explore the psyches of their wonderful characters. That’s the best of both worlds.

I’ve heard from a book rep that you’ve already finished the next book, which he says is you best yet. Care to offer a quick preview?

Yes, thank you. My next book, Walking to Gatlinburg, is the story of 17-year-old Morgan Kinneson, who, in 1864, does in fact walk from “Kingdom County,” Vermont, to southern Tennessee, down in the Great Smoky Mountains, in search of his older brother, Pilgrim, missing in action. Talk about non-stop action and adventure. Walking to Gatlinburg is a Howard Frank Mosher adventure novel to rival my first novel, Disappearances. Of course, the first major review of Disappearances, back in 1977, was headlined “Vermont Writer Should Disappear.” I nailed that review up to the side of my barn, blasted the smithereens out of it with my sixteen gauge shotgun – and kept right on writing.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

John Oliver is an Optimistic Curmudgeon


John Oliver’s job on “The Daily Show” is to take what’s essentially bad news – the collection of half-wits running for president, terrorism, racism, et cetera – and make fun of it. Considering that he is dealing with the same news cycle as network news programs, his first reaction to tragedy has to be to find comedy in it somehow.

“My instinct is always no, oh, that could be funny,” he says. “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.”

Watching the news, it’s easy to think the world is in the worst shape it has ever been. And, as the cliché goes, if you’re not upset, you’re not paying attention. But taking a historical perspective (read Voltaire’s Candide), it seems things have always been pretty terrible, and you wonder if you just need to ignore the worst of it to preserve your own sanity and trust the world will keep turning, an idea I brought up with Oliver. “You’ve just got to have some half-hopeful voice saying, let’s hope our gardens grow at the end of the day,” he says. “That’s pretty much all you can hope for.”

That’s when I brought up the idea of being an optimistic curmudgeon, a philosophy that seems to resonate with Oliver. “I think that’s the best way to be, though,” he says. “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.”

Oliver says that’s why he has always been a political comic, going back to his days in stand-up and writing for the BBC in his native England. Comedy has been his way of dealing with more serious issues (Will Kaufman wrote an excellent book about this dynamic, called The Comedian as Confidence Man: Studies in Irony Fatigue, which is now out of print). “I guess that has always been my coping strategy with the world,” he says. “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,

I interviewed “Daily Show” correspondent John Oliver for this week’s Comedy Notes column in The Boston Globe, which you can read in the Friday, October 12 edition. We did wind up addressing the philosophy of the optimistic curmudgeon, so I thought I’d include that detail here. See the Globe for a more in-depth story.

Friday, October 5, 2007

Ken Carlson and The Comedians magazine


I first heard about The Comedians magazine when their editor, Ken Carlson, contacted me about a profile of Boston comic Tim McIntire he was writing. I was excited to hear about any magazine that would write a lengthy profile of a comic that I knew so well from the local scene for a market outside of Boston. Shecky and Punchline are both great publications – I’ve had some great conversations with Brian and Traci over at Shecky, which is a great industry resource for comics, and I occasionally contribute to Punchline.

But The Comedians has its own niche, with longer pieces on a few bigger name comics like Mario Cantone and Jim Norton but also great, lesser-known acts, at least on a national scale, like McIntire and Matt McCarthy. (If you notice a New England bias, that’s partly because Carlson played rooms like the Comedy Studio and Portland’s Comedy Connection when he was a comic, before the demands of grown-up life forced him to put it aside). The Comedians is also a fascinating peek inside the New York City scene, where the print version is mainly distributed, but Carlson will sometimes stray as far as Israel for comedy to interview comics like Yonatan Friedrich.

I caught up with Carlson by e-mail recently to talk shop about comedy and his vision for the magazine.

Did you set out to create a local New York magazine for comedians, or have your plans always been for a wider audience?

When I started the comedians, I wasn't quite sure of the path it would take, but I am happy with its direction. One night last summer, I was sitting in the back room of an ordinary Lower East Side bar watching a free comedy show. One after another, the host introduced these really talented comics with solid credentials (this guy wrote for "The Chappelle Show", this guy recently appeared on "Late Night with David Letterman", this woman was on "Live at Gotham", etc). At that moment I knew I wanted to develop something that would focus on creative comics and try to discuss their craft in an honest way. It's certainly a niche product, but not solely intended for comedians. While New York represents the center of stand-up, so many of the acts work nationally, so it has appeal in other markets.

How did you get in touch with Yonatan Friedrich in Israel?

Yonatan is a comic from TelAviv who contacted me. He liked the website and reached out to me. We emailed back and forth a few times and I thought it would make for an interesting story to get his perspective on stand-up. We ran that article over the spring and I received a lot of positive feedback from it. That was one of those instances that opened my mind a bit to include more than just comic interviews with local performers and reviews in the comedians. Now we feature improv groups, humor columns, foreign comics performing in NYC like Glenn Wool, a Canadian working out of London, and industry professionals.

That's something that fascinates me - how stand-up comedy is perceived and created in countries that don't have a tradition of it. How do people even conceive an act in that kind of environment, and how do you judge expectations?

You have to take a few things into consideration. One, certain cultures are incredibly uptight about controversial material. Look at America where we have "freedom of speech," but comedians have been lambasted and arrested for what they've said on stage. But while jokes about car bombs or the holocaust may get you into trouble here, in Israel, it's something that has affected every single family and thus more acceptable, as I understand it, because the comic shares the common background.

How did you make the move from Internet to paper?

The first couple of issue of the comedians were published online and in print. The website and the copies I handed out for free acted as sort of a test to see what people thought. People were very complementary about it so I decided to move forward. I focused on the print because it's written with print in mind and I thought it would stand out against all the websites. It's a bit of a throwback. One comedian I spoke with said it reminded him of an engineering journal from the 50's. I like printed materials. They give the reader a sense of permanence.

How do you choose who to cover? Is there a specific set of criteria?

There are a lot of smart, creative comics that perform in New York. I try to feature those that generally reflect the entire comedy scene.

Do you see yourselves competing with online mags like Shecky and Punchline?

Not at all. There's plenty of room for media outlets of all forms. Shecky and Punchline are two good ones. It comes down to content and point of view. A lot of websites treat stand-up in a goofy, immature manner. From the start, I have tailored the feature articles in the comedians from in-person conversations I have with the artists. The majority of the text are the comics' words, not mine. I'm not terribly interested in their bios or backgrounds. I want to know what they think about their craft.

What's your view of the stand-up timeline - who created stand-up, when were its golden years, what the scene is like today?

Stand-up started with Mark Twain. If you combine the performances of Twain with the antics of vaudeville and the nightclub era comedians like Bruce, Rickles, Dangerfield or early Pryor, you have the current form. As far as deciding on what the golden years were or are, it comes down to how old you are. As a baseball fan I'm partial to the players I watched when I was a kid - Rice, Fisk, Yaz, etc. It's the same with comedy. My folks are convinced Jack Benny was the funniest man ever. Today, the kids dig Dane Cook and Dave Chappelle. Many comics will tell you Louis CK is their favorite, but half of this country has never heard of him because he's never had a long-running network sitcom like Seinfeld, Ray Romano, Rosanne, or Kevin James.

There's a stereotype that comedians are actually often anti-social or irretrievably pessimistic. What's your view of that perception?

I wouldn't say anti-social. They can be a bit guarded and apprehensive in certain settings. If you take into account that many of them developed their sense of humor to deal with problems at home; then once they move up everyone seems to want a piece of them, it seems understandable. Really good comics give their audience a sense of who they are and I think that can create unfortunate circumstances as well. That's why most comedians' friends are other comedians. I wouldn't say pessismistic either. Jaded certainly. What successful comic gets up there saying everything is great in my life and nothing is wrong with the world?

What's your view of comedy competitions - good or bad for comedy?

I don't put a lot of stock in them, but I don't suppose they do any harm. If they get exposure and some of the sponsors' money for talented performers, I'm all for that. I'd have more respect for a performer who's spent the last twenty years making than someone who wins a contest.

Do you think the mainstream would ever accept a magazine focused mainly on comedians?


I doubt it. The only exception would be for a major player, like Comedy Central, to use it as a support mechanism to promote their shows. But they have their website which is more in tune to their younger market, so why would they bother?

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Comedy By the Numbers: The Interview


Comedy how-to books are often either dry and humorless or so completely focused on mechanics they miss the most important thing you need to be funny – comic inspiration. Eric Hoffman and Gary Rudoren have written a truly amazing book in Comedy By the Numbers, published by McSweeney’s. It’s simultaneously a satire of how-to books and a useful compendium of all things comedy. They explain everything from sight gags to race humor, breaking down the principals and providing a loving history of stand-up comedy, all with the constant realization that no book can make you funny. And if that weren’t enough, they’ve provided a few video lessons over at Super Deluxe.

I caught up with them by e-mail recently to talk about the book and comedy in general. Thankfully, they do not take my comedy geek questions too seriously.

Do you think you have to be a die-hard stand-up fan to get anything out of the book?

ERIC: Hopefully there's enough there to satisfy any taste. And if a reader doesn't know who an Edgar Kennedy is (the King of the Slow Burn Routine), then maybe they'll check out one of his films and become a fan. That's a happy little story, isn't it?

GARY: Not just stand-up, I think you need to be a die-hard “I like to laugh” fan. We hope people who love stand-up, improv, sketch comedy, making fun of other’s flaws, Jews, the elderly, funny names...etc... will find this book valuable if only to discover more ways to laugh. If you aim to be a professional funny person, you should know your bits & shtick – sometimes if only to avoid them.

Are there any comedy books you consider valuable?

ERIC: Some of our friends have written some great books on comedy. I think the best "how to do comedy" books are the ones that tell you how they made your favorite comedy shows or movies. The Mr. Show book is a great one for that. Sid Caesar's autobiography is quite inspirational - all the "Your Show of Shows" stuff. As far as just straight on comedy books, all of the Python publications are top notch.

GARY: I echo Prof. Hoffman’s choice – Kudos to you, Eric. Also I would add to the library; early National Lampoons, MAD Magazines, Woody Allen’s short stories and essays and also a great book by Garry Marshall called; Wake Me When It’s Funny.

Did you find your editors at McSweeney's were comedy fans? Did they understand what you were trying to do?

GARY: We’re not just going to say they were great because they’re going to read this interview. Dave Eggers and Eli Horowitz were incredibly supportive and we appreciated the fact that they trusted their gut to say that if it was funny and smart to them (a McSweeney’s trademark I think) then it will appeal to a bigger audience. They don’t exactly do focus groups over there.

ERIC: McSweeney's knows what they're doing, comedy-wise. We were on the same "page" as it were from the very beginning. It was a really fun process.

There's an obvious appreciation for comedy history in the book, along with a dead-on satire of all the little tricks and habits. Was that purposeful? Was it hard to strike that balance?

ERIC: There were a few pieces that were thought to be a little too "tributey." There's also a lot of what you would call "dumb" stuff. But that's how we wanted
it, for the sake of variety.

GARY: I think it was important to let the reader know that we were not just two smartasses making fun of the latest comedy fad. We’ve been immersed in this for a long time, have a great mutual appreciation for the process and part of the vibe of the book that we were shooting for was to point out to the casual reader that there ARE some comedians who think all you need to do to make something funny is throw in a hackneyed stereotype. Hopefully, some of the youngsters who buy the book (and it’s totally recommended for kids or anyone who has $14), will learn more about the history of comedy before they repeat it. I’m sorry, this answer could have been funnier, I know.

Do you make a distinction between highbrow and lowbrow comedy? I know others have asked similar questions, but it seems like the best stuff (Woody Allen's "Sleeper" or "Love and Death," Monty Python's "Life of Brian" or "Holy Grail") balance clever material with an unabashed appreciation for a fart joke or someone falling in the mud.

ERIC: That's the very formula we tried to emulate. Everything from pathos to crap jokes.

GARY: Nick, you might have unwittingly inspired Eric to come up with a new marketing slogan for the book! Thanks! I’m sure there are dry definitions out there distinguishing between “high brow” and “low brow” but I think you just named a few great comedy examples that play around with both so-called styles (which because of the inherent cleverness in THAT, could let one label the whole thing as ‘high brow’) – I would also add Mel Brooks to that list for so much of his work. Proving yet again, that the Jews are incredibly funny. Monty Python, if they had had a Jew in their group, would still be working today if you ask me!

Did you get a lot of suggestions from other comedians? I know some are mentioned in the acknowledgments, and it seems like every comic would have one or two hacky comedy concepts they'd want to vent about.

GARY: Early on, when we were putting the list together, some friends & collaborators at The Annoyance Theatre in Chicago, like Matt Walsh, shared our obsession with putting together this list – and it was just a list at the time – of bits, shtick, characters, devices, etc. that so many comedians use. Eric and I later come up with the idea to deconstruct them and create a book trying to explain comedy as if it were an easy formula. Maybe it’s arrogance, but we purposefully didn’t reach out to other comedians for some of their ideas because we felt we were on the right track. Bob Odenkirk, who is not only incredibly funny, but really is a student of and KNOWS comedy, was instrumental in pulling us through the process, but also very respectfully hands off – most concretely, he contributed a phony bibliography that is hilarious. Naomi Odenkirk, who is really responsible for getting the book deal rolling and who was a constant source of editing feedback, was our sounding board and bullshit meter as the book progressed. Is this answer long enough? Sorry, Eric, no time for you to say anything.

Do you guys get to perform together much anymore, given that you're in different cities? Are you working on material for Super Deluxe?

ERIC: Sadly, the various book performances have been the only time Gary and I have performed together in years. And working with Gary is very much like
slipping on an old comfortable toupee. It's a very safe place.

GARY: I guess I’m the old comfortable toupee in this scenario – fine, I’ll take it from you Eric. Along with the live shows, the Superdeluxe videos were a lot of fun to shoot. We’ve got some ideas for more ways to expand the universe in which the “Prof.” and the “Dr.” bring comedy to the masses... stay tuned.

Did you plan the video shorts while you were planning the book or after?

ERIC: Right on the heels of finishing the book we cemented the "deal" with Super Deluxe and began writing right away.

GARY: Yeah, somewhere towards the end of the book, the “what if” idea came up to use these videos to promote the book – and it was a no-brainer for us because we agreed on the style right away. Bob Odenkirk, who directed them, gave us some feedback to tighten them up and was on board with the style. Neil Mahoney, a cameraman and editor who Bob works with, and Bob really nailed it in the final cuts of the shorts.

Would you collaborate on another book? Is there more to be wrung out of this concept?

ERIC: Well, comedy does come in threes, so it would make sense to do at least two more. Maybe an entire book on mirror routines? I can dream.

GARY: The book started out as a pamphlet, so I’ve been thinking that we should do a couple of more pamphlets first, then work our way back up to a booklette and then a tome of additional comedy bits. I’ve already catalogued, for future reference, the “Genius Who Lives At Home With His Mom.” (i.e. Will Ferrell in Wedding Crashers; Kevin Smith in Live Free or Die Hard; and Anthony Anderson in Transformers)...oh, and also, the great comedic bit; “Snapping Rubber Glove” (this bit always gets a laugh from the audience who is glad they are not the character who is about to get cavity searched, you know, in their anus – also combines well with a #144 from our book (The Double Take))

What else are you guys working on now?

ERIC: I'm working on the latest Snuz Brothers shorts with Jay Johnston for Super Deluxe. (www.superdeluxe.com/sd/series/snuz_brothers/) We're in the sound effects stage, which is the most fun of all the Snuz stages. They should be ready in a few months. Also, I'm working on a few things with Bob Odenkirk. Is it childish to refer to them as "top secret"? I hope not, because that's what they are. And I have a bit in "The Brothers Solomon," which Bob directed. Hilarious movie and a lot of fun.

GARY: Just yesterday, Sept. 10th, I was working on watching my children being born. Twins! The Rudoren name will live on. I can already tell that one of them has a highly developed sense of irony. Comedy wise, I’ll be boning up on those knock-knock jokes the kids love...they still love them, right?

Friday, September 7, 2007

Paul's Not Dead

I buy new Paul McCartney albums because I’m glad he’s not dead. Not the greatest reason, I know, but I grew up a Paul McCartney geek, a big Beatles fan who bought everything Beatles related that made it to the shelves. This was the eighties. John was dead, George never toured, and though I loved Ringo, as both a drummer and a music fan, McCartney was the one guy I thought I might get a chance to see someday.

Alas, McCartney never came to Rochester, NY or Buffalo to promote Press to Play, Off the Ground, or Flaming Pie. And since I’ve been in Boston, I could never pay the ticket price when he came through on one of his mega-stadium tours. But I can manage to pick up the occasional new release.

Which brings me to the latest disc, Memory Almost Full. Thanks to his Starbucks synergy, McCartney has made a big dent in the charts since he released the album last month. You can buy a glorified danish, a bucket of caffeine, and Paul McCartney’s soul all in one place.

It may seem a bit childish to accuse McCartney or anyone of selling out at this point – that boat seems to have sailed at this point, never to return. But Starbucks? Why not just give everyone a free download with their Happy Meal. And McCartney may want to rethink the close-up in the new iTunes commercial where he’s tripping along with a weird, blue face and basset hound eyes singing “Dance Tonight.” I can’t tell if he’s happy or paranoid or maybe just stoned. Well, okay, probably stoned.

But despite all the publicity and posturing around McCartney, the reality is that the music isn’t bad. There is always just enough of what I love about McCartney – still one of rock’s most talented melody makers, bass players, and singers – to make me glad to have him around.

McCartney still has a wet weakness for drippy ballads, “See Your Sunshine” and “Gratitude” fit that bill here. They are sweet, breezy, and disposable. Listen to more than one in a sitting and you’ll get a stomach ache like you’ve gotten a batch of bad fudge. There’s a difference between silly love songs and just plain crap, and McCartney has always had a problem drawing that line.

It seems like more of the same when the strings kick in on “Only Mama Knows” before McCartney rips into a classic Wings guitar riff. And there’s a little dirt under the fingernails in the story, about a bastard child wondering why he was born and if he’ll ever meet his father.

“Mr. Bellamy” is odd little story song, with the title character standing on a ledge, apparently contemplating suicide, with McCartney providing the voice of the main title character and the workers on the ground trying to coax him down. It’s a nifty piece of pop with an angular piano melody set against a bouncing vocal melody. But then, Genesis covered this ground more effectively nearly forty years ago on Nursery Crime’s “Harold the Barrel.”

“House of Wax” is a complex and engaging soundscape (just don’t listen to hard for the lyrics), and “Nod Your Head” manages to be heavy and goofy at the same time, trafficking dissonant guitars and keys. And McCartney sings it like he means it – he really wants all of you to nod your heads. Okay, Macca, just for you, just this once.

If you’ve ever been a McCartney fan, it’s hard not to get sucked in when he hits that Little Richard falsetto at the end of “Vintage Clothes.” And you can feel what’s been tugging at him when he sings, “Don’t live in the past, don’t hold onto something that’s changing fast” and then dives right into the nostalgic “That Was Me,” a great head bobbing rocker. He lets loose with his classic wail toward the end, singing, “When I think that all this stuff can make a life, it’s pretty hard to take it in.”

“Feet in the Clouds” completes that trilogy, and it’s almost a plea for help. McCartney has been very public about wanting to preserve his legacy, thinking he’s getting short shrift with all the continuing Lennon worship. It’s clear he wants to be cool, too, but the irony is that when he tries so hard to show what he’s done and what he’s still capable of, it sounds forced and he winds up looking like a wanker. “Feet in the Clouds” is pleasant, happy sounding melody – contrast that to the lyrics, which sound like something McCartney might actually repeat to himself every time he hears Green Day sing “Working Class Hero” – “I’ve got my feet in the clouds/I’ve got my head on the ground/I know that I’m not a square/As long as they’re not around.”

And for the contingent out there who don’t actually give McCartney his due, let’s be clear. This is the man who wrote both “Helter Skelter” and “Eleanor Rigby.” His ripping guitar break on “Taxman” is pure rock and roll. He pushed the Beatles into weird places on Sgt. Pepper and provided simple, sublime melodies for everything from “Hey Jude” to “Blackbird.” And again, there’s that voice and that bass. Rock and roll would not be the same without him. He would have to be the most insecure guy in rock history to question that, but that’s always been part of his motivation. It’s what led him to write and record “Why Don’t We Do It In the Road” for the White Album, and that was at the height of the Beatles’ popularity.

It’s a shame McCartney will probably never get past worrying about his legacy. Most musicians would kill for his toolkit. And his true talent isn’t fading as much as it is just buried by his worst instincts. But as long as Paul’s not dead, there’s a chance I’ll get to see a flash of that, and even that little flash is enough to keep me coming back.

Keep swinging, Paul. I’m pulling for you.