One month hiatus from blogging. What a slacker I am. Just when I thought I was on a productive role for the year (and on the back of fifty-million music posts in August), I ran out of stuff to say. Or maybe not - maybe it was just that I was too busy doing and not busy saying. I have indeed been up to much, though I don't know what's bloggable and what's not. You decide!
I've been back in NZ for the last month, and just returned to Japan yesterday. Goodbye friends, movies and family, hello fast internet and decent club events. But more on that later - I figure the best place to start is the main reason why I even went home in the first place: Bill Bailey.
The guy has been my favourite stand-up comic since around 1998, when he came to the St. James in Wellington (his 2nd time, after hitting the now-defunct James Cabaret in '97 - the home of so much brilliant comedy in those years). The guy is a "nutter", or so he would have us all believe. But under that eccentric shell lies a true intellect that carves his wit to a knife-point, and steers his musical genius from the realm of "good pianist" to something that is as much humour as it is talent.
He's off-the-beaten-track, sure, but he got there with a very good navigation system.
Bill played two shows in Wellington (both sold-out), using mostly the same material across the two. The crowd were real fans on the first night - those on the second were keen too, but a little more intoxicated (and thus annoying: one bloke was under to impression that saying "oh, he's brillunt" after every joke wasn't irritating).
He rolled through what was essentially all new material (a rare gift from comedians these days), starting out with his bemusement at New Zealand customs' obsession with stopping people who may have potpourri in their luggage ("Who carries their own blend of potpourri around?") and the notable invisibility of the Kiwi in the zoo (Probably covered in all the potpourri in the enclosure - that must be where customs dumps it). Before the interval he covered nuclear fusion, asking for audience input and receiving it from a pig farmer (who wouldn't confirm if his farm used nuclear power or not), and a British expat who was an expert on energy and didn't know when to shut up (laughter ensued after 10 seconds of rambling, and when it stopped she was still going on about the theory behind it). You can't plan comedy like that - good on you Wellington for your rather unorthodox heckling.
Moving through priceless musical comedy - including a lynching of Lionel Richie and his lyrical "drivel" ("'What a feeling, when you're dancing on the ceiling' - what, nausea and vertigo?") and a performance of the Star Wars Imperial March a la scat, Bill culminated in what are possibly his two greatest musical works: Ode of the Starbucks Emo, and The Greatest Love Song Ever Written (I take credit for the titles, having forgotten the real ones). The former was new and pure genius - two quotes resonating my mind are "if you were a DVD your region would be polar" and "I pressed thumbtacks into my hand and they spelled 'WHY?'...why did they spell 'WHY'? Because there weren't enough tacks for 'OBLIVION'... "
The latter, a ballad from Bill's previous tour, Part Troll, was an acoustic version of an onslaught on the form of the ballad, mincing metaphors to an epic and hilarious result. The "snowflake on the eyelash of a startled deer" that his romantic character views with his loved one then turns to "pus that oozes from an open wound" upon her betrayal ("The deer, now blinded, stumbles into a ravine").
Mr. Bailey has always been close to my intellectually deranged heart, and he only proved further that if anyone deserves the title of "Nuttier than a Whittaker's peanut slab" (given to him by a critic 10 years ago), it's him.
Here's a youtube clip of aforementioned Love Song. Enjoy.
No comments:
Post a Comment