I just got back from seeing "The Musical Comedians of Comedy Tour", a show put on by three stand-up comedians who use music as major portions of their acts.
Ron Feingold's act revolves around Acappella music- basically, music with no instruments. He records all of the "background stuff"- vocal percussion, "ooh-aah" sounds, backup vocals, and so forth- one track at a time, mixes it so it sounds the way he wants it, and has it on a CD that he plays on stage, so he is literally "singing his own backup vocals". He also has a bunch of very funny "normal" stand-up material, but the focus of his act really is about the music. He even managed to surprise us tonight with a new song we had never heard before. He's also one of the few professional comedians I've seen whose normal act is a "clean act"- in fact I think there's really only one bit which requires any adult language at all. I know he does a lot of corporate shows, probably for just this reason. I also know him off-stage, he is genuinely one of the nicest people you could ever want to meet.
Kier's act revolves around musical impressions- he does everybody from Sting to Springsteen to Barry White to U2... nobody is safe. With his guitar, his foot-pedal-operated sound processor, and his voice, I truly think the guy can impersonate just about any male musician out there. He lives in Tennessee and doesn't tour Florida as often as I would like, but I have seen him a few times before, and tonight he was better than ever.
Michael Mack's act starts off as if he's "just another comedian with a guitar"- the usual one-verse song parodies with enough normal stand-up material to introduce each song... except that the songs just keep getting funnier and funnier as the show goes on... and then the lights go out, and you start seeing normal songs done with flashlights pointing to his own face, along with puppets which are caricatures of the original artists- Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, the Proclaimers (you know, "I would walk five hundred miles and I would walk five hundred more", those guys) and several others which only get funnier and funnier (I won't name any more, go see his act- you won't be sorry!) Mike lives in the Tampa area, but for some reason he hasn't played Orlando much- the last time I saw him was about four years ago, back when I started going to comedy shows on a regular basis.
Then all three of them came out on stage together and held an impromptu "jam session", first playing off of each others' material and then coming together for a ten-minute montage of songs- some with slightly altered lyrics or voices, but mostly just plain jamming together... it was truly an incredible end to an awesome show.
And to top it all off, there were camera crews taping the whole thing. They plan to make a DVD of the show, as well as short promotional videos on their web sites. I don't know the details yet, but I would imagine that once the DVDs are available, you'll be able to order them from any of the comedians' web sites (although if this changes, if they do start a web site for the three-man show itself, I will add a comment with that web page address.)
No comments:
Post a Comment