Rhett, You Got It Goin' On (Got it Goin' On)

I find there are two general kinds of funny songs. Prose-funny includes troubadours like Jonathan Coulton or Flight of the Conchords. Their songs are like the opposite of sad folk songs, in that they generally tell a story, unveiling more and more information as you go, and leading up to punchlines rather than sad reveals. Think about hilarious versions of Dylan's "Simple Twist of Fate," where he waits until the final verse to let on that he's really talking about himself (gasp!). 

Jonathan Coulton, or JoCo, as he is (semi-ironically) known, has a song called "Skullcrusher Mountain," a love song written from a mad scientist/evil genius to the girl he has kidnapped. My favorite verse: 

I made this half-monkey-half-pony monster to please you

But I get the feeling that you don't like it, what's with all the screaming? 

You like monkeys, you like ponies 

Maybe you don't like monsters so much

Maybe I used too many monkeys 

Isn't it enough to know I ruined a pony making a gift for you? 

He really commits to the character, referring to doomsday plans and henchmen...it really is the kind of song you can imagine Syndrome writing, if he were the creative type. 

What makes Coulton's and FotC's stuff even better is that they are all really good musicians. Just like with "real" musicians, which leads me to my second category: poetry-funny. Tons of songwriters fall into this category, mostly with puns and asides that they slip into their songs to deepen the meaning or give the songs just the right kind of little Velcro-hooks to stick in your imagination. For instance, Paul McCartney wanted to show how dim his protagonist is in the Beatles' "Paperback Writer," and the third line of the first verse leaves no doubt: 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

It took me years to write, will you take a look 

It's based on a novel by a man named Lear

And I need a job so I want to be a paperback writer

Rhett Miller is a master of the sly reference, as well. I think one of the reasons I love him and the Old 97's so much (beyond his sexy, sexy stage dancing) is his clever songwriting. Consider this verse from "Hover" on his 2006 solo album "The Instigator:"

The city is dark

But we're not scared

Wrapped up in each other

Making loving out of nothing

Like the Air Suppliers said

By referring to the common ground of pop music, Rhett lets us in on the joke, while at the same time co-opting it for his own imagery. Also, I love the idea of Rhett Miller, who looks like this: 

...listening to Air Supply, who, when the cheesetastic "Making Love Out of Nothing At All" came out, looked like this:

Of course, the trick of putting jokes into lyrics reaches way beyond pop music. Country music is great at it (witness even just the title of Toby Keith and Willie Nelson's "Whiskey for My Men, Beer for My Horses").* And with its roots in poetry, rap is the perfect medium. The first time I heard Cancer Rising's "Play It Again" on the radio, I drove straight to Sonic Boom and bought the album because of the following verse: 

Stop tryin'

And I'm bound to rhythm and flow

With it

So hit it

Fans tell me 'go spit it, bro'

So spiritual

Dog, it's Roxanne to my Cyrano

Wrote a song about it, baby

Here it go

The Cancer Rising boys illustrated how much they love music with an original, non-cliched example (plus, anyone who can rhyme "go spit it, bro" with "Roxanne to my Cyrano" is more than alright in my book). It's the classic "show versus tell," the mainstay of all post-Raymond Carver creative writing and something I beat into the minds of my 826 students as often as I can. 

So I've just touched the tip of the iceberg; there are many more examples of comedy in music. And I didn't even get into musical comedies or Tin Pan Alley lyrics! But you get the idea. Any songs with jokes that come to mind for you?

*Thank you, Brandi, for knowing that song off the top of your head.

SP 20: A Weekend of Comedy

Happy 20th (kind of) birthday, Sub Pop! Thank you for all the music and the Northwest identity and stuff. But especially thank you for including comedy albums and their makers on your roster. And bringing them to Seattle for the festivities.

July 11
Friday night was the Sub Pop comedy show at the Moore, hosted by Kristen Schaal (the Fan Base from FotC) and featuring Todd Barry, Eugene Mirman, Patton Oswalt and David Cross. My favorites were of course Eugene and Patton, because I'm not the biggest Todd Barry fan (though I wouldn't consider myself an anti-fan) and I tend to like David Cross better when he's performing other people's material ("Excuse me...do these effectively hide my thunder?"). Plus, Cross had a little bit of an off night, involving leaving notes backstage and swallowing some parts of his punchlines.

One of my favorite jokes of the evening was Eugene Mirman's bit about stereotyping based on assumptions that no one has ever made. For example, he told the story that once he was in a small, crowded elevator, and to break the silence, another passenger made the comment, "I bet they don't make elevators this small in Russia!" Which, Eugene pointed out to us, is NOT one of society's previously agreed-upon stereotypes. It didn't make sense, just like it wouldn't make any sense if someone said, "I went out with this Jewish girl, and man, she was rude as a wolfcat! Which is an animal I just made up. And decided was rude."

Patton was priceless and original as always, but one of his many gems was his monologue about how most presidents have off moments because they work a lot and are struggling with stress and problems of their own, but that doesn't quite account for our current Dear Leader's communication problems. Though he is reputed to take care of himself very well, W. still gets away with amazing missteps. So Patton wants to know "why, when the man gets ten hours of sleep, works out for three hours, and has a big cup of coffee, he can still get up in front of people and say idiotic things like [pointing to his legs and then his head] 'PANTS ARE HATS!'"

I know quoting stand-up from memory in a blog is a poor substitute for the actual experience, and the above jokes are pretty dependent on the delivery...but if you've ever seen Eugene or Patton do stand-up, then you can imagine they really slayed.

What's that? You haven't? Well, please enjoy this slightly weird explanation of Canada from Eugene Mirman. Who is not Canadian. Nor a wolfcat.



July 12
Saturday was Day 1 of the music festival for Sub Pop, which I celebrated by sitting on the Marymoor lawn eating Luna bars, doing crossword puzzles, napping, and generally enjoying summer with Sara, Patty, and Jacqui. Highlights for me included the Helio Sequence, Fleet Foxes, Iron & Wine, and (especially) several of my husbands, Bret and Jemaine--you may know them as Flight of the Conchords. I got up out of my chair and clawed my way into the sweaty crowd for them, of course. Lots of fun: their banter was witty, they seemed genuinely surprised when someone threw a pair of boxers at them (Jemaine: "They're...warm. And they appear to have a snowboarding motif. But I'm not going to investigate that very closely."), and--perhaps most importantly--they don't do note-for-note performances of their songs. Live, FotC keep some of the funny bits, they drop some, they add some: all marks of good comedians (and musicians, actually) that can handle the long haul without going stir-crazy.

FotC played some new material, including one song in which Jemaine laments all the girlfriends that have left him and the different ways they did it (smoothly folding in a reference to '50 Ways to Leave Your Lover'), and Bret sings the part of the choir of Jemaine's pissed-off ex-girlfriends. During "The Boom King," the gentlemen got up and did a choreographed booty-shaking dance, which made all of the ladies scream, myself included. Imagine, if you will, that the Capitol Hill Block Party had a baby with Beatlemania. That is what being at a Flight of the Conchords show is like.

As we were leaving the comedy show on Friday, Sub Pop folks were handing out free compilation CDs. There are some excellent tracks on it from the likes of Sera Cahoone, Blitzen Trapper, Grand Archives and other Sub Pop darlings...but my favorite is perhaps FotC's "Bret, You Got It Going On." I'll leave you with the clip from that episode.

Indeed you do, Bret. Indeed you do.

Jerry Seinfeld on George Carlin

Today in the New York Times, Jerry Seinfeld has an op-ed piece about George Carlin. It's short, so I'll plunk it in below in its entirety:

DYING IS HARD. COMEDY IS HARDER.
June 24, 2008
By Jerry Seinfeld

The honest truth is, for a comedian, even death is just a premise to make jokes about. I know this because I was on the phone with George Carlin nine days ago and we were making some death jokes. We were talking about Tim Russert and Bo Diddley and George said: “I feel safe for a while. There will probably be a break before they come after the next one. I always like to fly on an airline right after they’ve had a crash. It improves your odds.”

I called him to compliment him on his most recent special on HBO. Seventy years old and he cranks out another hour of great new stuff. He was in a hotel room in Las Vegas getting ready for his show. He was a monster.

You could certainly say that George downright invented modern American stand-up comedy in many ways. Every comedian does a little George. I couldn’t even count the number of times I’ve been standing around with some comedians and someone talks about some idea for a joke and another comedian would say, “Carlin does it.” I’ve heard it my whole career: “Carlin does it,” “Carlin already did it,” “Carlin did it eight years ago.”

And he didn’t just “do” it. He worked over an idea like a diamond cutter with facets and angles and refractions of light. He made you sorry you ever thought you wanted to be a comedian. He was like a train hobo with a chicken bone. When he was done there was nothing left for anybody.

But his brilliance fathered dozens of great comedians. I personally never cared about “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” or “FM & AM.” To me, everything he did just had this gleaming wonderful precision and originality. I became obsessed with him in the ’60s. As a kid it seemed like the whole world was funny because of George Carlin. His performing voice, even laced with profanity, always sounded as if he were trying to amuse a child. It was like the naughtiest, most fun grown-up you ever met was reading you a bedtime story.

I know George didn’t believe in heaven or hell. Like death, they were just more comedy premises. And it just makes me even sadder to think that when I reach my own end, whatever tumbling cataclysmic vortex of existence I’m spinning through, in that moment I will still have to think, “Carlin already did it.”

What a great piece. It refrains from any oozing sentimentality and captures some sincere peer-to-peer reverence, which in my book is pretty much the best kind. Best of all, the article itself is structured like a great stand-up joke: a throwaway anecdote ends up the basis for the punchline at the end.

I wonder if there is a term for this type of joke set-up already, like Hitchcock's MacGuffin. If not, I'm ready to coin one: the sleight-of-hand execution reminds me of Rowena Ravenclaw's diadem in the Harry Potter books. In Half-Blood Prince, Harry runs across the "discolored tiara" when he's hiding his Potions book from Snape. And, of course, that old trinket ends up being pretty important by the time we get to Deathly Hallows.

Well diademed, Mr. Seinfeld. And happy travels, George.