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May 09, 2004
The Music Comic
OK, enough with the politics for now. I start getting madder the more I think about everything that's going on....and that's not nearly as fun as laughing my ass off, which is pretty much what I've been doing ever since this past Tuesday, when I picked up New Hope For the Ape-Eared, the new Scharpling & Wurster 2-CD set on Stereolaffs. Tom Scharpling is a DJ for the very fine WFMU station in northern New Jersey and Jon Wurster is a comic genius who also happens to be the talented drummer for Chapel Hill's very own Superchunk. Many years ago, these two guys started doing fake telephone interviews/scenarios over the WFMU airwaves during Scharpling's show....not trendy Jerky Boys/Tube Bar/Crank Yankers-type prank calls but rather lengthy and fully developed phone call skits that might almost sound real if they weren't such outlandishly hilarious examples of radio satire. Like many of the other Scharpling & Wurster skits that I've heard, the most hysterical parts of ...Ape-Eared are the ones in which Wurster plays ludicrous music industry characters, like the deluded lead singer of a generic modern rock band named Mother 13 or an overconfident songwriter who is convinced that his absurdly bad tune "Rock and Roll Dreams'll Come Through" will lead his nonexistent band The Gas Station Dogs to superstardom. I think my favorite skit on the new double disc might be the one involving a super-lame audiophile who has an "audio gu-ru" named Heinrich. Everything about it is just perfect...the delivery, the voices, the details, the surprising plot of the skit....it even yields the "ape-eared" reference used in the disc title. Throughout all these skits, Scharpling consistently plays the logical straight man and Wurster's characters just get to bounce off of him with their ludicrous ideas and stories. All of it is genius as far as I'm concerned, and I bet most any music aficionado would probably double over laughing to any of these skits or the older skits "Rock Rot & Rule" and "The Music Scholar".
Jon Wurster actually did a brief stand-up comedy performance at the Cat's Cradle about a week ago and I really enjoyed it. You could tell that he was probably a lot more comfortable doing his thing over the radio instead of in front of a live audience, but he still told a bunch of really funny jokes about things like a sorority girl trying to "drop science" at a Jurassic 5 show, the fashion sense of South by Southwest attendees, a "YYZ" drum clinic as performed on a single highhat cymbal, etc. I really think Wurster could successfully carve out his own niche of music-related comedy, because he knows music well enough to riff off of and extend the really funny and absurd truths that exist in the world of musicians, music critics, music fans, record labels, radio stations, etc. Personally, I enjoy Scharpling & Wurster's radio skits so much more than most of the generic and supposedly universal "what's-the-deal-with-cereal-boxes"-type comedy....and that's recently had me thinking about how much the underlying context and subject behind a joke can effect whether or not someone likes it. I'm still really big on Dave Chapelle these days and I finally plunked down the cash for the Season 1 DVD. But with a couple of exceptions, I think that most of my absolute favorite Chapelle skits are not the race-related ones (which are definitely funny) but rather the hysterical send-ups of R. Kelly, Rick James, Prince, and Lil' Jon. I don't know, maybe I just think about music too much and any jokes that play along those lines are that much more likely to tickle my funnybone.
After Jon Wurster finished his standup routine at the Cradle, he was followed by former Wilkesboro, NC native Zach Galifianakis, who's made appearances on all sorts of late-night TV shows and even Fox's Tru Calling. Galifianakis did a somewhat deadpan Steven Wright-esque thing where he plucked a lot of brutally funny one-liners out of his dogeared joke notebook. Really funny shit...I need to catch this guy on TV next time, though I guess he would be more tame and controlled in that sort of environment. Though maybe just as hilarious? Carolina comics represent!
Posted by Tim at May 9, 2004 02:53 AM
Comments
I saw another Carolina comic on Chapelle's show this weekend- Bryan Tucker- former main guy in UNC's Selected Hilarity is now a writer on Chapelle's show (used to write on the Chris Rock show, too). He appeared on Chapelle's "Do You Know Black People" game show...
Posted by: Stuart at May 10, 2004 11:24 AM
Oh cool...the guy that humorously sang the indecipherable Good Times lyric, right? I didn't know he was a Tar Heel.
Posted by: Tim at May 10, 2004 12:25 PM
Also, there's this dude John Reep who used to work at UNC-TV. I never knew him; he left here for LA a few years ago. He's featured in a coupla new commercials, and is playing Charlie Goodnight's this week. An article is in today's N & O: http://newsobserver.com/features/story/3576637p-3178790c.html
I do not know if he is funny or not but whathahell.
Posted by: Sarah at May 10, 2004 04:04 PM
Thank you for the Wurster review - I'm still kicking myself over missing that one.
Posted by: pinky at May 19, 2004 10:39 AM