Independents Day

Last night Mrs A and I went out, sans enfants, to see a funny guy that I have laughed at for many years.

The guy in question is a chappy called Adam Buxton and it’s kind of hard to describe what he does – I guess he’d be best described as an indie comedian. He’s been in a few sitcoms, he used to have a TV show called The Adam & Joe Show back in the 90s, and hosts a show from time to time on 6 music. I guess you could say that what he does best is to find the quirks and oddities in the world (quite often via weirdness’ spiritual home, The Internet) and brings it to your attention. He quite often adds to the planet’s peculiarities with his own video and musical concoctions. His stuff quite often reduces me to tears of laughter.

I felt like I was out on a limb with this particular gig as Mrs A quite likes clever comedy and this is what I can only describe as ‘juvenile’. Which is just why I like it. But given how much I wanted to see him live and the fact that the tickets were cheap, I thought it was worth a punt.

The evening got off to an excellent start at a small independent restaurant. I had a steak which was delicious. Mrs A had a tian of Mediterranean vegetables, on the basis that it was the only choice on the menu for vegetarians. The waitress clearly didn’t know what the feck a tian was and the chef clearly didn’t know what the feck a Mediterranean vegetable was, so a bowl of carrots and green beans in tomato sauce arrived. To be honest I like my menus to be presented in a language other than Bollocks, but if they are going to insist on using £5 words they should at least ensure the staff understand them.

After that we headed off to the indie cinema for the show. We ambled in and found ourselves a couple of seats. Eventually the turn bounded onto the stage and started to chat about the show. He informed us cheerfully that this wasn’t going to be a stand up comedy gig as such, more a collection of music videos that he’d found and thought were interesting for various reasons.

Feck.

Although I’m quite keen on finding new music I’m fairly mainstream in my tastes and the thought of sitting for two hours in a darkened cinema with a bunch of bearded 30-something hipsters all muttering approvingly about the ‘obvious influences of the late 90’s acid-rave-dub scene on the middle eight of this track, yeah?’ didn’t fill me with excitement. Also, I felt bad that I’d dragged Mrs A along to suffer such nonsense. Her view on music is quite binary:

• She loves it

Or

• It’s unutterable shite.

I braced myself for an uncomfortable couple of hours. I needn’t have worried.

The show opened with a version of the Chanel/Brad Pitt advert that was pretty weird to begin with but had been doctored so that Buxton’s mouth had been blended in with Brad’s face. After a couple of minutes of watching Brad smouldering to camera whilst singing about poo the whole audience was giggling like schoolchildren. The tone was set.

From there we went through a rollercoaster ride of videos featuring gay virtual footballers, angry songs about having a beard, adverts for redneck taxidermists, white guys rapping whilst cooking pancakes and songs about mouse droppings in your cereal, periodically reading through the comments feed on Youtube in silly voices. Eventually, after the frankly obscene denouement to the Brad Pitt ad, we wandered out of the cinema still chuckling happily.

Although I have to say I was, like, totally disappointed by the complete lack of examination of the overarching themes of grimestep influences, yeah?

NDC