50 shows to see at the Edinburgh fringe 2018
Superstar standups, daring dance, Brexit cabaret and a Bon Jovi musical … Dive into our guide to some of the shows at the world’s biggest arts festival
Continue ReadingTag: Music
If you plan to see The Offspring / 311 tour this summer, the Super Troopers might have different plans
So, if you’re looking for a 90s nostalgia trio, the bands 311 and The Offspring are hitting the road for… MORE
If you plan to see The Offspring / 311 tour this summer, the Super Troopers might have different plans appeared first on The Laugh Button.
Jack Black shows up in the new Gorillaz video
Jack Black hasn’t been up to too much lately. Why do we know this, because he’s spending his time on… MORE
Jack Black shows up in the new Gorillaz video appeared first on The Laugh Button.
Lil Dicky and the truth about comedy rap – it’s tricky!
Comedy rapper Lil Dicky has reached No 1, adding to successes such as Big Shaq and the Lonely Island. But as Honey G’s example shows, doing funny rhymes right takes sophistication
‘He’s not like a ‘rapper’ rapper,” the guy in the restaurant explains to his unimpressed girlfriend. “He’s like a ‘funny’ rapper.”
Those two statements – true and open to debate respectively – are from the opening scene of the video to Lil Dicky’s Freaky Friday, which is this week’s UK No 1 single, and which on Monday crossed 100m YouTube views, and will soon join its thriftiness-espousing predecessor $ave Dat Money in passing the same number of Spotify plays.
Related: Lil Dicky: the comedy rapper who made a blinged-out video with no money
Continue ReadingLil Dicky and the truth about comedy rap – it’s tricky!
Comedy rapper Lil Dicky has reached No 1, adding to successes such as Big Shaq and the Lonely Island. But as Honey G’s example shows, doing funny rhymes right takes sophistication
‘He’s not like a ‘rapper’ rapper,” the guy in the restaurant explains to his unimpressed girlfriend. “He’s like a ‘funny’ rapper.”
Those two statements – true and open to debate respectively – are from the opening scene of the video to Lil Dicky’s Freaky Friday, which is this week’s UK No 1 single, and which on Monday crossed 100m YouTube views, and will soon join its thriftiness-espousing predecessor $ave Dat Money in passing the same number of Spotify plays.
Related: Lil Dicky: the comedy rapper who made a blinged-out video with no money
Continue ReadingOpera isn’t elitest. If I can learn to love it so can anybody | Chris Addison
Only a handful of people can sing in this visceral, thrilling way – but the feelings they evoke are universal
The best thing I’ve ever seen, in all my long and misspent years hanging around comedy gigs, wasn’t standup. It was opera. Back in the late 90s, I was standing at the bar in one of the spit-and-stale-beer clubs where I cut my teeth, watching the MC corral the usual drunken Friday-night punters. He lighted on a woman in her early 20s at a table down the front and asked “What do you do?” “I’m an opera student,” she replied to general raucous disbelief. “Oh, yeah?” twinkled the compere, smelling pretentious blood (and what MC wouldn’t? An opera singer and a student – that, friends, is a double whammy), “Give us a song, then.” So she did. The gleeful muttering and ironic applause stuttered out when she stood and sang : Puccini’s O mio babbino caro, which, like pretty much everyone else there, I knew at that point only either as the tune from A Room With a View or an ad we couldn’t quite place.
It was incredible: the clarity of her voice, the pureness, the emotion. Such an odd and striking thing to hear in a room where most of the time what comes from the mouths of the performers is soaked in self-conscious irony. And what a reaction! I’ve never seen a four-pints-down crowd focus like that; there was a stillness to the place – a wonder, really – as she sang. And when she finished, they went crazy. Standing screaming crazy. X Factor final audience the-guy-whose-gran-died-just-won crazy.
Related: ROH’s Oliver Mears: ‘Our job is to generate an emotional reaction’
You’re listening to the most basic human tool of communication – the voice – used in an almost impossibly superhuman way
Continue ReadingWinter Blues Band for Hire, by Bizzy Coy
Dear Nightclub Booker, Hi. I’m Dugan Rathbone, guitarist and lead vocalist for Doctor Sad Man’s Sad Time Jam Band, the nation’s only winter blues band. That’s right, our quartet makes your favorite blues tunes even bluer thanks to our debilitating case of seasonal affective disorder. We’re now accepting bookings for our Endless Winter national tour. […]
Continue ReadingSandra Bernhard review – swagger, songs and starry stories
Ronnie Scott’s, London
The standup and singer has stellar personality, and a few neat lines, but not all of her material lands with a London audience
“If I looked at a crib sheet that much during my show,” I heard one punter complain on leaving Sandra Bernhard’s gig, “I wouldn’t have a career.” Ah yes, one might reply – but you’re not Sandra Bernhard, who is here to sell not her craft, but her charisma. Movie star, singer and raconteur, Bernhard is one of those acts – her compatriot Kathy Griffin, a recent visitor to these shores, is another – who trades less on any one skill than on force of stellar personality. That, and a four-decade career’s worth of names to drop. I give you a typical line from tonight’s show: “Recently both Diane Keaton and Lily Tomlin commented on my height … ” When such names can be rallied to boost your stature, why bother learning lines?
Continue ReadingTake an exclusive first look at Kate Wolff’s music video, “Labia Game”
NYC comedian Kate Wolff is the baddest woman in the game… what game you ask? Well that’s the Labia Game.… MORE
Take an exclusive first look at Kate Wolff’s music video, “Labia Game” appeared first on The Laugh Button.
Hannibal Buress and Eric Andre Show Up in Jean Grae and Quelle Chris’s New Music Video “Gold, Purple, Orange”
In addition to rapping on the recently engaged Jean Grae and Quelle Chris’s new collaborative album Everything’s Fine, Hannibal Buress is also showing up in their music videos. The newest video for “Gold, Purple, Orange,” premiering right here, is described as “a twisted, bleary karaoke crossed with an awkward family photoshoot” and features a delightfully weird […]
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