Sep 04 2008
Quick, Call The Lynch Mob
I think the first Stephen Lynch song I heard was Baby. It begins beautifully – a sweet song about his newborn child, and his glee “as my lady gives birth today“. All is going well until he looks at his newborn and says, “Damn that’s an ugly baby; Damn that’s an ugly ass baby“.
And so goes the comic musical stylings of Lynch. Having seen so many of his grainy YouTube videos (again and again and again). I was delighted to be able to see him live in the Olympia, not once but twice. On Monday night, Darragh and Niamh brought us along to see the American comedian and we coaxed Andrew, Anthony and Little Miss to come too. On Tuesday ngiht we went with Mr Rick and an old friend of his.
The support act on both nights, Ruth-Anne Cunningham, was woeful. She was woeful mostly due tot he fact that she did not fit in there. Somebody high up in the Bulmers Comedy Festival organisational hierarchy thouhgt it would make perfect sense NOT to put a comedian on a Lynch’s support act, but instead a young pop singer. Argh! What were they thinking? Anyway, Andrew speaks more on this moronic decision here.
Once Stephen Lynch came on stage the ‘oldest Porno Theatre in Dublin’ erupted with cheers. On the first night I was one of the whoopers and screamers. However, being that I was in one of the boxes in the Olympia for the first time on Tuesday night (gloat, gloat, gloat), I was able to look across the audience and see the cries, the hollers, the adoration. It was particularly impressive to look out at the crowds and watch them sing along to every word of almost every one of his songs.
And, of course, this is one of the great things about the Internet – the global community. The only way the vast majority of the audience would have ever heard Stephen Lynch’s music would have been on YouTube or through not-so-legal downloads. He has only ever been in Ireland once before for a short time,and he has never appeared on TV over here. And yet, so many people knew every word of Little Tiny Moustache, a song about his Nazi ex-girlfriend.
I, of course, was one of the many singing my heart out. I delighted in hearing Lullaby, his sweet song explaining to his young daughter why Mommy is divorcing him.
He also brings a bit of an entourage with him in the form of his friends Rod Cone and David ‘Joberg’ Josefsberg. The chemistry between the guys on stage is electric. It seems so natural and spontaneous even though seeing the show twice proves otherwise. Joberg wrote one of the best songs of the night, which I was lucky enough to catch on camera. It’s called Dirty Sanchez:
