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I recently asked America's greatest
living songwriter why humour is so under-utilised in rock'n'roll.
Randy Newman's answer was that irony and satire are not radio-
friendly and while they might produce one-off novelty hits, they
are generally disastrous moves if you want a lasting career.
Try thinking of exceptions and you come up with just two names
- Newman and Loudon Wainwright III.
Now 52, Wainwright had his one-off novelty
hit back in 1973 with Dead Skunk. Since then he has continued
his crusade to make us laugh with his satirical, ironic and sometimes
poignant observations on the world and the failings and foibles
of its movers and shakers.
At Ronnie Scott's, armed with only a guitar
and his wit, Wainwright previewed songs from Social Studies,
his latest album, which began life as a weekly series of songs
composed for American Public Service Radio on the big issues
of the moment. Leap of Faith was written on the eve of
Bill Clinton's first election, while Pretty Good Day So Far
dated back to 1994 and was a wry observation on the siege of
Sarajevo. Tonya's Twirls is about the Olympic ice skater
Tonya Harding - remember her?
The danger is that such topical references
can easily date, but Wainwright imbues the songs with a wider
universality that can resonate even if you don't remember the
stories he is singing about. And occasionally hindsight can add
a new significance. His seven-year-old Clinton song, for example,
includes the line: "We don't want a Santa Claus but God
knows we'd take a saviour."
He ended with the best of the radio songs,
Y2K, blessed with a funky James Brown riff and a brilliant lyric
which suggested that we should blame Bill Gates if all the planes
drop out of the sky come the new millennium. "Come on now,
it's the end of the world so you've got to sing along,"
he told an audience which included Salman Rushdie (on the guest
list as Herman Melville with his bodyguard Moby Dick). We called
him back for two encores; no one seemed to mind that humour is
meant to be a bad career move.
NIGEL WILLIAMSON |
