Life Without Keys

DOWNLOAD THE 2009 DOUG STANHOPE BOOTLEG HERE!

After what seems like an age, but is in fact only a year, Doug Stanhope graced the Leicester Square Theatre in London in the first week of September 2009. It was a welcome return after Stanhope decided to skip the usual financial H-Bomb referred to in some circles as the “Edinburgh Fringe”.

After a shaky start to the set, something that permeates most of his shows these days, Stanhope launched into three or four particularly strong ‘bits’ that will no doubt find their place in the new CD, and DVD offering.

Look out for venom against the modern perpetual habit of videoing everything on your mobile, an extended dark poetic riff on what sex with Doug Stanhope must be like these days, sniper sex, and the (literally) climactic “Blort” routine, destined, we suspect, for the ending of the new CD. A clever bit on George W Bush and the Queen, most likely destined for UK shores only, offers some new and counterintuitive but correct thinking on throwing stones whilst abiding in a glass house, and look out for the thinly disguised attack on Britain’s Got Talent too.

Whilst looking much older than in 2002 (compare his babyfaced energy in Word of Mouth, a mere 7 years ago), coughing like a madman and clearly unnecessarily down on himself after two rough sounding shows at Reading and Leeds Music festivals (with Jamie Kilstein, an up-and-comer who was Stanhope’s support act in the 2005 Austin Incident video Bootleg and an acerbic New York wit in his own right) Stanhope is nevertheless still a billion miles ahead of most stand-up comedy. If pressed, we can only name his equal in Louis CK, whose show in November in London we will also be covering (and hopefully someone will bootleg it for us again.) Apart from that, there is, as Bill Hicks would say, a “real big fucking drop-off” after those two.

A fan recording of the 3rd September exists and is available at this location for free download – the 68 minute set has been named (by Stanhope himself in the recording) “Doug Stanhope – Before Turning the Gun on Himself”. We will upload the raw .wav file as well in due course, in case anyone else can adjust the levels better than our resident “sound-idiot” – and naturally there will be a torrent with tracks divided up.

Enjoy the hate.

I don’t care about celebrity culture. At all. In fact, if you gave me the choice of eating a shit sandwich and speaking the words “You are a valid human being because of your cultural contribution to society” to one of Girls Aloud, it’s a face full of bready turd every time.

And despite this I am of the opinion that Katie Price and Peter Andre’s hilariously awful A Whole New World CD is possibly the greatest record I’ll never have in my music collection. This stands in sharp contrast to my acerbic and largely justified jihad-style dislike of those two column-inch hungry Orangutan-coloured dullards.

I recently found myself on the UK Amazon page for the Price/Andre collaboration and whilst there I discovered no less than SEVENTY-ONE 5 Star reviews and a mere SEVEN one star reviews. Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s Facepalm time.

However, I soldiered on, deciding I must understand the logic of so many positive reviews of a CD that has even been ridiculed by any and all reviewers.

So before we decode the reason behind so many positive reviews, let’s have a run down of the negative ones first, where one would actually expect the humour to be. There are seven 1-star reviews, the most sincere of which begins with,

“I don’t understand any of the reviews for this. The album is rubbish from start to finish.”

While Mr William Nisbett, of Nottingham, UK is bang on the money, he has probably made the (albeit very understandable) mistake of not actually reading the positive reviews for this piece of metallic crap (and who would actually DO that anyway?)

I just really hope he didn’t buy the album after seeing 70+ 5 star ratings without checking the content…

Another review, from a man calling himself Aladdin, (“The Disney one (so, the definitive Aladdin for all you care)” he writes) proclaims anger that Price and Andre have hijacked the eponymous song which HE wrote to woo Jasmine, but accepts some responsibility, citing the “unquestioning” acceptance of royalty cheques he is clearly earning from these two “shills”.

The positive reviews are even funnier. Variously reviewers claim they have cried, shat and laughed all at the same time, achieve sexual climax from hearing the album, or have, as “a hard bitten, cynical private detective with a bitter outlook on life” been put in touch with their more sensitive side after hearing the album.

Reviewers variously claim the album has “cured their cancer”, given them the ability to breathe underwater, made otherwise hollow lives abundant with clarity, meaning, fulfillment and joy and even caused one professorial music lecturer to throw away Beethoven, Bach and all other past masters in favour of Katie Motherfucking Price and Peter “Orange Elvis” Andre (as one reviewer puts it.)

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it’s 71 pieces of comedy awesome. One reviewer expresses his desire to invade Poland to create a master race with Katie, another recommends to “put this at the top of you list of albums to die before you listen to.” I laughed so hard I re-gave myself a double hernia. Happy now, Katie and Peter?

I know I am.

Perhaps the largest irony beside the deliberate inversion of reviewer values is that thanks to the creation of the  Andre/Price work, we now have a large online collection of hilarity. This, ironically, makes A Whole New World more worthwhile than half my music collection. It was made me laugh harder than Bill Hicks, and has one-liners worthy of Hedberg and the others.

For this reason, I give A Whole New World 5 stars unironically. It’s just I’ll never buy or listen to the album…