On “The Night Shift” with Brent Weinbach’s new CD
Just who is Brent Weinbach? He's a stand-up comedian from the Bay Area of Northern California. That's true enough. But if your first experience with Weinbach is through his new CD, The Night Shift, then you might find yourself asking what it is exactly that this has to do with stand-up comedy. It's weird. It's not for everybody. And that's how Weinbach likes it. He did win the 2007 Andy Kaufman Award, after all, so putting out a conceptual comedy album that's a mix of phone calls, sketches, songs he plays on the piano, and portions of his stand-up makes perfectly absurdist sense. Even the stand-up, recorded earlier this year at The Purple Onion in San Francisco, keeps the audience on its guard. There's a sketch playing off of his former life as a substitute teacher in East Oakland. He recounts his early experiences with women, and in front of a live audience, serenades a woman for her birthday. There's a song or two that sounds like he's auditioning for the Muppets. At one point, he turns his love for language into an extended satire on dick jokes. And there's an even longer piece that I've heard him do live before on the intricacies of the Russian alphabet. Instead of me trying to explain it further, why don't I just play for you a couple of short videos? Yes,...
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