November 25, 2003
Will Make Jokes For Foodentry,
I may have mentioned Eric D. Snider at some point in the past. Ten years ago he founded "The Garrens" (a comedy troupe that I ran sound for) and then went on to write some of the funniest editorial columns I've ever read, some of which you'll only really get if you're living in Utah, and some of which you should read right now before they go stale.
A couple of months ago he lost his job as an editorial columnist. A few short weeks later, in an effort to replenish his Pop-Tart supply, he did a concert of musical comedy entitled "Will Make Jokes For Food," during which he performed most all of the musical parodies he'd written for the Garrens Comedy Troupe. It got recorded, and last week I bought the CD.
As I'm sure you'd expect, this CD has got "indie" written all over it, from the grainy photo on the cover right through to the home-burned (but very nicely-labeled) look of the disc itself. So what? Production values aside, it's a great CD. Eric takes popular music and bends it to his own, nefarious purposes. When he's done, it's well-and-truly bent.
If you're a Mormon, or live in Utah, I'd put this on your "must-have" list. Eric makes fun of things that deserve to be made fun of, and manages to do so in a way that will fail to offend almost nobody. Songs like "A Whole New Ward," "Hold On, The Light Will Change," and my personal fave, "The Pioneer Song" are culturally acute crowd-pleasers.
For those of you (almost certainly the majority, though folks in Utah may not realize it) who are not Mormon, there are some real gems, including a crooning doo-wop love song to Agent Scully, and a sappy-happy musical slam on the movie Titanic, Leo DiCaprio, and Celine Dion.
There are 27 tracks on the disc, providing 60 minutes of family-friendly irreverence. It's a live recording, and the blend of audience response and direct sound is perfect -- at the very least it'll let you know when you're supposed to laugh at a joke you didn't get. Eric does not have an especially well-trained singing voice, but "Will Make Jokes For Food" is in that regard reminiscent of Tom Lehrer. If you know Tom Lehrer, you know that's not a bad thing at all.
There are few people I know who are as multi-talented as Eric D. Snider. Even if you decide not to buy his CD to help him put Pop-Tarts back on the menu, you owe it to yourself to read some of his work.