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| Photo by Bruno Bollaert. |
By a remarkable stroke of luck, I had managed to purchase tickets for seats just a few rows away from the stage, a welcome step up from the balcony seats I had to watch the Philip Glass Ensemble from. Indeed, I didn't fully appreciate what a nigh-miraculous occurrence this was until my brother and I were seated in the vast auditorium that is Royce Hall, surrounded by waves of what I assumed to be a combination of UCLA faculty, alumni, and die-hard Randy Newman fans with no connection to UCLA outside of Randy Newman. Not the most diverse group, yes (or for that matter, the most young), but a surprisingly large one. One of the people sitting behind us was a professor, and he spent most of the time before the show and during the intermission complaining to his companion, a graduate student, about other grad students. Looking forward, one could see Randy's sleek, ebony piano, the centerpiece of the otherwise empty stage. This sparse set-up indicated that unlike his albums, with their session musicians and often lush arrangements, it would just be Newman, his piano, and the audience. One might think that this would be most intimidating for a musician, but if Randy was, he certainly didn't show it when he came on stage. He made a beeline for the piano, the only sound being the enthusiastic applause of the crowd, and dived right into what he simply calls the "Putin Song".
As the sinister-sounding melody set in, Randy spit out the Russian president's name, followed in succession by descriptions of various garments - his hat and his pants (which he, of course, put on "one leg at a time") - he was "puttin'" on. In retrospect, it should have been a given that a Randy Newman concert would open with clever wordplay and light political satire, but somehow it took the audience by surprise because many of them burst into laughter at Randy's putdown of Putin. Not the put-on (pun definitely intended), polite laughter that you make when a friend or relative makes an unfunny joke, but the non-put-on, carefree laughter from deep in your gut when something that a minute before you didn't expect but within seconds you understand happens. The song continued with what Randy claimed was a conversation between Mr. and the former Mrs. Putin on the shores of the now-annexed Crimea. "We fought a war for this?" he quizzically asked before setting his sights on the Mediterranean, noting that the Greeks, Turks and Kurds might have something to say about this. No biggie, he decided. They could just make "Kurds and whey! Kurds and whey!" If one didn't know any better, they might have have come away with the impression that it was a tribute to the "Putin Man", which Randy informed the audience afterwards he threw in at the very end so that he wouldn't kill him - a valid concern, given Putin's KGB background.
He showed no such restraint with the next song, "Birmingham", which is one of the finest instances in music of damning with faint praise. It starts off nicely enough, with the piano playing warm, laid-back notes and a speaker who identifies himself as a blue collar family man in downtown Birmingham. But then he tells us about his father, "a most unsightly man", who "died right here in Birmingham". This is the first indication that something isn't right with the speaker's narrative, even as he appeared totally oblivious to it. He goes on, identifying Birmingham as "the greatest city in Alabam'" and declaring there is no place quite like it. Between the three-room house, the extended factory shifts, and the "meanest dog in Alabam'", perhaps this isn't such a bad thing. For those of a less cynical disposition, you can simply focus on the piano and Randy's singing, as they give the (false) impression of a light-hearted, agreeable song. The following piece was similarly deceptive, albeit inversely. While the lyrics could be described as sounding relieved, even grateful, the tune itself sounded downright depressing. Kind of weird to use the word "depressing" in anything involving Randy Newman, but the song really is. It also really is an example of a different, vulnerable side of him that people only familiar with the stereotypes of him and his music are largely unaware of. As the piano keys rang softly, Randy lovingly reassured the subject of the song that she was "still the same girl you always were". He proceeded to plead with her, for "a few more nights on the street" and "a few more years with me", and ended with one final reminder that she is "still the same girl, That I love." Solemn, simple, superb. That's "Same Girl" for you.
The show wasn't confined to just snarky and mopey songs, however. Before too much time had passed, Randy played the preeminent crowd pleaser of his long-and-storied oeuvre (which is saying a lot, given the plentiful number of crowd pleasers under his belt). That would be none other than "You've Got A Friend In Me," which even uncultured plebs who've never heard of Randy Newman can sing off the top of their head, thanks to Toy Story. The song, it's lyrics, and it's structure are so well-known that one can hardly imagine it being done any way but the way it's heard it in Toy Story (well, done any other way and done well, at least), so it was a bit jarring to hear him play those iconic first few piano rolls without the accompanying horn, strings, and percussion. The initial shock quickly wore off, as Randy carried the song well beyond the call of duty on his own. Seeing the composer of a song that was a major part of my childhood actually perform it live was a spectacle in and of itself, but on top of that, Randy brought so much character, so much believability to the song that it resonated deeply with the crowd, many of whom were already pushing 40 or 50 when Toy Story came out. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the few young people in the audience were transported back to their childhoods and only came back when the song ended, at which point they joined the rest of the crowd and whooped and thundered in rapturous applause.
The hits kept on coming, and Randy followed up with his biggest one. He mused about how unfortunate it was that the song in question, given it's subject matter, was the one that brought him the most success and thus the most attention. Under this increased scrutiny, he found himself the target of complaints and hate mail from what he would only identify as a "very small group of people" when the song was originally released. The offending song, of course, was the notorious "Short People." Fortunately, the audience was very short on outrage and very high on mirth, cracking up at Randy's infamous proclamation that short people, with their "little hands, little eyes" and "platform shoes on their nasty little feet", got "no reason to live." In today's hypersensitive environment, with card-carrying "victims" and identity politics-fixated bloggers eagerly sniffing around for hurt feels, it's almost a shock nobody protested this blatant micro aggression. I guess the audience was too busy laughing at the absurdity of the speaker's obsessive hatred of the vertically challenged and taking in the ironically-pleasant piano chords to be offended. It's not often that I refer people to Randy Newman fans for guidance on behavior and etiquette, but in this case, I firmly believe many internet commenters could learn a thing or two from them.
Later on, we returned to downbeat themes and melodies with another ditty called "In Germany Before The War", a disturbing, M-esque account of a shopkeeper in Dusseldorf a few years before World World II. As Randy delicately played the off-key tune, he revealed that every night, the shopkeeper would walk to the park and sit on the shore of the Rhine River, launching into a sublimely haunting chorus: "I'm looking at the river, but I'm thinking of the sea." Shortly afterwards, a little girl who "has lost her way" wanders onto the scene and catches his eye. Come the end of the piece, they're both laying "beneath the autumn sky", the girl lying perfectly still, and all that that implies. Randy wouldn't leave anything to the listener's imagination in another selection of his, the supremely-satirical "Political Science", which, depending on one's ability to perceive sarcasm, is an anthem for either American exceptionalism or noninterventionism. Genuinely confused, the speaker wonders why, in spite of our various efforts to the world safe for democracy, freedom, and other assorted platitudes, "no one likes us" before concluding that we should "drop the big one, and see what happens." Mind you, this particular line is said without any hint of malice. Indeed, Randy (who interestingly, is starting to look a little like Noam Chomsky) made the speaker sound more like a 7 year-old planning a prank on his friends than the most powerful nation in the world resolving to deploy weapons of mass destruction on every other country on Earth, causing the audience to explode once again into laughter. Well, not every nation. "We'll save Australia," the speaker mercifully deigns. Wouldn't want to "hurt no kangaroos," would we?
If I were to list and talk at length about every song Randy played, this post would be several orders of magnitude longer than it already is. Given the brevity of most of his songs, Randy was able to squeeze in a sizable amount of them into the show, which of course is great for concertgoers, but not for aspiring bloggers with limited musical knowledge. Fret not, for I, like Randy, have no intention of leaving viewers hanging. After the last song, he took a bow for the audience, which had risen in standing ovation. He quickly departed from the stage, even as the audience kept applauding and shouting for an encore. During all of this, I noticed that he hadn't played the song most appropriate to the venue: that is, "I Love LA." It should have been obvious enough, but he was saving it for the very end, so as to end on a high, provincial note (the best kind!) And that's precisely what happened. Once again, he emerged from the side of the stage to invigorated cheers, headed straight back to the piano, and started playing the song's jaunty melody. After singing the beginning local sight-and-landmark-filled verse, Randy invited the audience to help him with the chorus, calling out "I love LA!" and them responding with "We love it!"
As far as I could tell, "We love it!" was the general consensus amongst the crowd about the show as a whole. They loved Randy's banter, they loved the gags, but above all, they loved the music. Between those two hours, he admirably showcased his ability to write catchy music, his knack for penning funny and even heartfelt lyrics, and his skill at performing both. Not only was Randy able to accomplish all this, but his voice, in all it's unique, off-beat glory, really shone through and bore itself before a nearly sold-out venue to nigh-universal acclaim, something that many singer-songwriters can only dream of. Go ahead, laugh. Repeat "repetitive" over and over. Say his music is always the same. Watch that South Park parody of him. But ask yourself: if the music Randy Newman creates is always funny, catchy, and heartfelt, what's to hate?
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