The Null Device

Comedy Festival: Tonight, I went to the final session of Dave O'Neill and Fred Rowan's show at the Prince Patrick. I really enjoyed it; it was one of the best shows I've seen in the Festival. First the warm-up act came on, a stand-up comedian named Adam Rosensomethingorother who fired off a succession of lines and got the audience laughing.

Then Fred Rowan performed; Rowan specialises in parody songs, and mimics the styles of singers and rock stars quite accurately. He took the piss out of commercial radio, classic-rock stations, and took off a number of musicians, from John Lennon to U2, from Slim Dusty to Michael Bolton (singing I Only Used You For Sex in the throaty voice of the latter, replete with big-ballad electric piano and Kenny G-esque saxophone riffs in the background, most amusingly), and later did as an encore an old song he did about Jeff Kennett (a man who did a lot for comedy, though none of it intentionally).

Dave O'Neill came on next, cracking jokes and harrassing a bloke named Ian in the audience ("Where do you live?" "Glen Iris? Nice leafy suburb. The heroin hasn't spread there yet."); later, he and Rowan teamed up and did a song about living in the inner city and longing for the outer-suburban wasteland of Ringwood; a song I found most amusing, having lived out in Ferntree Gully for a decade and a half.

I was going to see a play called Guerilla Film School today as well, but the matinee was cancelled, and I had to choose between that and An Evening With Dave & Fred. Oh well.

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