Fred Armisen show last night...

Jun 14, 2022, 8:13 AM

A very entertaining show, although not quite what I expected. HUGE crowd, possibly the largest mass of people I've ever seen jammed into the neighborhood theater, and overwhelmingly millennial hipsters.

The opener was a band that Fred announced as a band he discovered from Dallas called Def Rain, a very LOUD pop-electronica band. Lots of smoke and lasers, very dark stage and you couldn't see their faces. Female singer, a laptop player (if that's the right term), and a guy that switched between some little keyboard and a MIDI guitar. Lots of distortion and pulsing EDM beats that made my shirt feel like it was trying to crawl off my back. I'm still trying to decide if this was mildly interesting or not but definitely not my genre. The crowd was polite, but they didn't seem to wow the room.

Fred came out and did some straight stand-up, then picked up the guitar and a bit about strumming patterns across the world and nailed it. Then he sat on a stool while a buddy of his came out and did 15 minutes or so of stand-up. Max something, he was pretty funny. Then Fred did a bit on the drums...I knew he was a good drummer but he's actually a VERY good drummer. Then he picked up the guitar, brought back Def Rain and played a song with them, then used them for a skit about a band on tour deciding where to eat breakfast, then did songs from several SNL sketches, and for the finale, he took Q&A from the audience.

Again, not quite what I would have expected and I had no idea that Fred was a hero and an icon to the millennial crowd, which went bonkers anytime he mentioned Portlandia (which I've never watched). All in all, very entertaining show. There were definitely a lot of jokes that you might not have been as funny if you aren't a musician or at least knowledgable in that regard, but Fred was spot-on with those routines.

Glad I got to see it, the tour was very limited and Charlotte seemed to be the odd duck city on the tour schedule among the Londons, Bostons, New Yorks, etc.