A somewhat regular visitor to our shores, self proclaimed sex symbol and musical genius Earl Okin came to town to perform a couple of shows. While the ladies man part of this description can be brought into question, he is undoubtedly an excellent musical performer.
Earl does like to push his unlikely ladies man angle quite a bit during the show. This is used effectively for some of his songs where innuendo plays a major role in the humour content. For example his “Mango” song works a treat by his saucing it up when singing it, even though the lyrics would appear quite tame when read off the page. I know of some people who seem to find this persona a little bit creepy and unsettling, but be assured that there is a lot more to Earl’s gig than just implied smut.
The majority of the show is based around Earl exposing the audience to a wide range of musically based topics. He has structured the show as a series of well scripted monologues about numerous musical styles or other music based issues. Each bit is wrapped up with a hilarious musical example of that topic performed on either guitar or piano.
On the guitar, Earl treated us to a Bossa Nova rendition of the somewhat recent popular song, although this song is now a number of years old. I’m sure he could work on something a bit more current in the near future instead of showing how long it’s been since he’s updated the show. In a personal highlight, he demonstrated his derision of country music with a comically disinterested performance of a generic country song.
Moving to the piano, he performed a song about plagiarism which was aimed at a particular English musical producer who quite clearly doesn’t deserve his knighthood. A tune describing the many shonky pianos provided at venues, set to the tune of “My Way”, was also featured.
Returning to the guitar, Earl embarked on a spot of audience participation in the form of a call and response style song. This tune was about a rendezvous with a lady and required the audience to reply back with various noises uttered by this woman. Some of the sounds proved a bit much for some of the crowd to make while simultaneously in fits of laughter, but it was given a red hot go. One of the most un PC blues songs about a large, homely woman was a great way to close off his amazing show.
Although he was suffering a cold, Earl put on a fantastic gig showcasing his brilliant musicianship as well as his witty rapport. He relayed some brilliant stories to us including a memorable one about his appearance as a Celebrity Date on the show Perfect Match back in 1990. His mucus problems didn’t stop him from inserting his famous oral brass instrumentation (complete with hand cupped muting) into several of his tunes. If this is Earl when he’s a bit under the weather, he must be awesome when he’s one hundred percent.
Earl’s final show is at 2pm on Sunday the 30th of April at The Palms at Crown. See Earl Okin for booking details.