Intended as an extension to his blog , music writer Alister Newstead has created the show Al’s Music Rant to bring to the people his passion for music in the flesh.
He covered a broad spectrum of musical styles, eras and various elements of the industry which clearly involved a hell of a lot of research. While he included topics that had been covered previously by others such as illogical lyrics, silly album cover art, comical dancing and gig etiquette, it was nice to see that he often approached them from a different angle to create plenty of laughs. He tended to refer mostly to current popular tunes which aided his quest to appeal to the masses, but even if you weren’t familiar with these songs and artists you could appreciate and find humour in the ideas behind his examples. It was nice to see that he had actually used his own observations and fresh ideas behind the jokes rather just signposting the obvious stupidity in the source material.
Not just content to talk about music, Alister also sang some songs to illustrate his points; some accompanied by guitar, others by a backing track. His delivery was wonderful in spite of his self deprecating comments stating otherwise. Some of these tunes relied solely on brilliant impersonations that were impressive in their accuracy. Others were clever deconstructions of musical conventions and the industry, composed of snippets from recognisable songs. These were full of so many ideas that it was sometimes difficult to catch all the references (even the accompanying technology was left behind!). The songs often came close to being too lengthy (given that they were usually one joke concepts that the crowd had picked up on early in the piece) but the recognition factor of his samples ensured that every last possible laugh was extracted.
Alister added plenty of colour and movement to his performance with numerous PowerPoint presentations, music videos and high energy dance moves. Thankfully the PowerPoint didn’t just repeat his points, as is often the case, but were actually the basis for the material. On stage Alister was confident, affable and everyone warmed to him immediately. The segues between songs, stand up and vision were a little clunky on opening night but he did a wonderful job holding things together in the face of technical mishaps. His enthusiasm was infectious and this certainly made the sometimes dense information go down a lot easier.
This was a most impressive debut show. This performance gives you plenty of food for thought as well as plenty of laughs. A brilliant comic masterclass in music appreciation.
Visit the Fringe website for booking details.