Fred Armisen: Standup For Drummers

2/7/18. I didn't know what to expect from a Fred Armisen standup. Oh, yes, I do in a way. I have watched him for years on SNL. This was like watching him playing Garth (without Kristen Wiig's Kat). Basically, he was all over the place, with occasional funny bits. The only saving grace was when he talked about and played his drums. He is actually quite a good drummer. Nice he had other drummers do their thing, especially Shiela E. So, it's a toss-up. Watch it if you like his humor, or watch it if you like drums.

Not your typical comedy special. I got the impression that this was a collection of drum related humor that he had come up with over the years that made him laugh but he couldn't use at the time because it was too esoteric. I don't know that to be true, it's just what it felt like. Kind of random and disjointed.

I am guessing Fred Armisen knew this would not be particularly popular but did it anyways as a passion project. I think the results were mixed. If you like Fred Armisen or the drums (preferably both) give it a shot.

A show about drummers, sounds great! Oh dear... After a few somewhat decent impersonations of famous drummers, he decided to imitate nearly every single American accent, following -yes- a map. I'm not english native, but I promise you, it was pittiful. He then loses himself in a serie of unconnected 'should be jokes' to end up shivering on the floor, impersonating a dying fox, through time-lapse. Although I admit the idea seems unconventionally interesting, it was unfortunately poorly executed. Yes, we didn't talk drums for the past 20 mins now, and I don't even seem to understand what we've been talking about. There it goes, showing us the pier in the crowd full of drums from every decades... but playing 4 bars on every kit with an unconvincing storyline has certainly not quench our thirst. Surprise, some famous guests! Perhaps it is not the end!? But it is one thing to embarrasse yourself, quite another to take some of the best drummers in the world down with you. Even as a drummer, you shouldn't bothered, quite sadly.

This is the first time I've ever made a review on IMDB. I was so utterly shocked at how bad this special is that I felt the need to share with the world my repulsion.

Full disclosure: I only made it less than halfway through this special. I kept waiting for it to get good, or for there to be even a single funny joke. There wasn't. Nothing Fred Armisen says or does during this special is worth watching or listening to. The thing is, I know that Fred Armisen is a drummer, a perfectly fine drummer with a few decades of experience. Of course, he's a very well known comedian, with plenty of funny work under his belt. So this should be a no-brainer. Drum jokes? Sure! They should come naturally for Fred Armisen.

Except exactly none of this special feels natural for him. All of the drum-related jokes are remarkably low-brow surface-tier observations that could be made even by non-drummers, assuming they've spent more than 5 minutes talking to or listening to a drummer. Strangely, most of the jokes seem dismissive of aspects of drumming that are clearly taken seriously by most drummers. He compares selecting cymbals to "testing fine wine," making fun of drummers by saying that at the end of the day, they're all just cymbals. Being a drummer for as long as he has, I would expect him to recognize that there actually is an incredibly wide variety of sounds of cymbals, and that's one of the joys of the art of percussion. Early in the special, he says that he's critical of jazz music because he can't remember the melodies after the songs end. WTF??? Anybody who has spent any time seriously thinking about jazz would know that that is not the intended takeaway of a lot of jazz, and it's incredibly shallow of him to both have that opinion and think that an audience full of jazz drummers would find that funny.

He also fills this special with very mediocre and boring "impressions," which don't really add anything at all, and just seem to reinforce his inability to come up with anything witty or observant to joke about related to drumming.

This is a stunningly bad special. Do not watch it.

I'm a drummer and standup fan and this special let me down on both accounts. Topical drumming observations that often don't ring true, jazz bashing, pretty weak standup bits, and some drumming shoehorned in. Guy is a good enough drummer but this special just didn't really work.

Edit: Also, he has his 3 guest drummers all on drumsets at the end and you think they're going to do some cool soloing or trading fours or something but then they literally just play the same simple rock beat for like 3 minutes... It'd be like if you had 3 professional guitar players come out and play the "Smoke on the Water" riff over and over. What a waste!