SOUNDTRACK: MICHAEL McDONALD-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #4 (March 26, 2020).
I was never a fan of the Doobie Brothers, although I do like a few of their songs. To me, especially now, Michael McDonald’s voice has the quintessential mockable tone and style. If I were to sing in a voice that I thought was funny, it would sound like him.
Now, he sang on the Thundercat album “Drunk” so that gives him some cred for me, but it’s hard for me to listen to this Tiny Desk Home Concert.
Shows what I know, though, since he is hugely popular and is a “five-time Grammy winner and 2020 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee.
After Michael McDonald finished “Matters Of The Heart,” the opening song in his Tiny Desk (home) concert, there was a brief pause. The bewilderment on his face was unmistakable. It’s a look I believe we all can relate to in this moment of uncertainty. He sat in his home studio, complete with an illustration of the Tiny Desk drawn by Mr. McDonald himself. That pause, usually reserved for the anticipated applause, was replaced by complete silence.
“Matters” is slow and ponderous. It lasts nearly 6 minutes and sounds like a ballad I would have hated in the 90s.
I hate to be so mean to him, because he seems like a nice enough guy. But my comments surely won’t affect him too much.
He then proceeded to play two 1978 Doobie Brothers classics that showcase his still-golden voice: “Minute By Minute” and “What A Fool Believes.”
He jokes: “If you know the words, sing along with me at home,” he said. “I won’t know if you’re singing well or not because I can’t hear you here.”
I enjoy these two Doobie Brothers songs, although don’t really know the words–I had no idea that the song was called “What a Fool Believes” until about twenty years after I first heard it. I much prefer the full band to these rather stripped down versions.
[READ: March 10, 2020] The Kids in the Hall: One Dumb Guy
It’s amusing to me that this book by Paul Myers, has an introduction by Seth Meyers and mentions Mike Myers.
Seth says that he was interning at Comedy Central and was doing a great job. Then he found The Kids in The Hall (which he had never seen before). He became so obsessed with it that he started slacking off. His boss at Comedy Central said that initially he was planing on offering Seth a job but after all the slacking off he wouldn’t do it. When Seth told his boss he had been side-tracked by The Kids in the Hall, his boss sais, “There are worse things to throw an opportunity away for.”
So this is an authorized biography of the five Kids in the Hall. Myers tells the story in a really compelling way. One where, as you read it, you think, gosh I hope everything works out for these guys. Even though you know they did because well, this book wouldn’t be written about them if it didn’t and because you’re a huge fan of the Kids and you know it all worked out.
It starts with Bruce McCulloch and his hard-drinking, travelling salesman father. McCullogh worked out and loved sports until he met a musician named Reid Diamond (who would later become the bassist for Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet and died in 2001). Diamond mentored Bruce and steered him away from sports and into the counterculture.
They lived in Calgary which didn’t have much in the way of a counterculture and soon enough he was performing music comedy in Calgary clubs.
Then Reid Diamond and Brian Connelly moved to Toronto when they met Don Pyle and formed a punk band Crash Kills Five in 1981. By 1984 they had reunited to become Shadowy Men.
McCullough, meanwhile, began performing with various local theater troupes. One was Theatersports in which improv teams competed and scored points. There were judges and the audience would throw foam “boo bricks” when a sketch failed.
Bruce met Mark McKinney at Theatersports. McKinney was working with another group called The Audience.
McKinney was born to a Canadian diplomat; so he lived everywhere. Mark was funny, which was a way for him to connect with the rotating group of friends he would meet–he did voices and had people laughing very quickly. All of his travel honed hie ear for dialects. McKinney always imagined doing something amazing–he even considered he might one day run for Prime Minister. But his grades were terrible so that nixed any political aspiration. He befriended Norm Hiscock (who would eventually go on to produce and write for Saturday Night Live, King of the Hill, The Kids in the Hall, Corner Gas, Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
Eventually McCullogh and McKinney joined forces in The Audience. They did a lot of work at Theatersports and did very well, but they got tired of the rules of the place. They were surprised by the pushback whenever they tried to do something different. So eventually The Audience went on its own and started to doing very well in Calgary. But you can only go so far in Calgary.
Then comes Kevin McDonald. Born in Montreal, McDonald was an overweight kid (so hard to believe since he is so skinny) and he compensated by being funny. His family moved to Mississauga and by the time Kevin was 19 his father was unemployed, bankrupt and blind drunk most of the time. He studied at Humber College under William B. Davis (cigarette smoking man from The X-Files). McDonald wound up getting work at Second City with many other legendary performers. He also almost wound up working with Mike Myers, but they went in different directions.
Dave Foley soon followed at Second City. They bonded almost immediately.
Dave Foley was from Etobicoke (home of the Rheostatics). He says he was pretty nervous, so watching sitcoms with his family was pretty important to him. When he was teenager he learned that his mother had ambitions of being a stage actress but quickly squashed them when she got pregnant. People told Dave he was funny so he studied stand up albums and on his first live performance he did very well.
Foley and McDonald joined a comedy team called Uncle Vanya and the Three Sisters.
Eventually The Audience and Uncle Vanya started to merge.
Then we meet Scott Thompson. He was a theater student who had formed an improv troupe called The Love Cats–sexually charged performers with a reputation for being a bit unhinged.
When Thompson went to see an early double bill of the Audience and the (early) Kids in the Hall) he told his friend that one day he was going to be in with them. Before the show, the troupe had taped donuts underneath everyone’s chair for a later skit. Thompson discovered them and, in a desperate bid for attention, he began throwing them at the stage: “I ruined their show, but it was a calculated risk.”
After the show, he was hanging around and Bruce said “Are you the fucking asshole who threw donuts at us?” He said Yes and they seemed confused as to who would be proud of ruining their show. But Scott says knew it was the right thing to do for that troupe. The next night Mark McKinney went to see The Love Cats and was very impressed with Thompson.
Thompson was born in Northern Ontario and had four brothers. But when he was nine, they moved to the suburbs of Brampton. He felt prejudice early because he was in a heavily Portuguese area and there was racial tension. He also realized he as gay very early which was tough since his household was very male and very strict. He loved Flip Wilson and that Flip played male and female characters which were never caricatures. Geraldine Jones was a huge inspiration.
In college Thompson met Paul Bellini who would be (and still is) his fined and writing partner for decades.
Bellini was a film student and he made a lots of short films. Scott always wanted to act in them–he was a reckless risk taker who did his own students.
By 1984 the troupe that would be the Kids in The Hall consisted of the five core guys we know and love and three other comedians as well as a revolving cast of guests. The Audience and The Kids in the Hall members worked together and when they decided to merge, they flipped a coin to see what name they would keep.
Before adding Thompson the troupe never went all in on drag. The performed women characters but never to mock them, always to try and inhabit them. Thompson came out to the troupe and they all supported him. He soon became one of the few openly gay men in Toronto, where homosexuality had recently been decriminalized.
Things were going well with The Kids in the Hall, but they never seemed to get the thing they needed to hit big.
Then in 1985 Lorne Michaels called Bruce and Mark to write for Saturday Night Live. While they were in New York, the other guys kept themselves busy. Scott and Paul Bellini formed a comedy punk band entity called Mouth Congress.
During the hiatuses they would go back to Toronto and do work for the Kids. Their second big show was called Graverobbers from Hipsville. Lorne Michaels came out o watch them and was impressed enough to give them a show.
The middle of the book talks about the TV show. It’s super interesting because it shows just how difficult it was for them to make it on TV and how much trouble they had staying on TV–despite how now everyone knows they were geniuses.
There’s some chapters about Brain Candy and how the film almost destroyed everyone (and how Dave Foley was pretty much a dick through the whole thing). He had just been cast in NewsRadio and wasn’t as committed to the Kids.
Things never quite gelled for them after the movie either with McKiney going to SNL and Scott going to The Larry Sanders Show. A reunion show in Montreal was supposed to be broadcast but never was.
It wasn’t until their first reunion tour Same Guys, New Dresses (which I went to) that the troupe worked together and felt great about it.
After the tour, the guys did their own thing again and then it was in 2009 that Bruce came up with Death Comes to Town. Then Scott found out he had Non Hodgkins lymphoma. He says he told the troupe and Bruce said the funniest thing to him:
Are you kidding me? You mean you don’t have AIDS? What kind of world is this that you don’t have AIDS?
Thompson nearly killed himself for the miniseries.
Now they are all successful in their own careers but they still get together to do Kids work–it seems to be the engine that drives them to do other things. There’s a funny comment that a fan says his daughter knows Mark McKinney from Superstore.. It’s like knowing Paul McCartney from Wings.
There was a 2015 tour (how did I not know about that?)
And just recently it was announced that The Kids in the Hall would be doing a new series for TV
The original “Kids” Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald, Bruce McCulloch, Mark McKinney and Scott Thompson are all set to return for eight episodes and they will reprise fan-favorite characters from the series which originally ran from 1989 to 1995 on CBC in Canada and stateside on CBS, HBO, and Comedy Central. The series will be executive produced by Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels. This marks the first Canadian Amazon Original Series.
I cannot wait!
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