To the invigorating grunge tones of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”
Woody Bop Muddy takes to the stage. As the audience are treated to a
disturbing yet humorously modified rendition of Kurt Cobain’s classic they don’t
yet know how the next forty minutes are going to be shaped by a record player, a
mountain of vinyl LPs, some rice, a broom, some more rice, a rubber Yoda, a
bottle of lighter fluid & matches, and enough Health and Safety violations
to fill a Comedy Clubs next inspection report a dozen times over.
The easiest way to think of Woody Bop Muddy is as a cross between a DJ and
some of the scarier strangers who have sat opposite you on the London
Underground. Woody Bop Muddy’s “Record Graveyard” is far from a
conventional stand-up act, and even further from a conventional character
act. One of the biggest indicators of this is the fear in the audiences
eyes (and the terror of those in the front row) as he delivers his high-energy
torrent of lunacy and insanity.
Woody does not do jokes or gags, as such. Instead the show is an
audience-interactive hit parade of classic vinyl from the past few
decades. On a mobile record player-trolly-thing (something that you could
picture him spending hours in some dark basement, painstakingly constructing),
Woody treats the audience to his record collection of some of the worst pop
songs that history has borne. After each record the audience get to
participate in a raucous vote as to whether the record should live or die.
And, should the record be condemned to destruction, he destroys it in a series
of creative and insane ways, ranging from incinerating them on the turntable, to
head-butting them, to smashing them with hammers, in a fit of breaking…
smashing… scratching… mayhem. Although far from conventional
entertainment, it is actually highly enjoyable watching a clearly unhinged man
destroy his LP collection in a flurry of debris and destruction.
…..and then there’s the RICE. Oh the rice. I still can’t look at
rice in the same way. Although having said that, I do frequently have to
look at rice on a regular basis, as even now I am still picking grains of it out
of my hair and clothing. This is really one of those things in life that
you have to be there to fully appreciate, but if you think of rice all over
everything, covering everything, flying through the air in great clouds,
settling indiscriminately over people, furniture, floors, and shards of departed
LP’s, then you might start to picture the madness.
Woody Bop Muddy is one of the most unique acts on the circuit. There
really is nothing else like this out there, nothing even close. Mixing
bizarre randomness, visual and physical insanity, intertwined with crazy comic
observations, music and even poetry, this wonderful act is almost impossible to
sum up in a single conclusive sentence. So I won’t even try to.
Place on Bill: Headline
Venue: Funny.co.uk Comedy
Club
Date: 7th November 2004
