“All this stuff is free on the Internet,” 19-year-old musical satirist Bo Burnham announced near the end of his hourlong set at La Zona Rosa Thursday. “Thanks for paying.”
But Burnham is not one to knock the ‘net. Without YouTube, where the Bostonian’s scatalogical songs have attracted 50 million viewers, Burnham would be a freshman in college and not a touring comic whose act is like vintage Steve Martin’s brain inside a horny teenager. The kid’s got a special mind, so sharp with wordplay and unexpected endings, but is he ever dirty!
“How old are you,” the lanky Burnham asked of a youngster in the audience. When the kid, chaperoned by his mom, answered that he was 12, Burnham wondered aloud if Texas was the home of “steers, queers and irresponsible mothers.” Hopefully, the youngster wasn’t scarred for life by material so puerile and blue it was purple.
Burnham was no doubt influenced by Stephen Lynch’s brutally funny folk songs, but he’s of the hip-hop generation, as evidenced by his bragathons on “Bo Fo Sho” and “I’m Bo, Yo.” He’s also got a keen standup comic’s touch between songs. (“I used to wrestle in high school. Once. I lost … my virginity.” Whether or not Burnham is gay was a major theme of the night, along with Helen Keller and Anne Frank.
The set could’ve used some tightening up; Burnham doesn’t yet have enough knockout material to fill an hour so he sorta lumbers around the stage at times trying to read the audience. But, in a way, the unshowbiz attitude is part of his appeal. After all, he’s the kid who was discovered singing naughty songs on a cheap keyboard in his bedroom.
No comments:
Post a Comment