May 21, 2013
Heywood Banks
continued
Thanksgiving weekend audience. One good way of defining this veteran comic would be by what he is not. He is not vulgar or arrogant, racist, sexist, or obnoxious. He is neither well dressed nor self conscious. And he is not an amateur musician. His songs draw on a wide range of styles, carefully sculpting covert yet brilliant relationships between the lyric and its music. For instance, "Smoking" is set to a cool jazz riff, as cool as ever backed any satin-draped lounge singer:
| I'm thinking 'bout taking up smoking looking pretty good to me All the guys look so hip with a cigarette lip and the chicks seem to agree. |
His quick little hook-laden ditties immediately pierce your cerebrum, remaining there on quick retrieve for those times when we need to process both the inane and the infuriating aspects of life. He laments having forgotten to replace his car's wiper blades to a groovy, Latin-feeling tune that contrasts sharply with the memory of the arrival of winter and "all the ice and snow" that overwhelmed his decrepit wipers. And he also sometimes worships the glories of existence, as in his ode to toast — "Yeah, toast!" — for which he actually accompanies himself on a toaster.
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