{CLICK HERE for Neil Hamburger - The Best!}

The news of comic Neil Hamburger’s recent national tour caused a wave of excitement to sweep the states. It’s been a long time since he left the Motel 6 circuit to play larger clubs in big cities, and his fans have missed him. Strangely, in Los Angeles Neil was not appearing at the Comedy Store, Laugh Factory or Igby’s, but at the rock club Spaceland and at Over Hear, some kind of avant garde gallery space in Echo Park.

Neil’s fans didn’t let the offbeat locations keep them from seeing their fave funnyman, and the room was filled to capacity for the first performance at Spaceland. In fact, there wasn’t a parking place to be found within eight blocks, and your editrix had to avail herself of the valet if she was to make it inside before the show began. Apparently some people were there to see a rock group called Trans Am, but the front couple of rows were all Neil-o-maniacs—including movie star and comedian Jack Black, taking mental notes to improve his own act.

The excitement in the air was palpable, as people craned their necks looking for the man who had brought them so many laughs (and tears) with his recorded works. Because Neil has never sat for a proper photo session, no one was quite sure what he looked like. Had he grown haggard since his recent divorce? Would we find him at the bar?

Finally, the stage door opened and Neil himself was standing, drink in hand, surveying his crowd. He was smaller than I expected, with greasy hair in what might have been a comb-over, big thick glasses like my English uncle Dennis wears, and a mismatched dark suit with dusty loafers. Any doubts as to his identity were dispelled as soon as he opened his mouth, and that whining delivery wafted like sour magnolias over the mic.

Coughing sporadically (Neil explained “I have cancer”), he began a series of new and familiar jokes and stories that soon had the audience reacting quite violently. A blonde woman off to the right interjected regularly with comments and catcalls (more about her later), and two young men right in front of Neil yelled something that sounded like “my choice!” repeatedly. Some people were laughing, others wincing, as Neil ran through a relaxed set that touched on such subjects as Teletubby penis grafts, the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ love of heroin, Mormons and anal sex, and of course Princess Diana.

At one point Neil refused to finish a joke as a punishment for one heckler—”I’m not going to tell you the punchline, loudmouth!”—and he didn’t. When the audience pelted him with dimes, he pocketed them happily. The “my choice!” guys were getting more and more rowdy, and one of them finally moved to climb onto to short stage and accost Neil. With an athlete’s grace, Neil emptied his drink in the kid’s face and called for a refill, and his antagonist immediately backed down.

The night ended on a high note with the celebrated Zipper Shtick, leaving at least one audience member red-faced yet proud at being singled out for Neil’s unique brand of comic humiliation. Then Trans Am came out, and they didn’t have any jokes, so I didn’t see any reason to hang around. Besides, I needed my rest if I was going to be fresh for the second night of Neil Magic!

The Spaceland show was fun, but Neil was in looser form the following night at Over Hear, and of the two this show was my favorite. Apparently his appearance was preceded by a mariachi band (who I missed) and some young rappers who jumped around in the manner of gibbons. The place was an art gallery, all righty—you could tell by the white walls, concrete floor, and all the pretty kids from Art Center milling around in their polyester finery. Professor Mayo Thompson was also spotted (with some difficulty, since he was all in white and blended into the room), as was comedy fan Don Bolles. The show ran late, and by the time Neil stepped onto the stage from the small door leading back to the beer garden, there were at least a hundred people who had that “make me laugh, goddamit” look on their faces.

Maybe Neil underestimated his own popularity, because quite a bit of his set was repeated from the night before. Unfortunately, the blonde blabbermouth from Spaceland had come to the second show—with his act memorized! As soon as the repeat jokes started coming, she began yelling out the punchlines during Neil’s pauses. He tried to ignore her for as long as he could, then finally snarled “Why don’t you come up and introduce yourself, you little bitch?” Rumor was that she was a friend of Neil’s wife. It is conceivable that the Culver City resident might have sent a friend to interfere with her ex-husband’s local performances. Neil was onto her, though, and started changing his punchlines to make her look dumb. While this did make the jokes less amusing, it successfully shut up his heckler.

When the audience yelled “How’s your wife?” Neil admitted he had agreed not to talk about her in exchange for all his Raw Hamburger royalties and a guarantee that she wouldn’t sue him for slander—but since Jesus hasn’t sued him yet, he could say anything he liked about that guy. I wouldn’t want to repeat any of the foul things Neil said about some folks’ Lord and Savior, so let’s just say that true believers might want to think twice before attending one of his performances.

An effort to make a joke at Elian Gonzalez’ expense fell flat when Neil, who’s spent most of the last year in Australia, mispronounced the kid’s name. He quickly reclaimed the room by intoning his celebrated “That’s my life!” catchphrase a few times, and riffing on Princess Diana. Who doesn’t love a good Diana joke?

Neil wrapped things up with a long, relatively hilarious story about Anthony Kiedis’ repeated visits to a local bar in search of heroin. The punchline when it finally came had the audience clutching their sides, which were aching with convulsive laughter. Neil Hamburger slipped out the door before anyone realized he was gone, and we all returned to our workaday lives, each one a little changed from having spent some special time in the company of America’s Funnyman, Neeeeeeeeeeeiiiiiillllll Haaaaaammmmmmmburger! (Kim Cooper)
{CLICK HERE for Neil Hamburger - The Best!}

It's been said about so many of rock's giants that they were “ahead of their time” that the expression has ceased to mean much. So how about a great band that was behind their time? That would be Shocking Blue.

It was 1969 when the best version of this Dutch act gelled, and while most of the bands the Blue emulated were by then turning away from groovy and towards heavy—prog rock, early metal and pre-punk taking over the scene—Shocking Blue still sounded like they might have come out of London or San Francisco, circa ‘66/‘67.

Jefferson Airplane is be the band that Shocking Blue mostly invites comparisons to, and it was the Airplane that veteran Dutch rocker Robbie van Leeuwen had in mind when he decided he wanted a female vocalist for his group. But while van Leeuwen may have started out emulating the Jefferson Airplane, his band quickly and permanently outclassed their predecessors. Where the Airplane's lyrics were usually cliché-addled and verging on ridiculous, van Leeuwen offered fresh and innocent boy/girl tales and existential laments; while JA’s music often had that messy, jazzy, “let me do a solo” element weighing it down, Shocking Blue stuck to stripped-down, energy-packed Beat Club grooves; and Mariska Veres was simply a better singer than Grace Slick, more genuinely soulful, more naturally melodious.

Veres was actually not Shocking Blue’s original singer. When guitarist van Leeuwen dropped out of local hitmakers the Motions to form his own band in ‘67, he did so with another Dutch scenester, Fred de Wilde, at the mic. The all-boy Blue recorded one album and some singles (a few of these minor hits in Holland, most notably the decidedly West Coast-influenced “Lucy Brown is Back in Town”). But before things could go too far for this version of the act, and just when van Leeuwen was thinking that he wanted a chick to sing his songs, de Wilde was called off to do military service. Robbie wasted no time in finding Veres, who looked like a model and sang like a soul sister. De Wilde managed to get out of his military duty after just a few months, but by that time the new Blue had already scored hits with “Send Me a Postcard” and “Long and Lonesome Road.” Fred had to understand.

With musical acts things tend to either never quite happen or to happen very quickly, but they rarely happen as fast as they did for the new Shocking Blue. Before the end of their first year together, they had a number one hit in the U.S. “Venus,” their third single and the one and only song everybody remembers them for now, topped the American charts in December of ‘69.

But it's one of the great injustices of rock history that Shocking Blue should be thought of (by the few who even recognize their name) as a one-hit wonder. “Venus” is only one of several classic tracks on the Blue's At Home LP, a collection that should be near the top of critics' All-Time-Best polls, instead of remaining in the basement of super-obscurity where it currently exists. “California Here I Come” and the already-mentioned “Long and Lonesome Road” are just as catchy, just as cool, just as memorable as “Venus,” as is a song called “Love Buzz,” which Nirvana eventually covered (not too well, but they get points for having the cool to pay the tribute) on Bleach. There’s also a raga-rock instrumental, a couple more upbeat tunes just barely lagging behind “Venus” and the others, and “Boll Weevil,” the R&B-fueled album opener, which sounds like the Dead with more real spirit.

The next two Shocking Blue albums, while not as strong or consistent as At Home, were still as good as anything being put out in the first years of the ‘70s, and both contained standout tracks. Scorpio’s Dance has “Sally was a Good Old Girl,” a rockin’ version of a C&W standard, plus “Little Cooling Planet” and “Seven is a Number in Magic,” two more swanky, riff-heavy grooves that sound like California ‘67. Next was 3rd Album, which has an overall folksy feel that was new for the band. “I Saw Your Face,” the lead vocal taken by van Leeuwen, is like the Mamas & the Papas with a banjo, and “Serenade” is one of SB’s many slow-tempo'd, melancholic tracks, it being one of their prettiest ballads. But the two strongest songs on this album are both rockers: the ‘60s dance party-sounding “Bird of Paradise,” and the autobiographical anthem “Shocking You,” on which the Blue seemed to be heading to Glamsville.

Throughout these years the band, while touring over great distances at break-neck speed, also found time to record a few non-album singles, and one of these, “Never Marry a Railroad Man,” may be their best song altogether. A number one in Holland and a gold record in Germany and Japan, this mid-tempo track, with its staccato guitar riff and stays-in-your-head vocal melody, somehow didn't make any noise in America, where the best the Blue had done since “Venus” was hit the lower reaches of the Top 100, or England, where they were, amazingly, never terribly popular.

Records kept coming. A live-in-Japan set appeared shortly after 3rd Album, and in the year 1972 Shocking Blue released three long-players: Inkpot, Attila and Dream on Dreamer. Sadly, the quality-level was diminishing slightly with each new LP; but with van Leeuwen continuing to write all the original material, there was still the occasional stellar track, and nothing as embarrassing as, say, Jefferson Starship (that would come later, after Robbie left). While the albums contained too much filler to be considered even minor classics, they all had excellent singles, the best of these “Inkpot,” “Rock in the Sea,” and “Out of Sight, Out of Mind.”

Things fell apart starting in ‘73. First, the band suffered their first flop single—“Let Me Carry Your Bag” went nowhere at home or abroad, and didn't deserve to. Van Leeuwen was tired from five years of worldwide touring, non-stop recording, and songwriting responsibility, and his fatigue showed on this weak record. Things were not going well with their label Pink Elephant, and soon enough they lost a member, original bassist Klassje Van Der Wal. The band's creator, mastermind and sole songwriter to that point, Robbie van Leeuwen, gave it up shortly after that.

This should have been the end of Shocking Blue, but people need to have things to do, and in doing them often threaten to permanently tarnish something that was once precious. The absence of van Leeuwen's pen was all too apparent on the ‘74 Shocking Blue singles “This America” and “Gonna Sing My Song” and the album Good Times. While the new players were competent musicians, and while Veres' voice sounded strong as ever, the riffs weren't quite there and the lyrics were atrocious (particularly in the case of “This America,” a song on which Veres foolishly sings the praises of the country that had only recently pulled out of Vietnam).

Mercifully, the band went on hiatus after those singles failed to bust the charts. But this was still not to be the last of Shocking Blue. In 1986, the same year that Bananarama trivialized them (although thickening van Leeuwen's royalty checks) with their hit version of “Venus,” a new—and newly-schlocky—SB came out with “The Jury and the Judge,” on which they went back and proved that, yes, they actually could be as tacky and dinosaur-sounding as the Starship. This piece of soulless, formulaic glitz could've easily been the B-side of “We Built This City.”

And that ain't all. There was another single, equally bad, in ‘94, and word is that a band called Shocking Blue, with fronted by Mariska Veres, is still haunting European concert halls. Van Leeuwen is quoted as saying that this new SB “sounds good for sure,” but one has to wonder what time has done to the ears of this once classic songwriter and unsung hero of rock; Robbie hasn't played his guitar for quite some time, apparently having become more interested in the art world than that of contemporary pop music.

Recommended Listening: Singles A’s & B’s, the 2-CD collection of Shocking Blue's 45's, front and back, ‘67-‘94, contains some of SB’s best songs, and can serve as an excellent introduction to all those who think “Venus” was the only thing the band ever did. But true enthusiasts should use this only as a starting point, and go to the same label (Repertoire of Germany) that put this out for their reissues of the first three SB albums with Mariska Veres. Those totally hooked can then go on and get the three ‘72 albums, also carried by Repertoire.

The All-Time Top 10 ‘Next Dylans’: Monkee, Punkers, Bubblegum King: They Wished That For Just One Time They Could Stand Inside His Shoes
by Gene Sculatti

A funny thing about revolutions: Once they're won, it's hard to find anyone who opposed them.  Paris, 1789: "Mais oui!  My servants will tell you: for me, it was always liberté, egalité, fraternité!" Seattle, 1991: "I always dug flannel.  That spandex belongs to my sister.”  Few cultural traditions are more time-honored than bandwagon-jumping, as P.  Edwin Letcher's piece on faux Beatles (Scram 12) proved.  Thirty-five summers ago, perhaps the most cataclysmic "arrival" in pop—Bob Dylan's, as reshaper of American song, world's unlikeliest rock ‘n' roll star and irresistible force—set off a wondrous flood of fakery and imitation.  Over the years, few musicians have remained untouched by his influence: Lennon, Prince, Jagger-Richards, Motown, Springsteen, V.U. Lou, Sheryl Crow imitating Stealer's Wheel imitating Dylan, etc.  But the real fun was the gate-storming party-crash that occurred when they first opened up that new stretch of Highway 61.  Once he roared past, it seemed like everybody wanted to be Bob Dylan, especially the 10 heroic aspirants revved up here on Simulation Row.

10.  MICHAEL BLESSING (NESMITH)
As the early-‘60s headquarters of TV-pop (Shelley Fabares, Paul Petersen, James Darren), it's perhaps not surprising that Colpix Records was the future Monkee's first label-stop.  The surprise is his 1965 single, "What Seems To Be The Trouble, Officer," an outright sendup of Dylan's version of "Baby Let Me Follow You Down.”  It's all there: thick-strummed 12-string, rudimentary harmonica and MN talk-singing his way through a series of non sequitirs in a voice somewhere between early Dyl and very late Walter Brennan.  The song climaxes with the hippie equivalent of a standup's rim-shot: "First hard time I ever had was a po-liceman stopped me," drawls Nesmith.  "He asked me if he could see some papers.  I said, ‘What you want, man, Bambu or Zigzag?'"

9.  JOEY VINE (LEVINE)
On the single "The Out Of Towner," the lead singer of the Ohio Express/Kasenetz-Katz Singing Orchestral Circus wraps his eternally adenoidal cords around an early-Dylan-style "protest" number.  A jagged guitar riff plays tag with the vocal as J.V. inveighs against a hypocritical suburbanite who seeks sinful pleasures in the big city; "skyscrapers" and "tranquilizers" figure prominently in this gem of an outlaw blues from ‘65.  (4 Seasons arranger Charlie Calello produced; hear that group's superb Dyl-crib, "Everybody Knows My Name," on their Working My Way Back To You album.)

8.  TIE: THE TRASHMEN and THE LOVE SOCIETY
Thank heaven the Surfin' Birdmen never bowed to sacred cows.  Otherwise, they might not have given us "(Why Do You Give Me) The Same Lines," a ‘66 rocker that mocks their famous fellow Minnesotan to a "D.”  Talk about colliding visions of youth culture!  The T-men cop the vocal kinks of the Poet Of The ‘60s to tell what's basically a ‘50s teen tale: the singer's upset with a girl who won't hang with him at the malt shop.  Only advanced voice-print technology could prove that the singer of the Love Society's "You Know How I Feel" isn't his Bobness; an amazing resemblance, courtesy of this Wisconsin band's one-off RCA single from ‘68.

7.  BUTCH HANCOCK
The gifted Austin songwriter and founder (with Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Joe Ely) of early alt-folkers the Flatlanders went delirious from the Dyl heat in ‘77, offering the fevered solo set The Wind's Dominion.  The sprawling double-album resembles a hot-wired “Blood on the Tracks”: endless verses breathlessly sung, vacuum-packed with shadow figures (Cockroach Man, the Shrimpboat Captain, "the queen's daughter's lover," etc.).  A solid hoot, even, it seems, for its creator.

6.  MOUSE & THE TRAPS
From the same Nugget-y ranks as the Trashmen, Ronnie "Mouse" Weiss and his East Texas Traps are easily the hardest-rockin' exponents of faux Dylanism.  The near-hit "A Public Execution" and the scorching "Maid of Sugar, Maid of Spice" burn Highway 61 rubber, while "Nobody Cares" brandishes Blonde roots.  

5.  SONNY BONO
Newsweek anointed Donovan "Dylan's work-shirted, cloth-capped English counterpart,” but the early period's most profound pretender was the Son-king.   Adapting the Tambourine Man's vocal mannerisms to his own restricted range, he begat a pop-protest style of great power and stupidity in 1965's "(I'm Not) The Revolution Kind.”  Its predecessor, "Laugh At Me," poignantly dramatized the plight of an oppressed minority (the bellbottomed, bobcat-vested ex-promotion man—Sonny—who'd been hooted out of an industry watering-hole by promo men in suits); it also set in motion the bizarre double-helix that found Ian Hunter borrowing Sonny's Dylan adaptation to forge Mott the Hoople's even more Dylanesque style five years later.

 
 
4.  P.F. SLOAN and BARRY McGUIRE
 "‘Eve Of Destruction' author P.F. Sloan, 19, allows that his inspiration comes from being ‘bugged most of the time,'" Time reported in 1965.  Something made the composer of Jan & Dean's "Theme From The T.A.M.I Show" and "One-Piece Topless Bathing Suit" swap his baggies for a Hans Brinker cap and life as a sim-Zim.  Not so much a sound-alike as a write-alike, P.F. aped every Dylan song-style, from apocalyptic anthems ("Upon A Painted Ocean" = "When The Ship Comes In") and declarations of independence (“Let Me Be” = “It Ain’t Me, Babe”) to Burroughsian cut-and-paste ("Patterns, Seg. 4" = "Subterranean Homesick Blues").  His second LP, 12 More Times, contains the great "Halloween Mary," whose witchy, wig-hatted protagonist is "riding on a sports-broom, actin' like nothin' is real.”  Sloan penned much of Barry McGuire’s Eve Of Destruction and This Precious Time LPs—most notably the Dylan dreamscape “Mr. Man On The Street– Act One” and the probing “Don’t You Ever Wonder Where It’s At.”

3.  THE CHANGIN' TIMES
Despite a limited output (four Philips singles), former Brill Bldg. scribes Steve Duboff and Artie Kornfeld ("Deadman's Curve," tunes for the Turtles and Lesley Gore) snag the "show" spot by virtue of the sheer crassness of their work.  The duo's late-'65 "Pied Piper" (Crispian St. Peters’ cover version went top five) is deliriously Dyl-derivative: an overcooked stew of deliberately flat vocals, clattering drums and reedy harp intrusions.  True "babe magnets," Steve and Artie repeat Dylan's stock gal-phrase some 18 times over the course of "Piper" and its flip, "Thank You, Babe.”  Self-plagiaristic follow-ups like "Aladdin" and the fuzzed-out, prom-queen putdown "How Is The Air Up There" almost best the team’s debut.  "It didn't come from the Dylan song," the boys assured Song Hits magazine.  "We chose ‘Changin' Times' because it seemed to signify the present atmosphere of society.”  Whew!

2.  DAVID BLUE
The heavyweights start here.  One of Dylan’s early Greenwich Village cronies, Blue was among the first to express his devotion on a full-length album.  Looking on the cover of David Blue (Elektra, 1966) like Mickey Rourke playing some Dickensian scalawag in an off-Broadway Oliver!, on disc he slurs his way across a littered imagistic landscape, taffy-pulling syllables to the accompaniment of Dylan sidemen.  “If Your Monkey Can’t Get It” is “From A Buick 6” sideways, with sawing Velvets guitars, eagles in the hallway and Superman at the window.  “Arcade Love Machine” tilts vertiginously, loaded as it is with dreaming streetlights, bleeding automats and the “hot-dog underground.”  On the fade, Blue gives one of those trademark Dylan cries of anguish: “Whoooahhh!!” Catch the late DB in the opening scenes of BD’s marathon movie Renaldo & Clara, nattering nervously as he plays (what else) a pinball machine.

1.  DICK CAMPBELL
More bugged than Sloan, with better diction than Blue, this intense Chicagoan produced the sole masterpiece of the fake-Dylan field, Dick Campbell Sings Where It’s At (Mercury, 1966).  Modest talent and immodest ambitions provide the fuel for Dick to build a fire on Main Street and shoot it full of holes; Dylan readymades (word choice, chord changes) form the DNA of the entire album, which, Dick’s liner notes explain, is heavily informed by his volatile relationship with his girlfriend, Sandi.  Cases in point: the cringe-worthy “Blues Peddlers” (“I won’t be capitulating/ You’re going to lose a few points in your ratings”) and the “Rolling Stone”-washed “Approximately Four Minutes Of Feeling Sorry For D.C.”  (world-class line cramming, plus appearances by Judas, blind men and the farmer’s daughter).   The whole LP, from “Despair’s Cafeteria" to “Girls Named Misery,” glints like cubic zirconium.*  But the high point—the veritable Apex of Appropriation to which all below Dick aspire in vain—is “The People Planners (proudly waving their propaganda banners).”  Mike Bloomfield, Paul Butterfield and support staff kick up an electrical storm as DC spits fire at the enemies of us all:
        
        Hey there, don’t you scream
        ‘Cause I didn’t eat up all my ice cream
        Or turn off the light when I came downstairs
        Forgot to burn the rubbish or comb my hair
        Just shut up!

Out of print?  Yes.  Hard to find?  Natch.  Likely to be reissued on CD?  Never.  But Sings Where It’s At is worth any effort it takes to find. Never has thievery sounded so sweet.  
 
*  It might also, thanks to the crisp vocals and unrelenting tunefulness, invite comparisons to Harvey Sid Fisher’s work.

 *                      *               *               *               *   
Available on CD:
Joey Vine: Immediate Records: The Singles Collection (Sequel box set)
Trashmen: Bird Call: The Twin City Stomp Of The Trashmen (Sundazed)
Butch Hancock: The Wind’s Dominion
(Rainlight)

Mouse & The Traps: The Fraternity Years (Big Beat)
Sonny Bono: The Beat Goes On: The Best Of Sonny & Cher (Atlantic Remasters)
P.F. Sloan: Anthology (One Way) (out of print)
Barry McGuire: Anthology (One Way) (out of print)

Special thanks to Ken Barnes, Chris Morris and Alec Palao

Neil Hamburger live in Los Angeles September 15-16, 2000
by Kim Cooper

The news of comic Neil Hamburger's recent national tour caused a wave of excitement to sweep the states. It's been a long time since he left the Motel 6 circuit to play larger clubs in big cities, and his fans have missed him. Strangely, in Los Angeles Neil was not appearing at the Comedy Store, Laugh Factory or Igby's, but at the rock club Spaceland and at Over Hear, some kind of avant garde gallery space in Echo Park.

Neil's fans didn't let the offbeat locations keep them from seeing their fave funnyman, and the room was filled to capacity for the first performance at Spaceland. In fact, there wasn't a parking place to be found within eight blocks, and your editrix had to avail herself of the valet if she was to make it inside before the show began. Apparently some people were there to see a rock group called Trans Am, but the front couple of rows were all Neil-o-maniacs-including movie star and comedian Jack Black, taking mental notes to improve his own act.

The excitement in the air was palpable, as people craned their necks looking for the man who had brought them so many laughs (and tears) with his recorded works. Because Neil has never sat for a proper photo session, no one was quite sure what he looked like. Had he grown haggard since his recent divorce? Would we find him at the bar?

Finally, the stage door opened and Neil himself was standing, drink in hand, surveying his crowd. He was smaller than I expected, with greasy hair in what might have been a comb-over, big thick glasses like my English uncle Dennis wears, and a mismatched dark suit with dusty loafers. Any doubts as to his identity were dispelled as soon as he opened his mouth, and that whining delivery wafted like sour magnolias over the mic.

Coughing sporadically (Neil explained "I have cancer"), he began a series of new and familiar jokes and stories that soon had the audience reacting quite violently. A blonde woman off to the right interjected regularly with comments and catcalls (more about her later), and two young men right in front of Neil yelled something that sounded like "my choice!" repeatedly. Some people were laughing, others wincing, as Neil ran through a relaxed set that touched on such subjects as Teletubby penis grafts, the Red Hot Chili Peppers' love of heroin, Mormons and anal sex, and of course Princess Diana.

At one point Neil refused to finish a joke as a punishment for one heckler--"I'm not going to tell you the punchline, loudmouth!"--and he didn't. When the audience pelted him with dimes, he pocketed them happily. The "my choice!" guys were getting more and more rowdy, and one of them finally moved to climb onto the low stage and accost Neil. With an athlete's grace, Neil emptied his drink in the kid's face and called for a refill, and his antagonist immediately backed down.

The night ended on a high note with the celebrated Zipper Shtick, leaving at least one audience member red-faced yet proud at being singled out for Neil's unique brand of comic humiliation. Then Trans Am came out, and they didn't have any jokes, so I didn't see any reason to hang around. Besides, I needed my rest if I was going to be fresh for the second night of Neil Magic!

The Spaceland show was fun, but Neil was in looser form the following night at Over Hear, and of the two this show was my favorite. Apparently his appearance was preceded by a mariachi band (who I missed) and some young rappers who jumped around in the manner of gibbons. The place was an art gallery, all righty--you could tell by the white walls, concrete floor, and all the pretty kids from Art Center milling around in their polyester finery. Professor Mayo Thompson was also spotted (with some difficulty, since he was all in white and blended into the room), as was comedy fan Don Bolles. The show ran late, and by the time Neil stepped onto the stage from the small door leading back to the beer garden, there were at least a hundred people who had that "make me laugh, goddamit" look on their faces.

Maybe Neil underestimated his own popularity, because quite a bit of his set was repeated from the night before. Unfortunately, the blonde blabbermouth from Spaceland had come to the second show--with his act memorized! As soon as the repeat jokes started coming, she began yelling out the punchlines during Neil's pauses. He tried to ignore her for as long as he could, then finally snarled "Why don't you come up and introduce yourself, you little bitch?" Rumor was that she was a friend of Neil's wife. It is conceivable that the Culver City resident might have sent a friend to interfere with her ex-husband's local performances. Neil was onto her, though, and started changing his punchlines to make her look dumb. While this did make the jokes less amusing, it successfully shut up his heckler.

When the audience yelled "How's your wife?" Neil admitted he had agreed not to talk about her in exchange for all his Raw Hamburger royalties and a guarantee that she wouldn't sue him for slander. But since Jesus hasn't sued him yet, he could say anything he liked about that guy. I wouldn't want to repeat any of the foul things Neil said about some folks' Lord and Savior, so let's just say that true believers might want to think twice before attending one of his performances.

An effort to make a joke at Elian Gonzalez' expense fell flat when Neil, who's spent most of the last year in Australia, mispronounced the kid's name. He quickly reclaimed the room by intoning his celebrated "That's my life!" catchphrase a few times, and riffing on Princess Diana. Who doesn't love a good Diana joke?

Neil wrapped things up with a long, relatively hilarious story about Anthony Kiedis' repeated visits to a local bar in search of heroin. The punchline when it finally came had the audience clutching their sides, which were aching with convulsive laughter. Neil Hamburger slipped out the door before anyone realized he was gone, and we all returned to our workaday lives, each one a little changed from having spent some special time in the company of America's Funnyman, Neeeeeeeeeeeiiiiiillllll Haaaaaammmmmmmburger!

About Scram #13: The cover cutie's Janet Klein, and she leads a naughty old timey ensemble called The Parlor Boys. Plus Hub Kapp & the Wheels, Mooney Suzuki, guys who sing like girls, The Frantics, Mark Farner, Red Planet, Gene Sculatti on the Top 10 "next Dylans," the final days of the Kahiki tiki restaurant, Shocking Blue, Neil Hamburger live. Wanna own the magazine in which this and so many other nifty stories appear? Pick up Scram #13

Scram #13: The cover cutie's Janet Klein, and she leads a naughty old timey ensemble called The Parlor Boys. Plus Hub Kapp and the Wheels, Mooney Suzuki, guys who sing like girls, The Frantics, Mark Farner, Red Planet, Gene Sculatti on the Top 10 "next Dylans," the final days of the Kahiki tiki restaurant, Shocking Blue, Neil Hamburger live.