Bob Newhart - Something Like This... The Bob Newhart Anthology

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Music reviews of Something Like This... The Bob Newhart Anthology

Music Review: Button-Down Brilliance
Rating: 5 Stars

The Charlie Chaplin movies which had your great-grandparents in guffaws barely rouse a smirk on you. The wacky comedies of the fifties and early 60's now seem naive, innocent, and terribly dull. By rights, 40-year old comedy albums, particularly those with nary a nasty word on them, should be about as entertaining as a rainy afternoon with Aunt Clara showing you her collection of porcelain cats.

Somehow, perhaps because of the very simplicity of his act, Bob Newhart's recordings escape that fate. They are as funny now as they were when they first came out. And that is VERY funny.

It's a simple idea in most of Newhart's monologues. Make your audience do at least half the work. Give only one side of a telephone conversion, strategically provide just enough infomation for the audience to work out what the other person is saying. Play the driving instructor, but let the audience do the driving. Put the ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances, like the Empire State Building security guard asking his boss if there's anything in the manual to cover giant apes. Or put the extraordinary man in a commonplace situation, like Abe Lincoln talking to history's first spin doctor.

Bob Newhart won the very first Grammy for Best New Artist. He's the only comedian to ever win it. He has starred or co-starred in 5 TV series, with a 6th, co-starring rapper Sisqo (?!?), slated for September 2001. His 2nd series, The Bob Newhart Show, where he played a psychiatrist, and 3rd, Newhart, as a Vermont innkeeper, were the biggest successes. In both those series, he remained the stoic solid center, surrounded by people far odder than he. In effect, he played us, and his reactions more than his actions were the source of his humor.

As funny as his co-stars were, Newhart was funnier still. Often with saying a word, his silence drew laughs. That same timing, those same funny silences, remarkably are just as effective on record (or CD) as they are on video.

Buy this CD for yourself and enjoy it. Or buy it for your kids, so they know who that old guy with Sisqo is. Or buy it for your great-great-grandchildren.

Because, very likely, they too will find it funny.

Description of Something Like This... The Bob Newhart Anthology

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