Ask me what my favorite music is, and I won’t be able to avoid talking about him. Ask me who inspires me, and he will probably be the first name I mention. I’m talking about my musical idol, pianist/singer/songwriter Tim Minchin. How big of a fan am I? I’ve seen him four times and counting, traveled as far as Washington D.C. to see him, waited by the stage door after every show to meet him and get one of his famous bear hugs. Creeped out yet?
So, as the one year anniversary of me discovering Tim Minchin’s music approaches (It was January 12th, he was the musical guest on Conan), I thought it fitting to blog about thoughts that my latest Tim Minchin concert experience provoked, which happened on November 4th at the Town Hall in Manhattan.
As aforementioned, Tim Minchin is a pianist, singer, and songwriter. He is also a very gifted comedian. He usually performs solo in the cabaret style, alternating between playing songs and telling jokes. He is not your run-of-the-mill Jerry Seinfeld, however. The reason why Tim Minchin holds the key to my heart is because his brand of comedy is extremely intellectual and philosophical. While his jokes are laugh-out-loud funny, every one of them is based on modern day issues and meant to be thought about seriously at the end of the day. His jokes are about mostly controversial subjects, mostly evolution, atheism, the corruptness of organized religion, etc.
In this manner, Tim is a lot like the groundbreaking artists we’ve examined all semester long in class. Tim’s music is still definitely not understood by most of the world. The overall conservativeness of American values (despite pockets of liberalism as seen strongly in New York City) makes Tim’s audience limited to only those who can handle the starting nature of his frankness, verboseness, frequent cursing, and unconventional appearance.
At the concert, Tim told a joke that examined what makes things sacred. It involved him taking a copy of the Qur’an and a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and swapping their book sleeves- he kept on asking, “is anything sacred as long as you have the word ‘Qur’an’ on it?” He went on to ponder whether it’s the title, the cover, or the text that makes a physical object sacred. This entire bit reminded me of the countless debates we’ve had over “what makes something good art?” Is art good because of the artist who creates it? Is the artist good because of the art he or she creates? Tim’s song “Beauty”, in my opinion, is a great attempt at answering these questions. He himself says he doesn’t know what the song means, but I see it as a lament on what the world’s obsession with beauty does to art and the people who create it.
I’ll try not to spam with too many links. Here is a wonderful introduction-to-Tim song.
Here is a very serious song about Prejudice.
Here is a ballad that will make you cry.
And here is a 9 minute jazz backed beat poem.
Note: Tim also has penned the music to Matilda the Musical, which is playing in London at the moment, but there’s no doubt in my mind that it will eventually come to Broadway 🙂
I am going to start off by expressing my deepest jealousy over your seeing Tim Minchin live. I happen to be a big fan of Tim Minchin and find his humor to be clever and insightful. The beauty of humor is it’s ability to project incredibly smart observations to the masses without being insulting or hateful. Despite the fact that Minchin is constantly making jokes about religion, I don’t feel insulted by them at all (ok, on occasion). Most of his points are well put, and are valid criticisms of organized religion. I may disagree with his conclusions based off these observations, but that doesn’t make the observations less true or the jokes less funny. He combines humor, philosophy, and music in ways that only the best and brightest comics can and has the timing and talent to pull it off. It is this brand of comedy that keeps me thinking far after I stop laughing.