2003 Bill Bailey Review
‘Good evening hippy scum!’ the man in black bellows to a tightly packed auditorium. There’s been a real buzz about Bailey’s performance all day. Clearly the most eagerly anticipated act outside of the Purple Zone, there’s true excitement in the air that the likes of Phil Kay can only hint at. But maybe that’s just the waft from the nearest ‘facilities’.
Bill’s sense of the absurd is devastatingly infectious. He has a truly genius gift for identifying the ridiculous in life and bending them into whatever refracted forms they might take. Simple ideas like the local West Country accent are taken to extreme conclusions like Beethoven looking for a penny via incidental music for kids TV, to Yoda singing ‘China In Your Hand’. It doesn’t matter if the connection seems obscure, Bill will enlighten you to his way of thinking and afterwards there couldn’t possibly be any other direction.
It’s actually quite wonderful to be reminded of what a truly masterful musician Bill Bailey actually is. Not overstated or pompous, Bailey is still very smugly flash. From guitar to keyboards to theremin, he gives an awesome performance in his own right as an inventive and talented artist. ‘Zip A Dee Doo Dah’ done Portishead style, is not only bleakly hilarious but totally worthy of the rapturous applause it receives. He begs the question of what came first, the chicken or the egg (roll)? The comedy or the music?
It’s observational comedy done in the most highly original style and, well, lets face it, the guy’s just not quite on this planet permanently, he’s only an occasional visitor that likes to brighten up our dimension. Holding four unwrapped Kit Kat Chunkys in his hand so that he can look like a little pixie indeed…
Bill just sees the opportunities for laughs in everything he reacts to. Coldplay’s ‘Clocks’ enters hyperspace into a rave environment and it just works. That’s the clever thing about Bill Bailey, he understands how to open up the mind to new and extreme possibilities, which must mean that he must be the most intense person to have a smoke with because it would be impossible to relax without having your mind scrambled. The man has been inspired by the tour of ‘Mamma Mia’ and the like to write a musical based around the works of Slayer, and although it’s just an excuse for the next musical gag, one cannot help wondering if he might just go ahead and do it properly, just because he could. He doesn’t say ‘Why?’ he says ‘Why not?’ and nothing will stop him from probing and exploring the cavities of life.
But Bailey’s intelligent wit has just a touch of bleak pathos coming to the surface occasionally. Glastonbury Fact for the day is that the USA spends more on pornography in a year than the amount that could solve third world debt. Quite a staggering statistic and one to think about when next reaching for the top shelf.
‘I Will Not Look At Titties For A Year’ is Bailey’s porn poem homage to such good intentions and ‘relaxing in a gentleman’s way’ done in a country blues fashion. To link it to Middle Earth-inspired 70’s rock like ‘Leg Of Time’ and the wisdom of George Bush sampled around pumping drum and bass takes either a fractured, diseased or focused mind, but Bailey doesn’t care where he takes inspiration for his musings. It’s all so seemingly unrehearsed but so achingly skillful and overpoweringly intoxicating that we just can’t let him go until he’s done another half hour.
From the Eastenders theme done Techno style, to cheese, to Pavlov’s dogs being tortured for science, the themes get wilder and weirder until his prog-rock doom tale ‘Human Slaves In An Insect Nation’ brings things back to at least a vaguely hazy normality. But maybe as Bill suspects, the ‘cakes’ he ate earlier are starting to kick in. Maybe the Super Furries or Flaming Lips animal costumes have affected his brain somewhat because Zebras, mice, badgers, weasels and a variety of other creatures are then the subject of ridicule but it still manages to end up with a dig at Phil Collins, so no harm done there.
Bill Bailey is just a comedy God, there’s no other suitable word for it. For many, too many, the absolute highlight of the whole day among some pretty stiff competition, but one of those gigs where you just had to be there nonetheless.
Deeply, darkly, dangerously and disturbingly wonderful.
Paul Mills
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