Bob Newhart - Something Like This... The Bob Newhart Anthology
|
List Price: Our Price: $11.25 You Save: $8.73 (44%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $6.43 (click here) Category: Music CD See more new music releases 
|
|---|
Canadian Music Store
Free Music Notes for Something Like This... The Bob Newhart Anthology
Free Music Review: Don't listen to this while driving
Hit: 5 Stars
I've had this double disc set on my iPod for five days now, and I've found myself just listening to it over and over again. I'd heard much of this material before, but had forgotten just how funny it really was. It is sad that our culture has devolved to the point where most Americans would not find Bob Newhart's routines funny. To truly appreciate his humor from the '60's requires a good education, intelligence, and a disdain for the present state of "comedy" (i.e. comedy channel vulgarity, def comedy jam ignorance, etc...).I question some of the material included on the disc, especially disc 2, which has less of the abstract "man on the phone" type comedy. I would have included routines such as "an infinite number of monkeys" and "automation and a private in Washington's army" instead of real world routines like "siamese cat" and "buying a house". Newhart's material really hits the mark when it is utterly abstract and ridiculous.
Classic "don't-miss" routines included here are:
1. Abe Lincoln versus Madison Avenue - "Abe, do the speech the way Charlie wrote it, would you?"...classic.
2. The Cruise of the U.S.S. Codfish - "Looking back on the mutiny"
3. Retirement Party - "Of course, Mrs. Wilson is down in Mexico with her hundred thou...and i'm still up here..with this crummy watch"
4. Introducing Tobacco to Civilization - "Don't tell me Walt, don't tell me..." "You see Walt, we've been a little worried about you lately..."
5. Defusing a bomb - "I'm gonna give it to you straight, Willard, you've got yourself a live one there..."
6. King Kong - "Well, sir, when people come to work in the morning, they're gonna see the ape in the street, notice the broken windows, and I think they're gonna put two and two together..."
I've never laughed so hard in my life. Buy this. It's worth every penny.
Free Music Review: Pure Genius
Hit: 5 Stars
To give you a bit of perspective on my review of this CD, I'm twenty-seven years old at the time of this writing - meaning that I wasn't even alive when Bob Newhart recorded these bits. I was never old enough to appreciate the TV series 'Newhart', either, mainly because at the age I'd have been I'd have found it incessantly boring. But fortunately, time has helped shape my tastes in entertainment, and from the moment I heard 'The Driving Instructor' on 'The Dr. Demento Show' (which I miss to this day since our local affiliate pulled it), I was hooked. Having been granted the opportunity now to enjoy even this smattering of Newhart's stand-up work, I can safely say that it's money well spent. From the first track - "You typed it...uh, Abe, how many times do we have to tell you? On the backs of envelopes!" - Newhart can get anyone still capable of conscious thought to snicker without the need for a Parental Advisory label on the case. Each track is a brilliant snowball of a gem that just keeps building toward a gleefully unrepentant punchline, as in the bit about how police handle jumpers.
Furthermore, in the area of satirizing even the most utterly inane of human proceedings, Bob Newhart is still one of the greats. 'The Driving Instructor', 'The Retirement Party' and 'The Kiddie Show' take the most sublime elements of Americana and give them a much-needed shot of strychnine laced with sugar-coated cyncism. The beauty of Newhart's comic mannerisms, in my view, is his ability to be totally acerbic and make it seem like it's a purely natural extension of his own sense of curiosity. He's never snide or aloof in his barbs; he's almost like the thinking man's dad.
'Something Like This' is a must for any Newhart afficionado or just anyone who appreciates getting a good laugh out of someone who can do it and make it seem totally effortless. Just like we wish WE could.
Free Music Review: Still Works
Hit: 5 Stars
This is the first classic comedy I've listened to in several years, so a few things struck me immediately. First, some of the conventions of stand-up have changed. In the earlier days of stand-up, the comedy was based on sketch material (almost everything here is a monologue) and the characters were as funny as the lines they were given to say. Second, the audience members withheld their applause until the end of the sketch and then applauded every bit. The third thing I noticed was that this comedy still works.It comes as a bit of a surprise to me that satire and dark humor were not invented by Saturday Night Live. Though his first album (Button Down Mind of Bob Newhart) came out in 1960, Newhart's material and delivery are still every bit as contemporary today as they were then. Ledge Psychology, for example, is a sketch about a cop casually trying to talk a jumper down...and failing.
It helps that Newhart's material is based on historical events and industry, neither of which has changed very dramatically in the last 40 years. Budget airlines still scare the heck out of us; there's still a high turnover in driving instructors; and the more imaginitive bits (like "King Kong") still play because the reference material is still in our culture.
Newhart is the perfect understated stand-up comedian and this album really demonstrates what Ray Romano and Steven Wright owe to the older guys. I laughed. A lot.
Free Music Review: Newhart one of america's most funniest comedians ever!
Hit: 5 Stars
The collection is really excellent on Rhino records CD right here. I've never heard any of his live comedy album recordings on Warner Brothers before. Now I have already and he's really funny on here performing every act and skits listening to every groundbreaking masterpiece from Bob Newhart himself. He is compared to like no other stand-up comic of a lifetime. Newhart's albums were released in the early sixties on the same label during that period like Bill Cosby's was. Take for example this black comedian genius was really in his young prime and so famous. A resemblance to a racial color personality of Newhart a white talented celebrity. With lots of big laughs to his fame and fortune to the greatest legend of all-time. I know your going to love Bob Newhart as an actor on television. Best remembered from the seventies sitcom series "Bob Newhart Show" and the eighties version "Newhart" where he played Dick Laudon who was a hotel owner in a small town area of Vermont. Or to movies include like from 1977's Disney cartoon classic adventure for his voice as "The Rescuers". And also playing a high school principal who finds out that Kevin Kline is already a gay homosexual teacher from Paramount pictures 1997's controversial big screen situation comedy hit "In & Out". Trust me it's the best CD you should get and enjoy listen to it by laughing your face right off!Free Music Review: Hilarious
Hit: 5 Stars
Bob Newhart is an underappreciated comic genius. He is known mostly for his TV programs these days but he come out of the standup comic scene. In this collection of 2 CDs, some of his best works are collected together.
His style is very distinctive. He usually spends a short time describing a situation and then transforms himself into one of the characters he just described. From there, he enters into long and convoluted conversations with the imaginary person or persons he described in the setting. He only speaks one side of the dialog but you can tell what is going on with everyone from the way he speaks. Sometimes he just makes a statement and other times he reacts aloud to what the other person supposed said. The sarcasm can be hilarious but the unexpected reactions are even better. I'll bet this is very much harder than it seems. The results, however, are hilarious.
A hilarious example of this is a phone call from a new janitor at the Empire State Building to his boss. Its his first day and he has just seen King Kong climbing the building. It's a situation not covered in the new employee manual. It sounds ludicrous and it is but it is also hilarious.
Listen to this one with few distractions going on. You'll want to pay attention to every word.