Fuck Yeah, Louis C.K.

• by Kevin Naulls May 23, 2012 

Fans of Louis CK’sincredibly colourful (and hilarious) standup comedy will be excited to note that he’ll be headlining four shows in Toronto as part of the launch of JFL42, a festival put together by Just For Laughs and LiveNation. The festival runs for eight days from September 21 to 28, and will include, um, 42 acts from various disciplines, ranging from art to comedy, to choose from (a pass entitles the buyers to a reserved seat for a Louis CK show, and the choice of attending several other events). This isn’t your average comedy festival either, because JFL and LiveNation want the user to be involved in creating the schedule—festival passes can be purchased via smart phone, and the acts with the most interest will get the best time slots (the festival also recognizes that some acts may be too popular, and they have committed to setting up at bigger venues or adding extra performance dates and times where possible). Passes go on sale May 25 at 10 a.m. via Ticketmaster, and a full list of the performers will be revealed in June.

Ready for more Louis C.K.? You’re in luck. The comedian released a brand new album, “WORD: Live at Carnegie Hall,” today as a download on his website. Laughspin first reported the news this morning, and although they first indicated that the album would not be released until tomorrow, “Word” is currently available on louisck.net for $5.

The comedian received plenty of accolades for his latest one-hour special, “Live at the Beacon Theater,” which he announced, produced, and independently released within about a month last November. This time, he’s beat his own record by releasing the album without any formal announcement beforehand.

Although some of the material may be familiar to fans of C.K., it has never been released as a special before. He explains on his website:

This is material that I was performing two years ago (about) on a tour that was called “Word”. Some of this material was on my FX show “Louie” in pieces but the entire show in one piece was never released. This show was recorded at Carnegie Hall on November 4, 2010.

His last special before “Beacon Theater,” the concert film and album “Hilarious,” was filmed in April 2009, over a year before his “Word” tour. C.K. is notorious for developing a new hour of comedy each year. “Beacon Theater” will make its TV debut Saturday on FX.

The “Louie” star, who recently swept the Comedy Awards, also released his breakthrough special “Shameless” for $5 on his website

ABC2, Monday, 10pm

COMEDIAN Louis C.K. has developed a cult following in the US, where he has been described by Chris Rock as the ”greatest comic mind of the last quarter century” and by Ricky Gervais as the ”funniest stand-up working in America”. In 2006 he pioneered a raw and bluntly amusing series called Lucky Louie, which was, in fact, so raw and blunt that it was cancelled after just one season. But C.K. is nothing if not a fast learner. Here in this 13-part series he reprises much of the same territory - love, sex, relationships, parenting - with far funnier, not to mention warmer, results.

Filmed with one camera on the streets of New York, this series is a kind of comedy verite, a semi-autobiographical rummage around the everyday mortifications of life as a divorced single dad. (In life, as in the show, C.K. is divorced and shares custody of his two young children.) The show shares DNA with Ricky Gervais’ Extras (the creepy vulnerability, the frankness), Woody Allen (the self-absorption, the nuclear-powered neuroticism) and even Seinfeld (in the interspersing of his live performances), among other things. But it’s C.K.’s nihilism that sets him apart, his ability to let his pet subjects - materialism, selfishness, declining sexuality in the average male - slide right off him in lines that make you laugh despite yourself. His rant tonight about his utter indifference towards poverty is illustrative. It sounds revolting, and it is revolting, but it’s all true: in another life, C.K. would have been a philosopher or a preacher. Tonight’s episode begins in typically disastrous fashion, with Louie accompanying his daughter on a school excursion that goes seriously off the rails. We then sit in on a date that - you guessed it - goes off the rails. Louie spends the whole time looking morose and mopping his forehead, or sitting in the train in his bunched-up suit, while his date, a young spunky woman, sits there, wondering when it will end. This is a dark world; you might as well laugh.

• By Malcolm Fleschner

  For The Daily News

  Posted:   05/16/2012 11:05:15 PM PDT
  Updated:   05/17/2012 12:27:51 AM PDT

I was struck recently by a scene in an episode of the FX Network TV show “Louie,” when the title character, played by comedian Louis C.K., takes his two school-age daughters on a road trip to visit an elderly aunt he hasn’t seen in years. As the three of them are motoring along, The Who song “Who Are You?” comes on the radio, and Louie turns up the volume and starts to sing along. In fact, he belts out the whole 3½-minute tune, at points accompanying himself on air drums and guitar, or turning around to deliver more emphatic vocals to his daughters in the backseat — even the climactic “Who the #$%& are you?” part.

If you’ve seen “Louie,” you know it’s an unusual show — the kind of comedy that’s actually more depressing and unnerving to watch than most anything else on TV (except maybe the Grammy Awards). But the scene in the car struck me as remarkable for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that network television shows don’t typically burn more than three minutes of air time while someone on screen sings along, slightly off-key, to a recorded track (again, with the exception of the Grammys).

One thing I found particularly authentic about the scene was the daughters’ reaction. On a typical “family-friendly” sitcom, in a scene like this, the daughters would likely join in for a happy, heartfelt family moment. Or, if the show were a bit more snarky, the girls would cover their ears and beg the dad to stop. But on ”Louie,” as I have found to be the case in real life, the kids in the backseat are mostly indifferent, paying little attention to Dad’s singing, his excitement or his disregard of highway safety as he embraces his love of classic rock.

Not that the scene was 100 percent true to life. One big discrepancy I noticed is that Louie got to pick the radio station. Needless to say, this is not the case in my car. I don’t know when parents lost this privilege, but it must have happened after my childhood was over. My dad always insisted on listening to classical music when we drove which, while I didn’t appreciate it at the time, I later realized helped instill in me a lifelong love of not having to listen to classical music.

The other element of the scene that rang hollow was that Louie seemed to know all the song’s lyrics, which is rarely the case with me. Sometimes I’ll hear a song come on the radio and tell the kids, “Oh, I love this one!” and then fumble pathetically as I try to sing along. I guess I should really tell the kids, “Oh, I love this one — the chorus, anyway!”

But there is at least one song I do know all the way through, and that’s “Yesterday,” by The Beatles. It’s one of the songs I’ve always sung to my kids to put them to sleep, whether they wanted me to or not. But with “Yesterday,” I have the opposite problem — I know it too well. I’ve sung this song so many times that I can’t help but over-analyze the lyrics, especially the part where Paul McCartney famously sings of his lost lover, “Why she had to go, I don’t know, she wouldn’t say. I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday-ay-ay-ay.”

In the approximately 18 million times I’ve sung this song, I’ve come to wonder a few things. Like, who is this girlfriend who up and leaves Paul McCartney without a word of explanation? Does that sound like any woman you know? What, was she an intelligence operative about to go on a top-secret mission, but she didn’t want to jeopardize Paul’s safety by revealing any of the details? Probably not. Which is why I bet if you asked her, she’d have a different story to tell:

Paul’s Girlfriend: “‘she wouldn’t say?’ Is that what he tells people? Oh, I said, let me tell you, I said plenty. Maybe Paul should rewrite the lyrics to that song as, ‘Why she had to go I don’t know, I wouldn’t listen. Probably because I was too busy running around with that French trollop, Michelle.’”

So clearly, even a musical genius like Paul McCartney has lyrics-related problems. But no matter. Inspired by Louie’s rendition of “Who Are You?” I’m going to keep on singing along to the radio in the car with gusto, even if I don’t know the lyrics and I sound absolutely terrible. Then I’ll promise my kids I’ll stop if they let me pick the station.

Readers taking issue with Malcolm’s take on classical music, Beatles lyrics or proper parenting can email their dissatisfaction to Malcolm@CultureShlock.com.

If you guys haven’t heard, LCK has released an audio version of his HBO special Shameless, an audio version of Live at the Beacon Theatre, and an audio version of his new (although old-ish) special Word - Live at Carnegie Hall. These are all for sale for $5 each. If you’ve already purchased the video version of Live at the Beacon, you can log back in and download the audio-only version for free. So head on over to LouisCK.net and support our favorite comedian. :)