Perhaps the is the best place to experience a show.
According to Forbes Magazine, Boulder was ranked among the United States’ smartest cities for two years running (in 2007-2008). Not saying that fans who appreciate a Randy Newman show are smarter than the average bear, but, they are. They just get it.
For starters you have to attend a Randy Newman show outside the mindset of: “I’m going to hear the ‘Toy Story’ guy.”
He won’t even touch the Pixar shit until the second half of his two hour show. Second, he swears — a lot! He even uses the racial slurs (including the “n” word).
And why not? The man is a modern day Mark Twain — under-appreciated for his time.
Self described as an “oafish man,” Newman takes the stage like all great composers have before him. He sits facing west like Beethoven, Mozart and Bach.
Newman drives home the point that we are only specks in this universe of life. He touches subjects that blanket Marxism, manifest destiny and the current state of world affairs. He sings songs about love that make you want to walk up on stage and put your arm around him, only to retract and slap him in the face during the next song. He optimizes satire and is every great literature teacher’s wet dream.
His banter between songs leads you to tears of laughter only to turn to sadness when you can fully understand the dark cavern from which his words come.
Before the song “I Miss You,” Newman started out by saying, “I wrote this for my first wife, while I was with my second wife. It might have been 20 years too late.” Or when he went into the song, “My Life Is Good,” he stated that he wrote it after a visit from his good friend Bruce Springsteen, who said he was tired, and wanted to know if Randy wanted to be the “boss” for a while.
Newman played all the hits including, “Momma Told Me Not To Come,” “Short People,” “Feels Like Home,” “Rednecks,” and among others, “You’ve Got A Friend In Me.”
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Evan Semón is a Denver freelance writer and photographer and regular contributor to Reverb. See .
Joshua Elioseff is a Boulder-based freelance photographer and regular Reverb contributor. Check out his .
