Jimmy Fallon - The Bathroom Wall Review
Posted by Tom Cocozza on 09.17.2002
We’ve got rock, pop, punk, metal, and comedy inside. Come along with your Friendly, Neighborhood Music Reviewer and explore The Bathroom Wall!
Now, for those of us who know Jimmy Fallon’s work, either from Saturday Night Live, or MTV awards shows, or Saturday Night Live…. Okay, the man hasn’t done too much, but he’s starting to branch out now, into the musical comedy album. Which brings me to my original point. He’s pretty much an Adam Sandler rip-off, with less bathroom humor and much less professionalism. But according to the ladies, he’s cuter, and he’s damn funny, so successful. And at least he thanks Sandler in the liner notes, as well as making an impression of Sandler part of his repertoire. They say imitation is the highest form of flattery. Anyway, I bought the album, and that’s what we’re gonna talk about here. Or rather, I’m gonna talk, and you’re gonna listen.
First off, this is another half hour special, of an album, clocking in at 36 minutes and change. It’s separated into two sections, Music and Standup. The Music section is five songs, all original Fallon works, although two of the songs use samples.
The first track, “Idiot Boyfriend”, is done in the style of an Eighties Pop/Punk/Funk/Rock song, those things that Prince used to excel at, back when he was first called Prince. It actually samples the baseline of “Rapture” by Blondie, who was also quite good at that sort of thing. The song is about an idiot boyfriend singing about his idiot ways, and not seeming to upset about it. It’s a funny track, with echoes of Adam Sandler’s “Steve Polychronopolis.” In case you’re not getting it, this guy wants to emulate Sandler’s career, and he’s doing a good job. Just watch, in a couple of years, he’ll be doing movies.
The second track is called “(I Can’t Play) Basketball”, and is, believe it or not, a rap song. Fallon apparently can’t play basketball, and double-dribbles often. He also gets dunked on often, and gets crotched in the face. But he’s “not taking the name ‘Dick Bruiseface’ lying down!” This song is hysterically funny, simply put. He’s a pretty good wordsmith, too.
He takes it down a bit with track three, a country inspired tune called “Drinking In The Woods.” If you have ever had the unique pleasure of drinking in the woods, you’ll really like this song. Drinking in the woods sucks, but when there’s nothing else to do… it still sucks. Oh, and this song reminds me of every person I met from upstate New York while I was in college. Good track, although somewhat limiting. If you haven’t had the experience, it’s not that funny. Oh, and Fallon’s voice really lends itself to country music…
As opposed to track four, “Road Rage.” This is a metal song from the early nineties, a la Offspring’s “Bad Habit.” A decent song, nothing really notable, but has perhaps the best lyric of any song on this album: “If honking my horn don’t get your attention/I’ll stick my fist up your ass like my name was Jim Henson.” Ah, classic!
Track five is like a modern, alternative rock version of those three chord Ramones classics. “Snowball” is about snowball fights, and how much fun they are. This id told from a kid’s perspective, and is actually just kinda cool because no cynicism creeps into the song. It’s just about winter fun. Not laugh out loud funny, but okay. And besides, he mentions moon boots and hand-me-down snow-suits, and I had both of those.
That ends the end of the music section proper, although this won’t be the last time music comes into play on the album. Just for the record, he sings rather well, and he and his band move quite well from one genre to the other.
The next nine tracks are a stand-up routine, where he does impressions of starts and musicians, and in-between talks about college life (My R.A. was just like Chris Rock! And how about those mini-fridges?!). He’s not really that good at standup, by my goodness, some of his impressions are dead on! He does Cliff Claven (John Ratzenberger from Cheers), Jerry Seinfeld, Robin Williams, and of course, Adam Sandler, and it sounds like they just do thirty-second bits on the album.
He finishes the stand-up routine proper with a medley of artists trying out for singing the jingles for a new line of Troll Dolls. That’s right. So he gets to sing versions of U2’s “Desire”, Alanis Morisette’s “Uninvited”, Dave Mathew’s Band “So Much To Say”, and gets the college crowd to sing along to his version of Cold Play’s “Yellow.”
He does the standup routine in front of a college crowd, and really plays them well. He knows something about our generation that kinda makes it easy for comedians to come up with material. People from the ages of 19 to around 28 or so just have the feeling that everything in the past was better than it is now. So just make references to things ten years ago, and everyone cheers. I mean, he covers a Four Non-Blondes song! Which one? They only have one, come on. Don’t even ask that. It’s “What’s going on?”
He finishes the album with one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard on an album, and in my opinion, better than anything he’s done on SNL. It’s called “Hammertime”, and he states and proves that you can sing any ‘80’s song over “U Can’t Touch This.” I mean, he does around twenty songs. Even if you don’t buy the album, download this. And make sure you don’t get the one he did from the MTV Movie awards last year, this one is much better.
The 411: : A good mixture of contemporary and retro themed comedy and music, geared towards the college crowd, and those who went to college in the nineties. Funny stuff!
