Photo quality suffers when snapping pics on the fly.
As promised, here’s a little more on Conan. (The camera had been temporarily misplaced and we are back on track now.)
I’d mentioned previously that I was trying to avoid reports of “The legally prohibited from being funny on television” tour, so that if there were repeat gags I wouldn’t be bored. I’m glad I hid under my rock.
The Conan O’Brien live show was way better than I had expected, and after paying $100 for a ticket I was expecting a lot.
While I had missed the opening comic’s name, many, many people smarter than I had caught that information and passed it along after the show. Reggie Watts is worth a little of your Internet time, as he’s funny, drops mad beats and has a lot of hair. Not that I judge people on their amount of hair.
Things were kicked up with a couple of songs from the band, with LaBamba coming so close I could touch him. But I wouldn’t, since he was playing his trombone. That didn’t stop the jerk across the aisle from slapping him on the back.
An hour or so later, Conan would lick LaBamba's face. He tastes of Funions.
I call him a jerk not just for that, but for talking through most of Reggie Watts’ set. And running around taking photos, while “security” hassled me for tweeting pre-show.
Which might as well lead me to the real important fact of the night. The Venue at River Cree is a tent.
Classy.
It’s a tent.
A giant tent, in which they give you folding chairs to sit on.
Only the classiest for world-class performances.
I didn’t know it was a tent. I probably still would have paid to see Conan O’Brien (And freakin’ Andy Richter! I was really amped about Andy being in the tent.) but I would have been prepared.
Thankfully, the tent zings were flying, so I knew I wasn’t taking crazy pills. People in the crowd (so much Twitter action Saturday night…) Reggie Watts, Conan, Andy, everyone was making fun of the fact we were in a giant tent.
Eww, a tent with folding chairs.
I don’t know if the River Cree Resort & Casino throws more money at acts to book them in their “Tentue,” but it’s sort of embarrassing. I mentioned to one guy that I’d be all over a downtown arena if it meant Edmonton would book great acts in great venues. Or at least, not tents.
Anyway…Conan was great. It was a perfect mix of him talking with the crowd, changing costumes, familiar gags and bits and characters from the show. Andy’s commercials about West Edmonton Mall (a place where you can find a Disney store AND a gun range) and the oilsands (forget about the coming oil wars of 2013) were great riffs on local spots. I won’t go on and on about the whole show since you’ve probably already read about it. Or you were there.
It’s also worth noting this is a pretty genius idea. He may have known about the possibility of a new TV deal (I guess it would be odd for nobody to be trying to land him.) but to capitalize on the NBC fiasco, to give your fans something different, and to create a variety show that doesn’t suck is something special.
He also thanked the “young kids” for all their online activism to try and keep him on The Tonight Show, and supporting him throughout. Good luck with your old people who won’t be watching whatever we call TV in five years, NBC.
I hope there’s a DVD after the tour so I can get me a little more Coco. That might be especially needed if we don’t end up with a chance to see his new TBS show in Canada.
As ridiculous as I think the River Cree tent is, there aren’t exactly a ton of comedy venues in town that would support a crowd of that size… Offhand, the only venue I can think of that would have been any good for Conan (or any other comedian) is the Jube, and I’d be willing to bet that it costs substantially more the book the Jube than the River Cree.
Really, there’s got to be some reasonable explanation why every medium-to-large booking comedian plays there…
Plus, the fact that you’re playing in a tent gives the comedians some great material to work with.
Haha…come play the Venue at River Cree, you’ll get fresh material out of our giant tent.
i would’ve rather seen him at the winspear. the sound would’ve been exponentially better.
just sayin’.
I agree that the venue was likely picked due to availability when booking a tour only a month in advance – both the Jubilee Auditorium and Winspear are generally booked upwards of 4 months in advance, and the Myer Horowitz has half the capacity of the River Cree Venue. However, I don’t think a downtown arena would be the answer for medium-sized theatre shows like Conan’s – venues like that are so large that they were probably never on the table at all. However, while I understood why the River Cree was probably booked as the venue, I couldn’t help but feel a little embarrassed at the venue; it felt really classless and tacky, like there really MIGHT be a livestock auction there after.
That said, the show was un-be-LIEV-able! It was as close to perfect as I could have imagined, the perfect blend of standup, music, and the fantastic remote segments that Conan is known for. I didn’t realize how much I missed having Conan on TV until Saturday.
I personally had no problem with the venue. It was a tent – who cares, the sight lines were reasonable and the sound was ok. My only big problem were the horrible, uncomfortable seats.
As for the show – meh.
The Edmonton specific jokes were great, including the Triumph voice-over. The old standby’s of the Bear and Walker Texas Ranger were good to see as an old fan (I wanted in the year 2000).
The main problem was that some of the bits were esentially 3 second sight gags and they went on forever.
Ooh Conan is in an Eddie Murphy leather suit, with no ass…A giant inflatable bat….like I said funny for about 5 seconds.
And the songs were lame. Sorry, they were. If you were to judge Conan’s performance independant of the attraction and novelty of him being famous – then it would be a 5 out of 10.
Reggie Watts is insanely funny. I would pay to see him again in any venue. For Conan, once was enough.
I watched Conan on tour last week and it was very entertaining. I can’t wait for his new show to come to TBS. It will be the start of a new chapter in late night TV.