The Best Lookin' Man in Comedy
Stand Up! Records · Album · 2020
The self-proclaimed best-looking man in comedy shows off in a basement.
Fancy Ray McCloney spends forty-three minutes proving that he is exactly who he claims to be. Blending the preening physical confidence of Little Richard with the bombastic self-aggrandizement of Muhammad Ali, the Minneapolis local celebrity and commercial pitchman treats his debut stand-up album as a high-camp coronation. He drops rhythmic, self-penned poetry, mocks his own androgyny, and leads the crowd through a series of energetic chants. It is a performance built less on traditional setups and punchlines and more on the sheer, overwhelming spectacle of his personality.
While the album was released by Stand Up! Records in March 2020, the tracks were originally captured during a pair of intimate 2014 sets inside the subterranean Minneapolis offices of Secret Stash Records. McCloney was already a beloved Twin Cities fixture, famous for his low-budget local TV commercials, a brief cameo in a Super Bowl ad, and a 1998 gubernatorial run where he pulled more than nine hundred votes on the “People’s Champion” ticket. The album captures this local lore, featuring bits on his campaign, his childhood, and a story about a rented Penske truck.
The release of the album was met with local celebration, with the mayors of both Minneapolis and St. Paul officially declaring March 27, 2020, “Fancy Ray McCloney Day”. The record features liner notes by screenwriter Diablo Cody, who described his public persona as a spell cast over the region. It also features a brief, commendatory quote contributed by McCloney’s lifelong idol, Little Richard.
The set list
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MN Governor's Race
Recounting his 1998 third-party campaign for Governor of Minnesota on the People's Champion ticket with his mother, arguing that since the election was already a joke, a professional comedian should run.
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Famous for Being Famous
Acknowledging and subverting criticism that he is famous for merely being famous by comparing himself to Paris Hilton with a pretty tan.
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Childhood... Alphabet
A high-camp routine where he humorously rewrites the alphabet.
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The Best-Lookin' Man in Comedy
Delivering spontaneous rhyming verse in praise of his own physical beauty, boasting that he possesses the beauty of a boy with the sweetness of a girl.
How it plays
- Tone
- Campy, mock-boastful, celebratory, and joyful.
- On stage
- Flamboyant, gleefully narcissistic, androgynous, and theatrical comic persona blending mock-arrogance with goofy winking innocence, channeling Little Richard, Muhammad Ali, James Brown, Prince, and a tent-revival preacher.
- Pace
- High-camp, amped-up pitchman energy, unshakeable confidence, loud delivery, and rhythmic swagger.
- About
- The legend of Fancy Ray, Vanity and self-aggrandizement, Minnesota politics and the 1998 gubernatorial race, TV commercials, Androgyny, Minnesota winters
What the critics said
Praised by liner notes author Diablo Cody as a subversive and bombastic character who looms large in the collective psyche of the Twin Cities, casting a comedic shtick described as being 'almost like a spell.'
In the room: Described as making a Minneapolis room sound like a night at the Apollo Theater.
Backstory
A legendary fixture of Twin Cities public-access television and low-budget local advertising who famously ran for Governor of Minnesota in 1998 against Jesse Ventura. Released at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic on March 27, 2020, leading both Minneapolis and St. Paul mayors to officially declare the date 'Fancy Ray McCloney Day'.
Details
- Released
- Where
- Stand Up! Records (album)
- Honors
- Official proclamation of March 27, 2020 as 'Fancy Ray McCloney Day' by the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul
- Topics
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