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Promotional art for Standup for Drummers
Cover image credit: via TMDB

Standup for Drummers

Fred Armisen

Netflix · 2018 · 65 min

A music-geek comedy hour with actual drum kits.

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Fred Armisen spends his first solo Netflix comedy special speaking directly to a room full of musicians, going so far as to make audience members play a drum fill for a bouncer just to get through the door. The show centers on the hyper-specific quirks, frustrations, and private jokes of life behind a drum kit, proving that niche observations can be far more engaging than generic crowd-pleasers.\n\nFilmed at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco and directed by Lance Bangs, the 2018 special arrived during a busy transitional year for Armisen. His long-running IFC sketch show Portlandia was airing its final season, and he was firmly established as the bandleader on Late Night with Seth Meyers. The performance showcases his unique intersection of music and character-driven comedy, eventually earning a Grammy nomination for its audio release.\n\nThe set pieces are highly physical and instrument-based. Armisen sets up a chronological row of drum kits, hopping from seat to seat to demonstrate how drum hardware and musical styles evolved from the 1920s to the 2000s. He performs silent, physical impressions of famous drummers like Meg White and Ringo Starr, and executes a bait-and-switch where he builds anticipation for Phil Collins’s massive “In the Air Tonight” drum fill, only to play a simplistic Ringo pattern instead.\n\nFor viewers who do not know a snare from a tom-tom, Armisen sprinkles in some of his signature non-musical observations. He delivers a rapid-fire tour of North American regional accents using a large map and a wooden pointer, pantomimes checking into a generic high-end boutique hotel, and mimics a decomposing fox. Famous drummers like Sheila E. and Tre Cool make brief cameos, and the evening winds down with a surprisingly quiet, sincere story about how filmmaker John Waters unwittingly helped a teenage Armisen through a difficult period.

The set list

6 bits

  1. Bringing cymbals to gigs

    Adopting an observational tone to question whether drummers actually need to bring their own cymbals, calling it showmanship.

  2. Decade-by-decade history of American popular music drumming

    Playing different drum kits to demonstrate historical stylistic shifts in drumming from the 1920s to the modern era.

  3. Accents across North America

    Using a map and his touring days in indie rock bands as a pretext to mimic regional accents and attitudes state by state.

  4. Drum kit shopping sketch

    Filmed sketch where a store clerk played by Sheila E. attempts to sell him octo pedals.

  5. Famous drummer impressions

    Mimicking the body language, facial expressions, and playing quirks of drummers such as Ringo Starr, Keith Moon, Larry Mullen, Stewart Copeland, Meg White, and Tito Puente.

  6. Teenage letter to John Waters

    Sharing a fan letter he wrote as a teenager to filmmaker John Waters and reading the response he received.

How it plays

Tone
Deadpan, witty, playful, and niche.
On stage
Deadpan, offbeat, earnest, and clean-cut with an idiosyncratic conversational delivery devoid of angst or anxiety.
Pace
Light, breezy, quiet, and steady tempo that snaps abruptly from awkward physical mannerisms into precise, session-tight drumming.
About
Drumming and drummer subculture, Musical genres and pretension, Regional American accents, Soundcheck and touring nuances

What the critics said

Received mixed-to-positive appraisals; critics appreciated its infectious, earnest passion for drumming and unique concept for musicians, while noting that its niche focus and lack of conventional stand-up punchlines might leave non-musicians perplexed.

In the room: An enthusiastic, musician-heavy room exclusively comprising drummers who gained entry by playing a drum kit at the door.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: wikidata.org, blu-ray.com, themoviedb.org, nytimes.com, decider.com, pastemagazine.com, theglobeandmail.com, imdb.com, rollingstone.com, en.wikipedia.org.

Backstory

Drawing directly on his background as a former punk rock drummer for Trenchmouth and Blue Man Group; originated as niche stand-up sets performed in small music shops like Main Drag in Brooklyn exclusively for musicians.

Details

Released
Taped
The Great American Music Hall, San Francisco
Runtime
65 min
Where
Netflix
Director
Lance Bangs
Honors
Grammy Award nomination for Best Comedy Album (2019)
Topics

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