Randy Newman

The appearance by Randy Newman was the reason I wanted to attend Vancouver Island Music Fest in the first place. I’ve been a fan since I heard “God’s Song (That’s Why I Love Mankind)” in high school and seeing him walk past on his way to the stage was the kind of fanboy thrill I haven’t had since the time Dick Dale brushed past me at Victoria’s Club 9one9.

Newman’s set cherry-picked tunes from throughout his career: “Political Science” & “Last Night I Had a Dream” from 1972’s Sail Away, “Birmingham” & “Louisiana 1927” from 1974’s Good Old Boys, “The World Isn’t Fair”, “The Great Nations of the World” & “I’m Dead (But I Don’t Know It) from 1999’s Bad Love, to name a few.

It took him a while to hit his stride – the first few numbers sounded rushed, like he was late for a bus or was going to be paid double if he got the cheque to the bank before the ink was dry.

Once he got to “You’ve Got a Friend in Me”, the Oscar-nominated track he wrote for the Pixar film Toy Story, he seemed to start having fun and the audience did too.

A famous curmudgeon, Newman’s few monologues between songs were much like his work: honest and bitingly funny:

“The first few times I saw [Toy Story],” Newman said. “I didn’t notice it was animated. Or a comedy.”

He went on to say that when he first saw the scene where Buzz Lightyear falls and breaks his arm, “I thought Disney was doing something daring…I thought he was trying to kill himself because he was gay.”

Now that’s stage banter.

After the performance I felt like I had a better grasp on where Newman was coming from.  This is a man who has written some of the must clever, incisive songs of the last 30 years but is consistently given awards for writing the theme tunes to children’s films.  Sure, the cheques cash fine but I think I’d be pissed off too.