Search - Steve Martin :: Wild & Crazy Guy

From Frisco To Denver Goes The Wild & Crazy Guy

Michael Daly | Wakefield, MA USA | 10/22/1999

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Steve Martin's second comedy LP begins somewhat inauspiciously and then segues to a more raucous performance before an audience as wild & crazy as the titular Festrunk brother.



W&CG begins at The Boardinghouse nightclub in San Francisco; the first three tracks sound like outtake material from the Let's Get Small performances. Here, though, Steve sports a rougher, less inhibited edge, such as when he boasts that he gets his drinks at half-price. He runs down a list of bogus books he's authored - the funniest is How To Get Along With Everyone, which he coauthored with someone he doesn't get along with - and then pontificates on language in his own inimitable fashion.



He tackles language again late in the second track amid pieces on philosophy, religion (Steve finds that The Lord has tallied the times he's used His name in vein, and it numbers 1,000,006), and college - feeling humiliated over the greatness of Leonardo Da Vinci, Steve takes up juggling, then outlines a dirty trick to play on impressionable three-year-olds and comments on his awkward negotiation with the French language during a recent vacation to Paris.



After denouncing the audience as paranoid, Steve does a nice banjo riff before mangling a portion of I'm In The Mood For Love.



The opening minute of track Four takes place at The Boardinghouse with a bogus financial disclosure by Steve; when he notes his desire to sell out a show at $800 per ticket, we then segue to the far more raucous atmosphere of Red Rocks in Denver, where Steve goes into his Festrunk brother routine. He resumes his Festrunk identity when he lectures Americans on their naive methods regarding dating.



Sandwiched between his Festrunk act is a series of pieces on cats - an expose on cat juggling, his need to shackle his own feline because he was embezzling from him, and a hilarious double-entendre regarding a girlfriend and her cat.



After a somewhat sloppy piece on his "real" name, Steve launches into the act's thunderous closer - the King Tut song that likely inspired Pam Tillis' hit Cleopatra: Queen Of Denial - every time I hear Pam Tillis' number I expect Steve Martin to chime in with the famous "Born in Arizona, moved to Babylonia" line.



While at times tackier than Let's Get Small, Wild & Crazy Guy nonetheless lives up to Steve's ability with laughs. But hey, he's into the......intellecutal...........KIND of thing."

Great comedy

Justin Atwell | Glendive, MT USA | 03/24/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Steven Martin is a great comedian for just about anyone. I am 14 years old and enjoy his comedy very much. Many comedians today throw too much profanity into their acts. While this can be funny, after a while it gets old. Steve Martin may throw in some profanity but he doesn't get old. Steve Martin is a very original man. The only weak point of this CD is the songs, Martin would have been better doing two more comedy skits than doing the songs. All in all its a 4 star performance."

A WILD AND CRAZY CD!!!!

ssj | new orleans, louisiana United States | 02/09/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is one of the best, no the VERY BEST Steve Martin work from my point of view. I recently gotten ahold of A Wild and Crazy Guy CD and it brought back some very veeeerrrry funny memories from when it first came out in 1978. I was very young and to this day, I still hear King Tut rolling in my head. I can't go anywhere without hearing this on my headset and not laugh myself silly walking down the street to which people may think I'm crazy. This is a good CD to have if you favor people other than Eddie Murphy, George Carlin, or Richard Pryor among others."