“We have a lot of respect for the folks in your profession, unlike a lot of these garbage people you.” Neil Hamburger is speaking on the phone from his hotel room, a few days into his extensive run of Melbourne performances – marking his welcome return to our shores, and, for the first time, as guest of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. The graciousness is somewhat of a surprise, with Neil operating at a polar dichotomy between venom and adoration, weighted overwhelmingly towards venom, aimed at the worst, in Neil’s eyes, society has to offer. It’s a modus operandi that has seen Neil endure as one of America’s cult favourites, often being tasked as a counter-intuitive warm up act for musical acts – his ire-inducing performance at a packed Madison Square Garden, opening for Tenacious D, captured on the brilliant comedy album Hot February Night. He’s also found another niche in Twitter’s brevity, a constant opposing force to the proliferation of corporate brands.
The majority of Neil’s targets over the years have been prominent figures in the rock (RHCP), pop (Michael Jackson), and even indie (Arcade Fire) musical realms. But as the major pillars of the music have crumbled somewhat since Neil began performing, he takes no Schadenfreude in this development. “Sadly, I can’t. The people who are making me the sickest in my stomach are still thriving, even as the industry collapses. If I was to see someone like Britney Spears in some sort of debtors’ prison, with her arms and legs in shackles, or be imprisoned for the crimes of ruining literally millions of peoples’ afternoons when her awful music is blaring in the supermarket. If justice was served in that way, if I was able to see someone like Jay Z or The Doobie Brothers tarred and feathered publically, then you’re going to feel good about it.”
Whether performing to tens of thousands or a few dozen, Neil is capable of rising to the challenge of each respective stage. “Honestly, if you’re playing at a place like Madison Square Garden, it can be easier than playing to a crowd of six people in a basement somewhere. Those huge crowds, I’ve had several of those shows. Frenzal Rhomb put me on the bill at Sydney’s Olympic Stadium during one of those god-awful festivals, and I think there were more people there than Madison Square Garden. The thing is, with a crowd of that size, it becomes on gelatinous blob, you can’t even make out the whites of their eyes, and usually you have a great big spotlight right in your face. So you’re essentially blind. Usually, you have inner ear monitors, which block out the sound. You’ve been turned into Helen Keller trying to do a routine from inside a coffin, that’s how it feels.
With a constant barrage of vile directed from Neil’s Twitter page to a myriad of corporate brands (including insurmountable retweets of people mentioning how Taco Bell made them ill), you could imagine there would be some legally-inclined repercussions. “We’ve definitely had some problems with that. The Axe deodorant people got very, very testy over a series of humorous tweets and eventually had an article pulled from Vice magazinethat was critical of them. It was written in my own inimitable style, but they didn’t care for it and they had it yanked. So they were the biggest complainers, the biggest whiners. When you make a deodorant as horrific as Axe deodorant is, it puts you on the defensive. This is a product that smells like a urinal cake essentially, and it’s used by some of the most rotten people in society today.”
BY LACHLAN KANONIUK
Venue: Portland Hotel – Portland Room, Cnr Russell & Lt. Collins St, CBD
Dates: Currently being performed until April 19 (except Monday)
Times: 9.45pm (Sundays 9.45pm)
Tickets: $28 – $34
