 "Photo: Courtesy Photo")
According to his biography, comedian Stephen Lynch was raised by a former priest and nun. These days, he croons about everything from soliciting sex from a transvestite to a particularly heavyset girl guzzling down chicken wings and tennis shoes.
Lynch, who refers to himself as a “musician trapped in the body of a comedian,” performed a mixture of old and new material Friday night at the Portsmouth Music Hall as part of a year-long U.S. tour to promote his fourth CD, “3 Balloons”.
His first song, entitled “Waiting,” is a ballad about waiting to receive the results of an “AIDS test.” In the song, Lynch sang about a range of unorthodox activities, including shooting smack, contracting gonorrhea from strangers, and encounters with prostitutes.
Showing his range of musical talent, Lynch digressed from his comedic routine to perform excerpts from songs by Prince, Led Zeppelin, Queen, Journey, and Lionel Ritchie.
In the past, he has performed on Broadway as the lead in “The Wedding Singer,” originally a film starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore.
“I can’t believe I opened with a song about AIDS,” Lynch said onstage. “I used to be on Broadway; now I’m singing about AIDS in Portsmouth, N.H.”
He went on to sing old favorites like “Special,” about growing up with a mentally challenged friend whose mother “dropped him on the head.”
“I thought college life was great, Ed could count from one to two. I grew up and learned to shave, he was scared of the microwave,” sang Lynch.
Another song from an older CD, “Craig,” is about the hard-partying brother of Jesus Christ.
“Because when Craig’s in sight, we’ll party all damn night. I don’t turn water into wine, but into cold Coors light,” Lynch belted out.
While Lynch was solo for much of the performance, he also welcomed two friends, Rod Cone and David Josefsberg, onstage for several numbers, including “Crazy Peanuts,” a tribute to the popular comic strip and cartoon by Charles Schulz. Lynch discarded his guitar so that he could perform a choreographed routine to the song’s funky beat with the rest of the trio.
“Oh peanuts, crazy peanuts- a bunch of crazy kids trying to be free,” they harmonized enthusiastically while gyrating their hips.
Cone also lent his vocal talent to a song about a BFF, which according to Lynch, is an acronym for “Big Fat Friend.” The lyrics describe a man thwarted by a larger woman while trying to put the moves on her attractive friend at a bar.
The song segued into a kind of competition between the two, during which Cone challenged Lynch to perform a series of impressions. These included Homer Simpson from The Simpsons, Hank Hill of King of the Hill, Yoda of Star Wars, and comedians Lewis Black and Ray Romano.
For Lynch, no subject was off-limits; he joked about issues and people as serious as the Holocaust, Anne Frank and Christopher Reeve. He also mentioned Rihanna’s recent brush with domestic violence, and talked about the virtues of feminine hygiene.
He closed with a slide-show of naked breasts, strangely interrupted by a close-up of Morgan Freeman’s face and pictures of Jeff Daniels and Justin Guarini. His encore, a cover of Prince’s “Purple Rain,” was a crowd favorite and had Lynch in the audience serenading patrons.
Derick Rushoo ofMedford, ME, a longtime fan of Lynch, said he was surprised by Lynch’s Prince cover.
“You always get something you’re not expecting at a Stephen Lynch concert,” he said.
UNH student Nic Emerson, a senior civil engineering major, said that he enjoyed the show, but was hoping to see a few of the older Lynch songs like “Superhero.”
UNH freshman Austin Jacobs, who was attending one of Lynch’s performances for the first time, was surprised by the low pricing of seats, although Lynch himself didn’t realize that ticket prices cost as much as $40.
When an audience member let him know the price of attendance, he jokingly referred to the show as “a rip-off” and attributed the high price to the “extra large” screen behind him.
Erin O’Connor of Biddeford, ME, who has been following Lynch ever since his first special aired on Comedy Central in 2000, said that although each of his shows is unique, much of the material is not spontaneous.
“He seems like he’s improvising, but we’ve heard it all before,” she said.
While much of the controversial show kept audience members laughing, Heather Guevara of Biddeford, ME thought that Lynch’s reference to the Jewish Holocaust went a little too far.
“I would highly recommend [the show] for anyone with a stomach for that stuff- not my mother,” joked Guevara.
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