Interview with Neal Medlyn
Tell us about your working process for “Our Hit Parade” with Bridget Everett and Kenny Mellman.
We met doing a monthly show called “Automatic Vaudeville.” I always wanted the three of us to do that again, so we started “Our Hit Parade,” which is in its 3rd year now. It’s crazy; it went by really fast. We got to be friends doing that show, we had done other things since then together…then we were up-state, me and my wife and Kenny and his partner, Brendan, talking about this old show, called “Your Hit Parade.” Every week this young cast had to perform the top ten, they had to do something special with the song, like skits. It was on radio for a long time, then TV. It was definitely pre-rock-n-roll, before the person singing the song was really important. Back when you would buy the sheet music, because it didn’t matter who was performing it. One time this song, “16 Tons,” was on the chart for several months, so every week they had to come up with a new way to perform it. So we thought, wow, that would make a really fun idea for a stage show. Variety shows are always so problematic; this happens and then this happens. Also, we all–in completely different ways–do stuff with pop music, so we thought this would be a great way to advance the cause for artistic use of pop music. We convinced a festival in Portland to let us perform “Our Hit Parade,” even though we had never done it before. We couldn’t even really pitch it to them. We came back to New York and started it at the Zipper Factory, which promptly closed after our first show, then Joe’s Pub took us on.
How does the show come together?
Once the previous month is over, we figure out who we want to be in the next one. We curate the show first, by inviting guests to perform with us. We figure out our own songs individually, and then bounce that back and forth, because we have to keep up with what song choices everybody has. If we don’t, somebody will work on something for several weeks and turns out someone else has it. Kenny comes up with the intro song, a medley typically, that has something to do with something going on. When that “Friday” song came out, we did that song mixed with “Days of the Week” and “Do Re Me” from the Sound of Music. When John Hughes died, we did a bunch of songs from those movies.
I guess cabaret is like, contextualized song-singing, it’s not theatre which you tell stories in between songs. There’s Elaine Stritch and Bobby Short…I’m not really sure why our show ends up in the cabaret category so much. We don’t spend a lot of time at Feinstein’s. Most of the guests do something out of the ordinary. For example, Molly Pope who does the show a lot, she’s singing it with the piano, but she’s got costumes, there’s water, it’s set on a boat suddenly, and there are sounds of whales. Or Jenn Harris will ride her motorcycle onstage, and she’s serving shots to that LMFAO song, “Shots,” doin’ crazy dances. Mary Testa did these heartbreaking versions of a Taylor Swift song. I want it to be super diverse, what’s happening in the show.
Has your repertory or the way you’ve done the show changed in the 3 years?
We’re more accurate now than we used to be. As far as the Top 10 goes. For a while we were in what would be your normal mode, to find a song that you really like and take that on, and be a little more intimidated by the songs that you would’ve never chosen to do. As time has gone on, I think we’ve gotten more comfortable with the charts. We follow it more closely, we can think of something to do with a Taio Cruze song.
Is there a particular way that you think about what you’re going to do or how you are going to respond to each song?
I just try to listen to each song and think of something. For me, it’s just a lot of weird association games. In “Dynomite” by Taio Cruze, he says something in the song like “Baby, let’s go” but it sounds like “Galileo” the way he says it, which made me think of the Indigo Girls’ song “Galileo.” I looked up the chords and by weird coincidence, both songs have the same chords, so I mixed them together. Then I decided to stop in the middle, singer-songwriter style and tell a story about Galileo, but still be autotuned. I was talking to someone the other day that saw it live and he had no idea the story was about Galileo. I don’t know how many people did, but it doesn’t matter. I try not to think about how successful it will be. I try to think of the craziest ideas, that if I tell it to someone ahead of time, they say “woah, I don’t know if you can actually end a show like that.” Even I don’t really do that thing, if I make the rule in my own mind, you are going to watch me attempt to do it. Whether I’ll succeed or not–that’s the rule. If I’m in that area, I know I’m doing what I want to do. Last month’s Our Hit Parade, I decided to do a Rihanna song, “S&M.” I pretended like I’m an angry kid who is going to their room and I’m going to shout at my grandmother, it seemed important that the kid lives with his grandmother. So I’m just yelling at my nana and I put my headphones on, playing the drums really hard and I have NO IDEA what it looked like. I remember doing that a lot when I was a kid. It was very loud and exciting in my head, I don’t know if people were booing, I know the person who was sitting next to the stage hated it, because she was right underneath the cymbal and she kept cringing. Everyone really tries to “kill” their song, in the showbiz sense. Everybody works really hard. Alot of times, I don’t know whether it’s going to be really great or bad. But if it seems pushed far enough, that’s when I’m at a stopping place.
Sounds like performing is giving yourself tasks…
Early on, that was a tactic so that I would actually get on-stage by myself. It was petrifying; I hadn’t done solo performance stuff. I wanted to start doing it because I had quit theater and I had quit being in these experimental bands and I had all these ideas of stuff I wanted to do. So I would setup a task, I have to go on and do this. Music was a big part, once I put the song on, first of all, I could just be in the song, and that will feel more comfortable. Also the song made sure that I would stay on-stage for more than five seconds. So I wouldn’t go up there and be like, “Ok, whatever, you’ve seen enough, I’m leaving.” I don’t like to be out there for too long.
And now, years later, you are touring the show to Australia…
We decided to try this three-person version, just me, Kenny and Bridget, for a touring “Our Hit Parade.” We each do three songs, then an opening and a closing. And the “What’s in my diaper?” game. In Australia, we have to make sure that all the songs we pick have actually ever charted there. We don’t want to do a bunch of songs that they’ve never heard of…luckily though, the charts nowadays are not that much different. I mean even ten years ago, when I was in Berlin, the chart was pretty different. It was about half songs you would know about in America and half other European stuff.
Neal Medlyn speaks with Isabella Bruno.
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Share steps for a ritual or exercise that is part of your performance practice.
1. Go into your drawers, your closet, and your box of clothes you feel you should probably get rid of but haven’t.
2. Find everything wonderful, ridiculous, exciting, ill-fitting, old, new or that reminds you of anything you have seen, read, felt or thought recently.
3. Now collect jewelry, other objects that aren’t normally clothes: toys, dildos, birth control pills, etc.
4. Lay all of it out on your bed.
5. Curate that shit. Use these criteria:
a) pick a time frame: i) Today ii) This Week iii) a looser frame of Essential Contemporaneity
b) If you had to dress in, say, seven outfits made from the assembled materials that expressed who and what you were AS WELL AS who and what America in the chosen time frame, which seven outfits do you see among the clothes you have on your bed that fulfill that mission. This will result in you not choosing many things that you like and/or are exciting but take a moment to feel good about this because you’re not giving it all away. Know that the time will come for the neglected outfits. Reflect on how this is the plight of all artists, that things get left out, but that that is a strength and not something to get neurotic about.
6. Pack your items into a specifically chosen (use the above criteria. realize that most of the time using this criteria will lead you to using old plastic bags, so feel free to substitute an interesting reusable “green” bag even if it doesn’t fulfill criteria) bag or series of bags.
7. Get on the train.
8. Think about how, if you died and they went through your things, these are the seven things they would find.
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Share one object.
These are our American wear outfits we bought when we did the show the first time. Brendan Kennedy, who is one of the creators of the show but doesn't perform with us very often, got us a performance as part of the TBA Festival in Portland so we were wandering around town trying to find things that seemed "right" for Our Hit Parade, which we were, of course, deciding on the spot since it was brand new. We found these outfits at some thrift store and felt like they were perfect since part of what we thought we were doing, and still feel this way, is presenting American pop music as this important and crazy and wild and interesting thing. So these outfits became integral to that idea because they're all-over-print USA jackets. Plus, they're Olympics jackets and Our Hit Parade is pretty athletic, what with the audience attacking and the messes and the time I stabbed myself on accident with what turned out to be a real knife onstage. Just like the Olympics!
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What do you listen to when you are creating?
Oh pop music. And then more pop music. We’re on Billboard’s Hot 100 constantly, watching videos on YouTube of brand new songs, listening to leaked songs, all of that. Learning the ins and outs of Rebecca Black’s career arc, investigating the subtext in Justin Beiber songs, watching BBC videos of Lady Gaga seemingly suggesting a romantic relationship with her grandfather. We’re on it. 24/7.
REBECCA BLACK’S CAREER ARC:
Here are the videos that made up my own personal investigation of Rebecca Black’s career arc:
Her video on YouTube:
Other video from the same Hit Factory as part of trying to figure out the backstory of the service she paid for to get the above song:
Her on Jay Leno:
Katy Perry singing the song in Australia where they know all the words:
Us doing Friday as part of an opening number for OHP:
LADY GAGA ON THE BBC:
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What is one space that influences your creative process?
Maybe this is silly but Joe's Pub is the space that I think influences us the most. It really has become our home and I know I at least think so much about how and what I'm making each month based on that space and the people who work there that I love and the seating layout even. I try to vary what I do each month a lot. That was one of the original ideas of the show, because on the old Your Hit Parade they would have to do the same songs each time because such-and-such song would still be on the charts but they'd have to do a new version. So I really try to stick with that and do as many different things as I can: live auto-tuning, playing the tonal bells, dancing, re-enacting Marina Abramovic's Lips of Thomas to Cooler Than Me by Mike Posner. But I'm always thinking about Joe's and the space and where people are. It's influenced the show to the extent that Bridget named one area of seating the “Rape Den” and now people sit there on purpose (or presumably avoid it on purpose) because of what Bridget tends to do in that area of seating.
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Share something you are making/have made.
Well, here’s the Lips of Thomas one:
and here’s this one by Taio Cruze that I also mentioned:
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Upcoming projects:
Our Hit Parade starring Bridget Everett, Kenny Mellman and Neal Medlyn
Joe’s Pub
425 Lafayette Street
May 25, 2011 at 9:30pm
Our Hit Parade starring Bridget Everett, Kenny Mellman and Neal Medlyn
Adelaide Cabaret Festival, Australia
June 15-17, 2011 at various times (see link above for ticket info)
Our Hit Parade starring Bridget Everett, Kenny Mellman and Neal Medlyn
Joe’s Pub
425 Lafayette Street
June 29, 2011 at 9:30pm
I love him.