Kids in the Massey Hall
Courtesy of CANOE.com
Wednesday, January 26, 2000
Comics are psyched for hometown shows
By JIM SLOTEK
Toronto Sun
The Kids In The Hall have thought of themselves as a rock band for years, in the sense of a bunch of pals banging out dark comedic "tunes" in a basement.
But when their reunion tour kicked off two weeks ago in Vancouver, reality caught up to the metaphor. In city after city, Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Scott Thompson, Kevin McDonald and Mark McKinney have been met at the stage door by young girls. "There's like 50 to 100 people, each night, and the guys have been great signing autographs," says Kids lawyer and de facto tour promoter David Himelfarb. "These are very committed fans. It's like small-scale Beatlemania."
The halls are larger than the last time they toured -- back when they had a show on CBC and CBS. "I'm really looking forward to Massey Hall (where the Kids play a three-night gig starting tonight)," says Foley. "It's a cool venue. I saw Lou Reed there, Siouxie & The Banshees, General Public."
As well, the Kids In The Hall trek is like a rock tour in that the "band" is criss-crossing the continent with an erraticism that suggests throwing darts at a map. After T.O. and Montreal, they head out to Texas, where they'll cross the state on a tour bus.
"It'll have bunks and some sort of unidentified odour that all tour buses share," Foley says from his L.A. home, where he's been using the downtime to continue writing a pilot script for an upcoming NBC series.
Of the fans, he says, "They're the same 3% of the audience they've always been, disenfranchised youth and aging hipsters."
But he admits he's a little taken aback at the age of some of them. "It's strange when you talk to some of them and they say, 'Yeah, I grew up watching you.' That's pretty alarming. You see someone and say, 'Hey, she's pretty hot,' and you find out she started watching you when she was seven. It's a definite turnoff to find out she was a pre-pubescent when you were making her laugh."
Clearly the troupe is jazzed by the experience -- from opening night in Vancouver, when even the technical flubs got laughs, to last weekend's L.A. swing that brought out celebrity friends and fans, including Tom Green, Mike Myers, Brendan Fraser (Foley's co-star in Blast From The Past and the upcoming weird fantasy Monkey Bone) and -- though Foley doesn't bring up her name -- Monica Lewinsky.
"It's been really great," he says. "No matter how jaded and tired we are, as soon as we hear the Shadowy Men (show theme), our weathered cynicism disappears."
Which gets to the dichotomy of Kids In The Hall's muse -- sharp behavioural satire delivered with a shrug, humour of the "whatever" variety, attracting hugely passionate fans. KITH haven't been promoted or hyped while airing in reruns on Comedy Central in the U.S. and on the Comedy Network here. Yet their fan base has noticeably grown.
Said fans are getting what they want on this tour -- McKinney as the "Head Crusher," McCulloch and McKinney as diffident cops in a "best of" compilation of sketches, Thompson as gay lounge lizard Buddy Cole, and Foley and McDonald as the satanic Simon and his demon familiar Hecubus.
"I feel a little chubby for Simon & Hecubus," Foley says of his leotard-clad character. "Fortunately black is a slimming color."
A third of the material is new. Foley's new favourite is "Jesus 2000" (from the gang who brought you Kids classics Naked For Jesus, Jesus The Bad Carpenter and Dr. Seuss Bible).
The smoothness of it all has surprised the Kids themselves. According to Himelfarb, who brokered the reunion, it took a few years for them to warm up to the idea of a tour.
"As a lawyer, I can tell you, time solves a lot of problems," he says.
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