And now a word from the Association of English Majors…
I like PHC, although Keillor seems to struggle more and more for funny stories. I think he (personally) jumped the shark when he started his anti-Jesse Ventura crusade.
Having seen the show live, he does indeed seem to be messing around with his sound effects man (Tom Keith?) on occasion; these are, IMO, some of the better bits of the show.
Well… it’s been a long winter, but we’re hopin’ to have some for the summer, eh?
Oddly enough, I was big-city raised. And yet, even when my hairstyle was a mohawk, this show appealed to me. The humor is sincere and seemingly artifice free. I love it.
For all the hypotheses suggested in this thread about who GK’s audience is in terms of age, location, religious upbringing, etc. I’d just like to state that I was raised a Jew in upper middle class suburban Long Island who became a huge huge PHC fan at about 21 years old.
Granted I didn’t (and still don’t completely for the most part) get all the Lutheran jokes, (Or the Norwegian Bachelor farmers thing, a little help here?), but studying JS Bach has helped a bit with that.
Granted I was living in MD at the time I discovered the show.
Granted I can’t find a single damn person back here on LI who appreciates him the way I do.
But I find him absolutely brilliant with a wonderful insight into the nature of human beings. And I love most of the music on the show. I am often astounded at the quality of the musicians often featured (and the All Star Shoe band ain’t nothing to sneeze at IMHO).
I must admit I’ve tried to read a few of his books and just can’t get through them. In print they seem so slow, yet I love listening to him tell stories.
Seeing him live a few times I also must concur that part of the fun of the live show is watching the sound effects being made.
Well, I could ramble on about GK for awhile actually (especially since I’ve seen few, if any, threads about him in the past here) but I gotta get to bed. G’night.
::slinks off to bed humming the Powder Milk Biscuits tune::
Well, I’ve spent 26 of my 31 years in big cities of the Deep South, so you can imagine my feelings…
I think Keillor’s a genius.
I LOVE his show, and have since I first heard him in '85 or so. I listen to it just about every week (unless there’s an SEC football game on, of course). I went and saw his Memphis show in January 1997, and it was terrific. He has helped me gain a deep appreciation for the rare public voice that is adult, yet guileless; the White Stripes is another example (did I really just make that comparison? Yes; listen to their lyrics), and James Thurber another, more obvious one.
Also I miss terribly his “Dear Mr. Blue” advice column on Salon.com. Cary Tennis is very, very good (I can imagine few things more difficult than writing a regular advice column), but Keillor was brilliant.
Moe Norwegian bachelor farmers are real. They are, simply, just what the name implies: men who farm and remain unmarried. In a more sophisticated state than Minnesota, they might be gay. In rural Minnesota, Methodism is about as close to an “alternative lifestyle” as they get.
Ahhh, I see. And I’m thinking all along that some commonly known historical fact about Norway was involved.
I became a fan of his Lake Wobegon monologues when I was about 13 years old. I certainly wasn’t representative of the typical demographic for the show.
How it happened was that my grandmother was visiting from Florida, and she bought the first boxed set of tapes of Lake Wobegon monologues. She was listening to it in the car, and I was astonished at how clearly I was able to follow what he was saying.
Let me explain: I’m severely to profoundly deaf, and when I was a kid, I was far more dependent on lip-reading. Using the phone with anyone other than family was tricky.
Here was a voice so clear and distinct that I discovered that I did not need to lip-read him in order to follow what he was saying. Perhaps it is because of the deep baritone quality of Keillor’s voice, or perhaps it is because of his measured delivery of the monotone. In any case, it was like a revelation to me that I could follow what he was saying without any difficulty.
My grandmother saw how much I enjoyed the tapes, and she gave them to me, deciding to get a set for herself when she returned to Florida. I still have them today, and my collection of Lake Wobegon monologue tapes and CDs have grown considerably since then.
My experience with Keillor’s monologues gave me an idea. In order to gain more practice in understanding what people were saying without lip-reading, I started listening to his show on the radio (which soon went off the air for a while when he retired briefly in 1987) in order to hear the monologues. I also started listening to talk radio, and to the broadcasts of Portland Trail Blazer games on the radio (thank you, Bill Schonley).
My proficiency at understanding speech without lip-reading improved dramatically. Although my need for lip-reading still persists to this day, I am much better on the telephone than I ever was as a kid, and can listen to talk radio, which was something I couldn’t have done as easily before discovering Garrison Keillor. It helps that I actually enjoy the Lake Wobegon monologues, and his show in general. When “A Prairie Home Companion” did a broadcast from Portland, Oregon a few years ago, I bought a ticket and watched the broadcast live at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall and enjoyed every minute of it.
Keillor unknowingly did a great service for me: his monologues let me discover a way to improve my ability to understand what other people are saying. So for that reason, I really can’t join in the GK bashing here, although I do disagree with many of his political views.
Casual fan here – I’ll often continue listening to NPR after the news, although I won’t run to turn it on for just PHC.
Kudos to his show for being a rare showcase of traditional music genres like bluegrass. And I credit GK for pretty much everything I “know” about Lutherans (and Lutherans v. Methodists) and the Scandinavian-American subculture. Well, GK and “Fargo,” both. Anyway, I think we can all agree that he has raised the national profile of Scandinavian-Americans and of Lutherans.
On second thought, GK pretty much is the national profile of those two groups, eh?
Could someone PLEASE give me an example of some of his jokes?
Knock yourself out, Guin.
I don’t mind A Prairie Home Companion, but why is it when I’m travelling cross-country on a weekend, I can hear the show in its entirety through every city, while I can only catch the last five minutes of Car Talk, if I’m lucky enough to catch it at all?
Here is the PHC web site. Knock yourself out. Just go to any program and scan down to the news from Lake Wobegon segment in the second hour of the program.
Thanks. It seems kinda banal and bland, but hey, if you like it, that’s fine.
I’m sure some jokes about Pittsburghese would befuddle some of ‘yinz’ and have me rolling on the floor ‘an’at’!
As someone who has lived most of his 43 years in Indiana, I like PHC and I especially like the music Keillor showcases.
I like the music most of the time, but can we circulate a petition to get GK to shut his damned trap when it’s time for the singing to start? The presence of a vocalist on the show does not mean that the world is crying out for a GK/guest musician duet.
I just. want. to. hear. the. <i>real</i>. singers. You know, the ones you asked on the show because they make their living <i>singing</i>?
What coding?
I’m Scandinavian-American and was raised Lutheran, and I think his show is hilarious. And why the hell would anyone start a Pit thread about it? I mean, Garrison Keillor barely ever makes the news, as do other forms of entertainment like professional football and Joe Millionaire. If you don’t like PHC, turn it off.
As much as I like him and the show, I must agree with you here.
Something would be missing if he stopped his Wheezing-Into-The-Microphone™, however.