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The Voices Inside His Head
Christopher Titus flips his script to the more personal with release of new material on double CD
By
Michael Shashoua / Jester editor-in-chief
Titus begins the performance, long enough to require two CDs, with a
Prince and Bruce Springsteen-inspired preacher-style introduction
that segues right into his act. Titus really hits his stride and
delivers a Carlin-worthy piece with “The Word ‘Retard,’” in which he
takes a strong but still funny stand against political correctness.
Titus makes it specific and clear that using the word ‘retard’ is
never meant to malign or even mean those with mental disabilities.
“I’d be the first to beat up someone who did that,” Titus says,
explaining that he means slow and stupid behavior by anyone who has
all the basic faculties that they could be using. He does all this
in a lot less elaborate fashion than this review is doing. …
Throughout “Voice In My Head,” Titus spares himself least of all,
and freely shares many times where his behavior has been, well,
retarded. He refers to it throughout the album as “the church of the
epic fail,” saying that he often snatches failure out of the jaws of
success. Notoriously, Titus recounts again on this album, that he
made the wrong kind of comment to the wrong Fox TV executive that
led to his sitcom getting shifted around on the schedule and
eventually canceled.
That continues in two pieces on the album, “The Viper Incident” and
“The Tako Incident,” where given the opportunities to race a sports
car and put on a protective suit to be attacked by a US Army dog,
respectively, he does just the wrong things at the wrong times –
resulting in the kind of epic failures that are a running theme of
the album.
Lastly, “Voice In My Head” closes out with an endearing story of
Titus getting to meet Springsteen himself, who Titus idolizes. In
telling this story, Titus what he thought in his own head through
the experience, as any fan of the Boss likely might be thinking in
the same situation.
This album, coming two years after “Neverlution” (see review,
6/28/11),
does carry the same tone and style, but Titus focuses on different
subject matter, and that makes it a performance one would be more
likely to come back to again repeatedly over time.
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© 2005-2018 Michael Shashoua