Watson: How obvious was it that you were going to do comedy? Watts: I think they wanted me to get an education. They wanted me to find something to better myself, for sure. But nothing specific. I think when I was pretty young, I showed musical inclination. Both my parents loved music, and my dad loved jazz and soul, and my mom loved soul and some European folk music and stuff like that. But I grew up listening to a lot of great music, and my dad was a cool dude and my mom was pretty hip.
They both love fashion and they love. Whatever that whole thing. I think they just wanted to make sure that I grew up in a situation where I got to exercise whatever my curiosities were and they really supported it.
My mom noticed I was playing on piano, toy pianos a lot. Watson: Did you go to college, or did you have enough confidence to try and make it as a performer right out of the gate?
I won it and I won the money prize. Then I got two gigs in state. I went to two small towns to do stand-up comedy with a thin group of comedians. So I went to the Art Institute of Seattle. I decided to go to Seattle and yeah, I started doing music production and then kind of fell off from there. You get paid for it. Why did you break through?
I feel I was born at just the right time. I got to grow up with the advent of the home computer, the advent of, I mean you had a leftover from Soul Train and American Bandstand music shows on TV, on prime-time TV that people were just watching people dance and stuff.
It was a crazy time to grow up and then no cellphones and no interconnected technology and video games. Everything, the curve was perfect for me to have a ton of early developmental space without a lot of distraction and people-based human stuff and mixed with the right amount of media influence coming in that inspired me. Am I white? Am I Black? Is he Black? Oh, white.
Then I was in music there, and comedy kind of was a little bit lesser of what I was doing. Always wanting to be where something is happening. Then also having these weird instincts of moving to cities at the right time to have these opportunities. Oh, Conan. We left The Tonight Show. And what exactly is a Reggie Watts? Think an improvised comedic musician with a penchant for bad Christmas sweaters who creates brilliantly funny, socially profound, and highly listenable tunes with the aid of a keyboard, a loop pedal, and off the cuff lyrics like "it gets easier when it gets hard, it gets harder when it gets soft" or, if the mood strikes him, will mutter jibberish in Spanish for a minute straight and then end the incoherent rant with "I dunno Much like Andy Kaufman, you're not sure what to make of him, but much like cocaine, about a minute in, you know you want more.
Although considering this came from a man who fades in and out of accents, we're not too sure any of it was actually true. The sweet coming-of-age tale. There was also an ongoing joke about how witches, demon, goblins, and. Watts has a second performance tonight at 8 p. Visit miamilightproject. Join the New Times community and help support independent local journalism in Miami. Get the latest updates in news, food, music and culture, and receive special offers direct to your inbox.
Support Us Miami's independent source of local news and culture. While his usual voice is a slow Midwestern mumble, on stage Watts speaks in an extraordinarily accurate English accent for, he says, "a quarter to a half of the time. It's just something I enjoy doing. I was nervous about how people would react here but fortunately people were like, 'Oh yeah, you must be from London.
The roots of Watts's uncanny vocal abilities — from pitch-perfect impressions to the aforementioned beatboxing — goes backto his childhood. My mother's French, so I grew up with two languages.
I just loved mimicking sounds. Whenever I'd see something on TV like someone [dead-on cockney accent] 'Why's he doing that? The need for constant experimentation is what makes Reggie Watts so special. You never get the sense — as with many musical comics — that you're watching well-honed set-pieces. Instead, he develops most of his songs spontaneously, a feat of improvisational skill that means that you can never be entirely sure what's coming next.
I'm not the kind of guy who goes [posh English accent] 'You there sir, what do you think? So my version of interacting is listening to how the audience is responding. And if the audience are laughing, I may go on to a different tack. Not necessarily, but hopefully.
0コメント