The Pink One
© Copyright-Lou & Peter Berryman
(783707740928)
Record Label: CORNBELT
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Frequent comparisons to Will Rogers and Dorothy Parker, and Burns & Allen notwithstanding, Lou & Peter Berryman are originals, melding midwestern culture with street smart savvy. With influences as diverse as Woody Guthrie, Gilbert & Sullivan and Jacques Brel, but always with a twist of their own, Lou and Peter Berryman write songs of inventive and intelligent humor. Their whimsical and wonderfully accessible performance of these hilarious and quirky, oddly profound songs leaves audiences with cheeks aching from smiling.
Formerly married and longtime friends, in their more than 25 years together, Lou & Peter have recorded 14 albums of their original songs, and produced 2 songbooks. Such venerable and prestigious venues as Berkeley's Freight & Salvage, The Old Town School of Music in Chicago, The Ark in Ann Arbor, New York's Caffe Lena and Passim in Cambridge have hosted them regularly. They have performed frequently on national public radio including Minnesota's A Prairie Home Companion, and they have played at most major folk festivals across North America. They tour throughout the year, and make their homes in Madison, Wisconsin.
Originality and invention pervades the careers of these two, as, in addition to writing words and music, they run their own mom-and-pop musical enterprise, handling booking and tour arrangements, scheduling, promotion, recording, artwork, layout and record distribution themselves.
Reviews:
Rhymes that rhyme! I love your stuff, and if I were still performing, I'd steal it!... Tom Lehrer
When it comes to being funny, I think I've spent the first thirty years trying to be as funny as Tom Lehrer and the last part will be trying to be as funny as the Berrymans. They don't come any funnier than that... Tom Paxton
Lou & Peter gave 2 hours of delightfully humorous entertainment. The audience laughed and chuckled continuously, and it was all clever, clean fun. We will definitely have these two back. Ferris State U., Big Rapids, MI
Lou & Peter Berryman! Long may they wave! Their song, "A Chat with your Mother" is one of the great American folksongs of the 20th century. Pete Seeger
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Great CD, Great CD, Great CD
author: Lew Lefton
I bought this CD after hearing "Bird Bird Bird" on the radio. That song alone is worth the whole CD! By stringing together the sights you would see outside a moving car as it drives through a typical American city, the Berryman's capture the plight of urban decay and suburban flight, all without using a single verb! It's as if this is the point of view of a preverbal child in a car seat, watching out the window. Just fantastic.
I was happily surprised to find the rest of the CD filled with other witty and thoughtful gems from these clearly gifted songwriters.
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With every release, Lou and Peter move the universal song writing bar just a lit
author: SING OUT! Fall 2003 Vol. 47 #3 Matt Watroba
THE PINK ONE marks the fourteenth recording from this one-of-a-kind duo from Madison, Wisconsin. With every release, Lou and Peter move the universal song writing bar just a little bit higher. THE PINK ONE features eleven brand new songs and three re-recorded and rescued from the vinyl vault. The whole package is presented in true Berryman fashion: 12-string guitar, accordion and vocals, homemade from design to recording and, in the end, totally satisfying.
As with any other of their CDs, you can listen again and again because the melodies are so engaging and the word play comes so wonderfully fast and furious. All 4,029 words to the songs are included in the booklet. If you're a fan, relish in them. If you're a budding songwriter, study them closely. You can go to school on their ability to match fresh ideas and meticulous rhyme and structure to melody.
Some highlights include the offbeat agnostic anthem "After Life Goes By", a round-trip car ride using only short image bursts in "Bird Bird "Bird", a sweet love song between a gardening nut and a baking nut in 7/4 time and "Amalgamated Gigawatt McGoo", a hysterical take on deregulation. Lou and Peter Berryman have done it again.
--Matt Watroba
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