Dan Willis wants to talk to you about the songs that he loves; about the feel-good music in his collection that takes him back to his happy memories. He does point out early on the contradiction in naming his show after a band that could be sponsored by Prozac, but hey, there you go.
What follows is an amiable meander through his mid-thirties life – from the songs of his childhood to those from his first proper relationship, graduation and onwards. Ditching the hi-tech multimedia world of projectors and PC equipment, Dan accompanies his set the old-fashioned way with a flipchart covered in graphics of album covers and old pictures of himself to illustrate his points.
There are small prizes to be had if you can guess any of the songs from their intros, and he hangs a nice collection of straightforward comic stories and observations around each audio memento.
He is aware that his Mr. Nice Guy image can leave the audience wanting more, and he goes for a more whacky, deconstructionist gag for his finale, which is pulled off nicely, twisting the audience’s expectation even as he talks to us about how he’s creating the joke.
This inoffensive, observational story-teller is just the kind of thing you need to help clear away the cobwebs of last night’s Fringe hangover, and it can only be good that it’s set in a bar where you can start work all over again on tomorrow morning’s sore head.
