Customer Reviews

Blue Jam

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4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Be warned, this is serious stuff. Often misdiagnosed as comedy Blue Jam is a chilling but sometimes funny probe into the darkest corners of the human mind. Chris Morris blends surreal sketches designed to haunt, amuse and terrify with an excellent blend of ambient music from the likes of Aphex Twin and Brian Eno. Highlight sketches are as follows:

'Unflustered Parents' deals with two parents who are entirely undisturbed by the fact that their six year old son has gone missing and is probably lying dead in the woods somewhere. Eerie sound effects of rustling leaves and cawing birds conjure up images of a cold winter's wood whilst the actors convey mild annoyance at the interuption of their lives by this unwelcome event.

'Acupuncture' is my personal fave. A dispassionate and mentally detached woman comments on her acupuncture services whilst a hapless man endures the treatment in the background. She is admirably dedicated to the welfare of others, unfortunatly she uses six inch nails and a hammer.

'Lizards' is about a television repair man who arrives to help a couple whose television is pouring out lizards. His helpful comments range from, "Use windscreen wipers to wipe them off" to "Have you checked with the cable company sir?"

'Suicide Journalist' is a scathing satire of personality driven journalism, art house pretension and the need for a new gimmick. The story is narrated by a man who is so detached from common sense that he must have the life expectency of a [slow] may-fly.

'Fix-it Girl' Remember Harvey Keitel in his role as clean-up man in Pulp Fiction? Imagine if Jules and Vincent opened the door to find that their boss had sent them a four year old girl to do the job. A remorselessly evil girl.

Blue Jam is not for the faint hearted. It will offend many. But those who condemn it will be missing the entire point of the excercise. Real life is constantly subject to murder, abuse and terror. Chris Morris using a light coating of acid-jazz and ambience, combined with comedy that sometimes (though rarely) achieves laugh-ou-loud status, exposes all the dark crevices of the mind and the harsh world in the newspaper headline that we prefer to detach ourselves from. Some of the sketches are just plain funny-surreal with beyond nightmarish unreality little chilling content. Others will be akin to being whacked round the back of the head with a baseball bat. Marily Manson would recoil in horror. Easily the most inventive and thought provoking work to come out of British radio in the last decade. It has a horrible fascination.

To be listened to with the lights off.

This is the highest level humor going. People that do not get it do not deserve to be on the streets. These are people who do not understand understand irony and for that matter do not understand the difference between art and reality. These are the people who write letters to soap opera characters and address them as the real characters. Screw the litteral.
On perhaps the finest track on the CD, "Unflustered Parents," the title states the point. It's not about pedophilia, it is about parents' apathy to what's going on in their kids' lives. This is a global problem, bigger than child molesting. Highly deserving to be satirized. Thank you Chris Morris.
Oh, and it's really funny.

Wonderfully sick and twisted making satire a treat to listen to.

This isn't Fawlty Towers (nothing wrong with FT though). It isn't "BritCom" as one reviewer put it. It is unique, get up and take note comedy/parody/insight into what should be said more often instead of hiding behind the couch and waiting for it to go away. It's not a case of liking it. It is simply a case of understanding that it is not watered down, formula driven stuff designed to appeal to the masses (insert Friends, Raymond, Seinfeld here, and all those other meaningless heaps of drivel that are regurgitated and copied ad nauseum). No it won't be rerun every week for the next thousand years. It was there and it has gone and the writers will move on and create more controversial stuff because they have said what they want to say and repeating it won't make it more funny. Don't knock it because you don't understand it. Morris has trodden similar paths before (okay so maybe some of it is regurgitation in a sense) but it is still quite different to anything else out there. It should make you think if nothing else. If you cannot think, you won't like it.

This is scary stuff, the blackest of black humour. The stuff of nightmares. More horror than comedy, you feel you have to laugh because you don't know what else to do.

Satirical comedy, with a whiff of performance art, Jam is hilarious, sometimes thought-provoking and often dark as hell.

The more disturbing items can be too much for the timid and polarise opinion strongly, but it's not all shock and horror. Many sketches are laid-back and playful and the whole CD is rampantly surreal.

Throughout the disc, the soundtrack plays an integral part, from chilling to chilled-out, underpinning the moods and scenes played out.

If you like your humour intelligent, dark and non-PC, Blue Jam sits in a class of its own and will blow you away.

Terrifying but side splitting messed up humour. Not for the light hearted. Absolutely Hilarious, with an amazing selection of chilled out beats. Listen to the skits and then sit back and chill to the beat, AMAZING.

Chris Morris, like the greatest English comics, is a master of the absurd. What sets him apart is just how outrageous his conceits are and the way he keeps a poker face the whole time through. The result is a scathing indictment of contemporary society, which winds up looking far sicker than anything a prankster could imagine.

Whenever anyone criticizes the work of a cult figure they are accused of not getting it, of it being over their heads, etc. Let me preempt those statements by saying that yes, I am a fan of Chris Morris. Brass Eye is brilliant, Jam is brilliant, etc. I do get him. But this is just not very well-done. There are good moments, of course, but much of it is rather boring and hard to hear over the incessant ambient techno soundtrack. I would recommend saving your money (all of this stuff can be heard online and since it is out of print there is no issue of Morris not getting any royalties) and buying the DVDs of his various television shows.

This kind of comedy just has no place in our world. It is offensive to the point of inducing sickness. The others who claim that this is a satire on modern life must themselves lead very uncomfortable lives for this to be any reflection of it. I'm not a huge fan of Britcom anyway but this has lowered my opinion of the standard of programs over there. The kind of people who find this funny do not deserve freedom.