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Rick Right is pretty much the epitome of the hack musical comic, employing every cliché going. Though he is very good at what he does; what he does is little more than automatically pushing the right buttons with an audience. Sin one is dressing the feeblest of puns to music, in the mistaken belief that this makes them better. This, he dresses the word 'Taliban' into such lyrics as "The Candy Man can" and "Every woman, every man join the caravan of love" - pretty lame stuff. However, such is an audience's Pavlovian conditioning that they instinctively clap when a song is over, so each of the gags, if they can be called that, always gets a round of applause. What's more, this experienced American comic then has the temerity to moan that his compatriots won't make jokes about such sensitive topics as this - as if this is cutting-edge stuff. His other stock-in-trade is the well-used trick of one song in the style or tune of another - Frank Sinatra singing a James Brown number, for example. He's a masterful exponent of this trick, more than adept at adapting to any style, and most the songs do raise an initial smile.. But it's been done so often - by comics and musicians alike - that he can't shake the mantle of unoriginality. It's entertaining stuff on a simple level, but Rich proves himself more a versatile singer of cover versions than an inspired comedian.
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