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Can somebody please explain a prairie home compani

GaryGary 3,982 Posts
edited May 2010 in Strut Central
A prairie home companion.Sometimes I am in the car and then this comes on the radio. I have tried listening to it quite a few times and find it to be, uh, not to my taste.who is the target audience of this product?I just don't get it.And what is the show even about? Is it just a variety show?I don't get it.I really don't get it.Who listens to this stuff?

  Comments

  • RockadelicRockadelic Out Digging 13,993 Posts
    Imagine if Slingblade had a witty older brother who was a tour guide at a Civil War Cemetery and decided to turn that career into stand-up comedy.
  • jaysusjaysus 787 Posts
    A prairie home companion.

    Sometimes I am in the car and then this comes on the radio. I have tried listening to it quite a few times and find it to be, uh, not to my taste.

    who is the target audience of this product?

    I just don't get it.

    And what is the show even about? Is it just a variety show?

    I don't get it.


    I really don't get it.


    Who listens to this stuff?

    You sound non-lutheran and younger than 50 and like you have never eaten a jello dish with fruit and vegetables in it.

    This show is constantly sold out at the fitzgerald theater in st. paul. He does have some sweet bluegrass/gospel acts on once in a while and the annual yo mama joke off helps get material for talking to children of christian parents and grandparents.
  • BreezBreez 1,706 Posts
    Imagine if Slingblade had a witty older brother who was a tour guide at a Civil War Cemetery and decided to turn that career into stand-up comedy.

  • ennuiennui 111 Posts
    Things White People Like
  • BreezBreez 1,706 Posts
    Things White People Like

    Soul Strut & Black Culture.
  • SoulOnIceSoulOnIce 13,027 Posts
    Things White People Like

    I am white as an imported egg and Prairie Home Companion makes me throw up.
  • faux_rillzfaux_rillz 14,343 Posts

    Who listens to this stuff?

  • DocMcCoyDocMcCoy "Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,913 Posts

    Who listens to this stuff?


    Actual LOL.
  • ennuiennui 111 Posts
    Things White People Like

    I am white as an imported egg and Prairie Home Companion makes me throw up.

    Me too. But I have to imagine that the audience for this show is somewhere in the range of 90% white.
  • waxjunkywaxjunky 1,850 Posts
    I have also given it more chances than Sage Francis. I can't get through an entire episode. Not even close. Sometimes the music is good, sometimes Keillor says something funny. Mostly, I wish they would play old Joe Frank reruns instead.
  • dollar_bindollar_bin I heartily endorse this product and/or event 2,326 Posts
    Prairie Home Companion is to old liberal white people like my parents what Lawerence Welk was to their parents generation: Bland and comforting entertainment.


    Who listens to this stuff?


    http://www.wbur.org/npr/125364838

    GROSS: And I just have to ask you, there is a scene in "The Wire" where two of the teenaged drug dealers are driving from Baltimore to New York to meet their connection and they're listening to "A Prairie Home Companion," and I've never understood the - why "Prairie Home Companion" showed up in that scene. So David Simon, please explain.

    Mr. SIMON: Oh god. I have to go back to that? Well...

    GROSS: Yes, you have to, because they'd never be listening to "A Prairie Home Companion."

    Mr. SIMON: I mean we're fans of NPR.

    (Soundbite of laughter)

    Mr. SIMON: We are fans of NPR. It's fair. By the way, Roy Blount, Jr. has a cameo coming up in "Treme."

    GROSS: Great.

    Mr. SIMON: So there's a little WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME! Action coming.

    GROSS: Very nice.

    Mr. SIMON: But we are, you know, we're consumers of NPR. But the thing about that one scene was I actually, when I was doing the book "The Corner," at one point, to make it real to this particular kid, DeAndre McCullough, 15-year-old kid who's slinging drugs on a corner of West Baltimore, I didnt want, you know - he was willing to let me follow him but I didnt want him to do it without really believing it was a book. So a couple months into the process I actually drove him to New York to meet the editor of the book at the publishing house in New York. I wanted him to see that there was really going to be a book and so he shouldnt get into this lightly because he, you know, he was 15 and, you know.

    In any event, we got - we hit that point where the Baltimore station, 92-Q, this hip-hop station lost - started to fade out and then we started to pick up the Philly stations, you know, near Delaware or something. And he, having never been outside of Baltimore, he expressed that same amazement and we ended up listening to - because it was right sort of down at the end of the dial there -we ended up listening to "Prairie Home Companion." At that point I think he thought that the world had gone insane.

    (Soundbite of laughter)

    Mr. SIMON: He was listening to, you know, Garrison Keillor talking about Lake Wobegon and, you know, and...

    Mr. OVERMYER: It was probably on WHYY.

    GROSS: That's right. That's where our station, our show comes from.

    Mr. SIMON: Probably right. Probably right.

    GROSS: Yeah, our Philly station.

    Mr. SIMON: But he was looking at me like, get me back to Baltimore as fast as you can.

    (Soundbite of laughter)

    Mr. OVERMYER: What's this Lake Wobegon?

    Mr. SIMON: Yeah. Exactly. So, you know, I'm not going to say it delighted him or that he sudden - I dont remember what the, you know, if it was Guy Noir or whatever, but at some point...

    (Soundbite of laughter)

    Mr. SIMON: ...you know, he got interested enough that we listened to it for a good half hour. And, you know, those moments used to happen all the time - I have to say, all those sort of cross-cultural moments. And, you know, you just, you put them in your back pocket and you hope you'll have a chance to use them some day.

  • dayday 9,611 Posts
    Imagine if Slingblade had a witty older brother who was a tour guide at a Civil War Cemetery and decided to turn that career into stand-up comedy.

  • mannybolonemannybolone Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
    I ride for the Writer's Almanac: http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/
  • FlomotionFlomotion 2,390 Posts
    I have also given it more chances than Sage Francis. I can't get through an entire episode. Not even close. Sometimes the music is good, sometimes Keillor says something funny. Mostly, I wish they would play old Joe Frank reruns instead.

    This.
  • DB_CooperDB_Cooper Manhatin' 7,823 Posts
    It's to radio what Andre Rieu Live from Vienna is to TV. Old people love that schitt.
  • mannybolonemannybolone Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
    I do like the way Keeler says, "oh my, they're tasty" when he's hawking those biscuits.
  • GaryGary 3,982 Posts
    I hate the host's voice, accent, manner of speaking, everything about the host makes me cringe. He sounds like an rambling alcoholic.
  • mannybolonemannybolone Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
    I hate the host's voice, accent, manner of speaking, everything about the host makes me cringe. He sounds like an rambling alcoholic.

    Yet they're like the most banjo friendly show on radio! Embrace, don't hate.
  • GaryGary 3,982 Posts
    It's not the only thing I wonder about. I had airline miles that were going to expire so I used them to subscribe to some magazines. I put Harpers on the list on a whim, even though I had never read it.

    I was baffled when the first issues showed up. I couldn't imagine who the target audience of this would be. The next issue was better, I actually read quite a bit of it before the toddler destroyed it. So I'm curious to see what the 3rd issue will be like. After trying to read the 1st one I actually googled "who reads harpers magazine?" just to try to figure out what it was all supposed to mean.
  • bluesnagbluesnag 1,285 Posts
    "who reads harpers magazine?"




    It all comes back to The Wire
  • mannybolonemannybolone Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
    I subscribed to Harper's for a year or two but I just wasn't that into a lot of their long features. I ended up gravitating back towards The Atlantic and New Yorker.

    I do kind of miss not getting The Economist anymore but 1) it's expensive and 2) I wasn't reading everything I got in so...
  • Birdman9Birdman9 5,417 Posts
    If you were raised in the Midwest (or in particular MN) as a Lutheran or any other protestant denomination, much of the basis of the show is terribly familiar in it's themes and humor, and you either find it incredibly comforting or horribly cloying and corny. I have to give Keillor props for taking something so specifically Minnesotan and translating it to a National audience over a time period when Corporate and Public media has served to pretty much trample and dismantle something simple and corny like the whole premise of his show. That is no mean feat. And when he dies or quits, I think the whole thing goes with him.

    However, that doesn't mean I ride for it. I went to a broadcast with my family when we visited them in Madison, WI, and the show was visiting there. It was entertaining enough, decent, tho forgettable, musical guests, and lots of low-key corny jokes about Lutherans and DFL'ers, etc. I made the best of it, it wasn't so bad....and I find myself not turning it off when I fire up NPR on a Sunday morning, unless the Bluegrass is too obnoxious. But the thing that drives me most nuts is Keillor's delivery, which sounds like he is barely off a ventilator and about to suffocate. I never understood why people outside the Midwest liked the whole thing, until my wife said how much she enjoyed the Madison show. It then dawned on me, if you were raised in DC in the 80s, Prairie Home Companion is pretty foreign and exotic, and pure imaginary escapism. But I still have weird like/hate relationship to the whole deal.
  • DB_CooperDB_Cooper Manhatin' 7,823 Posts
    I went to a broadcast with my family when we visited them in Madison, WI, and the show was visiting there. It was entertaining enough, decent, tho forgettable, musical guests, and lots of low-key corny jokes about Lutherans and DFL'ers, etc. I made the best of it, it wasn't so bad...

    Once a summer, my station has a bus trip to the Berkshires for all the old folks who want to see a live broadcast of APHC. I usually go along as staff. Once the folks are in their seats, I cut out to the wine stand and grab myself a bottle, which I then drink far from earshot of the whole affair while getting paid overtime to do it. I think of it as making the best of an APHC performance.
  • white_teawhite_tea 3,262 Posts
    I hate the host's voice, accent, manner of speaking, everything about the host makes me cringe. He sounds like an rambling alcoholic.

    I just wish Keillor wear his tie at a sensible length. It's always dangling around his private area and it always bright red. Think he also wears red New Balances with his suit, which is sort of an odd look. Letting the tie break at his belt would go a long way, I think. I once tried reading his Lake Wobegon book but didn't make it past the first few pages. Robert Altman's film version of the show and his last movie ever was interesting but don't think I'd revisit that anytime soon.

    I do like that Guy Noir dude. Admittedly stupid hard-boiled send-ups will find me leaving the radio dial alone for at least the duration of the skit.
  • FlomotionFlomotion 2,390 Posts
    I hate the host's voice, accent, manner of speaking, everything about the host makes me cringe. He sounds like an rambling alcoholic.

    I just wish Keillor wear his tie at a sensible length. It's always dangling around his private area and it always bright red. Think he also wears red New Balances with his suit, which is sort of an odd look. Letting the tie break at his belt would go a long way, I think. I once tried reading his Lake Wobegon book but didn't make it past the first few pages.

    The book was pretty funny if you've grown up in a small rural town with traditional values. Not sure that you have to be Lutheran, Norwegian or white to appreciate it. He wrote it 25 years ago and it was the last good thing he did.
  • white_teawhite_tea 3,262 Posts
    I hate the host's voice, accent, manner of speaking, everything about the host makes me cringe. He sounds like an rambling alcoholic.

    I just wish Keillor wear his tie at a sensible length. It's always dangling around his private area and it always bright red. Think he also wears red New Balances with his suit, which is sort of an odd look. Letting the tie break at his belt would go a long way, I think. I once tried reading his Lake Wobegon book but didn't make it past the first few pages.

    The book was pretty funny if you've grown up in a small rural town with traditional values. Not sure that you have to be Lutheran, Norwegian or white to appreciate it. He wrote it 25 years ago and it was the last good thing he did.

    I will probably give it another go -- I still have my thrift store paperback somewhere. Didn't really give it much of a shot, and being Catholic, Bohemian and white, I am pretty close to the sweet spot of the demographics.
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