'I can't think of a better place to do our first television ever,' David Lee Roth told the thousands of fans gathered Monday night on Hollywood Boulevard for a Jimmy Kimmel Live set that was billed as the first TV performance since Roth rejoined the band in 2007. 'Like they used to say on Ed Sullivan: If this goes well, we got a great career ahead of us, boys.'
By every standard but the cosmetic one, it went swimmingly indeed, with the band running devilishly through eight of their late '70s/early '80s greatest hits, two of which aired Monday on Kimmel, with a couple more set to be saved for Tuesday's (March 31) show. But there was a nasty bit of business involving Roth's nose that ultimately didn't affect his performance, yet did leave home viewers baffled as it went unexplained on the ABC telecast.
If you ever saw Roth twirl the microphone stand like a drum major and wondered if he could hurt somebody with that thing, the answer is yes. 'Ladies and gentlemen, I cut my nose on the microphone. I apologize,' Roth announced midway through the band's opening number, 'Panama,' leaving the stage for almost two and a half minutes to get it bandaged while Eddie, Alex and Wolfgang Van Halen vamped further through the tune in his absence. Naturally, no one in the crowd was thumbing a nose -- so to speak -- at a bonus Van Halen guitar solo.
Lady Luck David Lee Roth. Album A Little Ain’t Enough. Lady Luck Lyrics. Ow, all right Aww yeah. Sometimes I laugh to win 'Cause he who laughs lasts I see the headlights burnin'.
'Let's give it up! He sacrificed his nose!' bellowed Kimmel. Roth, upon his return, explained that he 'f---ed my nose up on the microphone here, so I'm gonna wear the Band-Aid and we're gonna start the whole thing all over for you. We'll give you a little extra for your patience here. Work with us if you will… How do I look? Like f---in' Hiawatha?'
None of that timeout made the broadcast, and with the boulevard-closing concert not even beginning until 10:30 p.m. on the East Coast, there wasn't time for the show to think about cutting in an explanation. But the show's editors did manage to use a few long shots of the pre-injury Roth doing his mic-stand gymnastics before cutting to the bandaged Roth by the time the first verse started.
The Van Halen Twitterverse exploded with speculation and gags once the East Coast airing began: 'Is Roth wearing a Breathe Right strip?' 'Did Eddie break David Lee Roth's nose?' 'I can overlook the Band-Aid David Lee Roth has on his nose but is he chewing gum?' (Yes.) Presumably, Kimmel will address the issue before Tuesday night's performance footage.
Even after that mishap, Roth seemed in as jolly a mood as ever, with his perennially poop-eating grin visible all the way back to Orange Avenue -- as was a half-revealed, heavily tatted torso that, at 60 years old, you could still bounce a dime off. Roth also became probably the first person ever to reference both Gazzari's and the Masquers Club from the stage of a Hollywood Boulevard concert. The former was in reference to the Sunset Strip club 'around the corner' (just a slight exaggeration) where Van Halen got their humbler start. The latter was the 1930s-era 'club behind the Chinese' (a better use of geography) whose longtime showbiz motto Roth approvingly referenced: 'We laugh to win' (or 'We laugh to win, baby,' as Roth inevitably amends it).
That slogan works just as well for Van Halen as it did for the long-gone Masquers, as the band remains the one great hard rock group ever to get as much mileage out of a knowing, almost sophisticated mirth as from shredding. 'Dance the Night Away' could be 'Laugh the Night Away' with Roth in the lead -- though, as his solo career showed, he needs Eddie as his half-amused, virtuosic straight man to pull off his gigolo-ing. At Monday's show, he pulled a 'hot stuff' woman up from the audience to dance and then manically pushed her around the stage in his version of a tango. It was a funny, one-sided variation on the 'Dancing in the Dark' schtick that so many classic acts do, but served as a reminder that you're always glad Eddie, Alex and (now) Wolfgang are around for the push-back.
Unlike their previous reunion tour, this one won't be behind a new studio album --in their hour set Monday, the band didn't try interesting anyone in anything post-1984 -- but the chemistry is still so powerful that freezing themselves in amber doesn't seem like a remote possibility. Some Van Halen historians were imagining what kind of 'How could you do this?' words might have been exchanged after the show. But this version of the group holds such an otherwise unoccupied niche in rock 'n' roll that music fans can only hope Dave and Eddie are talkin' 'bout love, now and forever -- closing numbers notwithstanding.
Van Halen's Jimmy Kimmel Live concert set list:
'Panama'
'Runnin' With the Devil'
'Eruption'/'You Really Got Me Now'
'Hot for Teacher'
'Dance the Night Away'
'Unchained'
'Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love'
'Panama'
'Runnin' With the Devil'
'Eruption'/'You Really Got Me Now'
'Hot for Teacher'
'Dance the Night Away'
'Unchained'
'Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love'
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Not the book you’re looking for?Preview — Our Gang by Philip Roth
A ferocious political satire in the great tradition, Our Gangis Philip Roth’s brilliantly indignant response to the phenomenon of Richard M. Nixon.
In the character of Trick E. Dixon, Roth shows us a man who outdoes the severest cynic, a peace-loving Quaker and believer in the sanctity of human life who doesn’t have a problem with killing unarmed women and children in self...more
In the character of Trick E. Dixon, Roth shows us a man who outdoes the severest cynic, a peace-loving Quaker and believer in the sanctity of human life who doesn’t have a problem with killing unarmed women and children in self...more
Published May 29th 2001 by Vintage (first published 1971)
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Jan 10, 2017Michael Finocchiaro rated it really liked it![Laugh To Win Roth Laugh To Win Roth](/uploads/1/2/5/0/125047738/321979724.jpg)
Shelves: political-satire, novels, american-20th-c, fiction, pulitzer-fiction
I read this book today and to be honest, it was terrifying. Yes, Tricky Dick is long in the grave (and apparently trying to usurp Satan if we believe Roth), but the scenario of the book is so close to the insanity of Drumpf that it made me want to scream. Whether it was the horrifying week in Washington with the ever-insistent attacks on democratic process even before taking office or his public speeches (or his fucking tweets), everything about Drumpf is present in Roth's Tricky B. Dixon in spa...more
Dec 16, 2010TK421 rated it it was amazing
Okay, I've had some time to think about this book. I know political satires are a dime-a-dozen, but this one works.
Here are my thoughts:
Even though it was written almost 40 years ago, and about a president that was less than decorous, I think it still has much clout concerning politics and politicians today. (That's both side of the aisle for those wondering.) We've seen how inadequate our elected officials are and, worse, just how incompetent they can be.
I think that was the point of this nov...more
Jul 10, 2018Derek rated it really liked itHere are my thoughts:
Even though it was written almost 40 years ago, and about a president that was less than decorous, I think it still has much clout concerning politics and politicians today. (That's both side of the aisle for those wondering.) We've seen how inadequate our elected officials are and, worse, just how incompetent they can be.
I think that was the point of this nov...more
Shelves: read-in-2018, favourites, literary-fiction
I read this in one sitting, taking a six hour bus ride from Queen Elizabeth National Park to Kampala. I can never read for more than an hour or so, especially on buses - crying kids, no AC, loud lingala on the stereo, but not with this book. Read it right through, no hiccups.
Our Gang is quite the humourous satire of 1970s America. The President's called Trick E Dixon, Vice President's called Blurb, etc. It's not funny haha, but it keeps you giggling all through. The writing is typical Philip Ro...more
Our Gang is quite the humourous satire of 1970s America. The President's called Trick E Dixon, Vice President's called Blurb, etc. It's not funny haha, but it keeps you giggling all through. The writing is typical Philip Ro...more
Living in an era of the non scandal--whitewater to Benghazi--while the real scandals go unnoticed--how many hundreds of William Calleys have gone unseen, un-prosecuted, and ignored in Iraq or Afghanistan? How come Clinton's cigar-placement is a scandal but his sending bombers to devastate civilian populations in Europe in order to halt the genocide of other civilian populations is presented to us as a just and even leftist (once they were called doves--another endangered species) strategy? So, a...more
Feb 27, 2013Michael rated it really liked it · review of another edition
It helps to know about (or remember) the administration of Richard M. Nixon to laugh out loud as I did while reading Roth's great satire, but it's not necessary. Our Gang certainly satirized Nixon (as well as Spiro Agnew, several Democrats, and a cadre of famous news reporters and commentators), but far beyond that, it satirizes cynical political opportunism that uses rhetoric that sounds reasonable to twist reason into unrecognized train-wreckage, no matter the time or place.
The book opens with...more
The book opens with...more
This is a a genuine laugh-out-loud work of relentless satire from Roth, targeting the machinations in the final days of the presidency of Trick E. Dixon. From his heartfelt notion of the sanctity of life for the unborn (but for no one living in southeast Asia), his solution to the protests against him by the Boy Scouts (imprison them, shoot them), his gripping 'there's something rotten in the state of Denmark' speech before his - SPOILER ALERT - destruction of the 'pro-pornography regime of Cope...more
Sep 01, 2018Amir Guberstein rated it it was ok · review of another edition
This book has not stood the test of time
I never read Gulliver’s Travels growing up but for many years I assumed it was merely a children’s book like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland not realising both were, in fact, satirical works, the former, a transparently anti-Whig satire whereas the latter lampooned the ordered, earnest world of Victorian England.
When George S. Kaufman proclaimed that “satire is what closes on Saturday night,” he was referring to its ephemeral quality: satire dates quickly. I would add that political satire date...more
An amusing satire but rather overplayed. It could just as easily be written about the current Trump administration where obfuscation, manipulation, skulldugery and bare faced lying seem to be the order of the day.
The first thought I had when I was going to read this book, was that it would be like watching someone shoot fish in a barrel. Sure, the guy can hit a lot of fish, but there ain't much going on in strategy or how it is going to end.
That is NOT how the book ended up. The book's main satirical target isn't Richard Nixon - rather it is a send-up of how language is used for political ends - and how masters of this utility (like Nixon or 'Dixon' in the book) can get so far. The main thing that you se...more
That is NOT how the book ended up. The book's main satirical target isn't Richard Nixon - rather it is a send-up of how language is used for political ends - and how masters of this utility (like Nixon or 'Dixon' in the book) can get so far. The main thing that you se...more
Feb 01, 2017Christopher Saunders rated it liked it
One of Roth's odder concoctions, Our Gang is a rambling, sporadically funny attack on Richard Nixon and the politics of untruth, written in the early '70s before the worst of Nixon's misdeeds came to light. You'd think Nixon, a self-caricaturing blowhard if ever there was one, would be an easy mark for satire, but Roth seems out of his depth skewering 'Trick E. Dixon's' prevarications and absurd mismanagement. He does, in fairness, have Nixon's bizarre diction and self-pitying bromides down pat,...more
Not the Roth I was expecting. It said on the jacket that it was 'satire in the vein of Swift.' But I thought.... Yeah but its Phillip Roth. I've read 10 books by this guy. It'll be lush prose, naturalistic plots and characters, y'know, Roth. The jacket was right. The writing was clever and someone who loves stylized satire might really love this. 'The Breast' looks like it might be like this one, I haven't got to that yet. I'd say read some of his 90s/2000s stuff first.
PS I read this because Nix...more
PS I read this because Nix...more
Sep 11, 2008Aaron rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Our Gang is probably one of the two most underrated books in Roth’s bibliography. A fake play of political satire, it is also a window into the writing career Roth could have had. Now mostly a novelist, Roth started his career as a writer of short stories, nonfiction, and political satire (he was first noticed by “The New Republic” when he wrote a parody transcript of an Eisenhower press conference), and he continued to shadow his novels with this type of writing throughout the 60’s and 70’s. Mo...more
Jun 01, 2013Jay rated it liked it · review of another edition
Roth starts with something like a Firesign Theater political satire ('Man, you broke the president') and ratchets it up a few grade levels. This really felt like a Firesign Theater radio play, with the names used and the pacing. It's just a bit too long for their kind of audio, and a bit too repetitive. Roth did really get down the mannerisms, the verbiage, and maybe the thought processes behind Nixon, err Dixon. Very good for going down memory lane in a satirical way. I'm not so sure it works w...more
An original, humorous, witty, political satire written in 1971. President Trick E Dixon answers questions from journalists, has a discussion with his advisors, (spiritual coach, political coach, legal coach,...) gives a lengthy address to the nation and then there's an event that is initially denied. The President wants unborn babies to have the right to vote. Three Scout demonstrators are shot dead by police and the President justifies the police's actions. Pro-pornography Copenhagen is invaded...more
Nov 27, 2017Alex Wexelman rated it liked it · review of another edition
Written pre-Watergate scandal, Our Gang sees Philip Roth lampooning Richard Nixon and his administration. As Roth told The Atlantic in 1971, 'Political satire isn't writing that lasts.' The book, although amusing at times, is mostly schlocky SNL-like satire that makes ad-hominem attacks with no greater purpose than to employ cute caricatures. Writing for The New York Times, Dwight McDonald said, 'One really feels for the President. The punishment seems excessive, considering his more serious cri...more
Our Gang is Philip Roth's very heavy-handed, but equally very funny satire about Richard Nixon. Trick E Dixon, as the novel would have it. Successor to Lyin' B. Johnson and John F Charisma. The novel is full of wordplay, ironic placement of policy (Calley and abortion provides the impetus for the book), and is told as a stage-play, more or less, being a book of dialogue. It is over-the-top, quivering with anger, and mostly works. You cannot help but think about Donald Trump when reading it, and...more
Like any pure satire, occasionally loses power when it’s slightly too on-the-nose; but an effective exercise in the dangerous inanity of political speech which rings true in the Trump era. It’s a one-joke book which stretches too long and I get the feeling Roth had more fun writing it than I had reading it, but I took away some things (and despite the timelessness of its message, it also acts as an interesting time capsule as a pre-Wategate Nixon takedown).
I finally completed this book. It was not a favorite Roth read. I really enjoyed the last chapter when Tricky Dixon (Nixon) attempted to overthrow Satan as the new Devil in hell. While this fictional novel is intentionally farcical, it’s amazing how none of it seems as ridiculous when read with an eye on our current political environment and leadership in the country.
Deeply, profoundly disturbing. Nothing short of the funniest piece of satire I have ever read. Roth was, perhaps, the greatest American novelist of all time, and this, a lesser work of his, is proof positive of that fact.
May 09, 2018Ana A rated it really liked it · review of another edition
3.5
Funny and interesting, but there were some tedious parts.
Funny and interesting, but there were some tedious parts.
May 16, 2018Michael rated it it was ok
2.5 stars, rounding down because this seemed too easy for Roth, such low-hanging fruit. Still, I'm sure writing this felt therapeutic at the time.
Jan 18, 2017James rated it really liked it
I read this book as it began to sink in that Nixon was going to win re-election no matter how strongly I as a 15 year old high school sophomore felt. It had me positively rolling with laughter.
Feb 03, 2017Ellie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
rarely has there been a more accurate assessment of what government is capable of. Time to re-read this satire. You will find surprisingly similar events occurring in 2017.
Jun 25, 2018Victor Pérez Negrón rated it really liked it
Brave, hilarious and itchy. Anothe great and short read.
Somewhere in between Orwell and Dr. Strangelove, with, strangely, hints of Monty Python? Messy and brilliant and so, so, so relevant.
May 18, 2008Alan rated it it was okRecommended to Alan by: the dollar rack
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Feb 02, 2015Timothy Cole rated it really liked it Shelves: political, historical-fiction, a-favorite-author
How do you rate a top-notch author who writes from his vehement, political heart? While the style is creative, humorous, and digging, it's hard to get past the bullying.
We all know who it's about, and the storyline is deserved, but is it within the concept of creative writing?
We all know Roth's penchant for satire, and we have all experienced his brilliant capture of our inner thoughts, the laying of them on the dissecting table, and his driving, personal need to exonerate some Freudian guilt th...more
Apr 06, 2011Lori Summers rated it it was amazingWe all know who it's about, and the storyline is deserved, but is it within the concept of creative writing?
We all know Roth's penchant for satire, and we have all experienced his brilliant capture of our inner thoughts, the laying of them on the dissecting table, and his driving, personal need to exonerate some Freudian guilt th...more
Shelves: 100-books-in-2011, fiction, the-roth-project
I didn’t know what to expect from this book. I knew it was Roth’s diatribe against Nixon, I knew it was satirical, I knew it was political. What I didn’t know was that it would turn out to be one of the most enjoyable of all my reads so far as part of The Roth Project. I didn’t know what a shift in tone it would be, how hilariously on-the-nose it would be, how intentionally ridiculous and how sharply written.
Roth concocts a scenario of a President, Tricky E. Dixon, who comes out in favor of the...more
Roth concocts a scenario of a President, Tricky E. Dixon, who comes out in favor of the...more
Oct 06, 2012Michael Austin rated it really liked it
Roth has written a number of brilliant political novels, such as Operation Shylock (1993) I Married a Communist (1998) and The Plot against America (2004). But none of them hit my funny bone like this gem of a book published during the first Nixon administration. Before the Watergate break- in even happened, Roth created a brilliant satire of Nixon’s essential duplicity.
This is not really a novel. It is more like six separate satiric shorts featuring the American President Tricky Dixon (who has...more
This is not really a novel. It is more like six separate satiric shorts featuring the American President Tricky Dixon (who has...more
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Philip Milton Roth was an American novelist. He gained early literary fame with the 1959 collection Goodbye, Columbus (winner of 1960's National Book Award), cemented it with his 1969 bestseller Portnoy's Complaint, and has continued to write critically-acclaimed works, many of which feature his fictional alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman. The Zuckerman novels began with The Ghost Writer in 1979, and in...more
![Laugh To Win Roth Laugh To Win Roth](http://pmd.cdn.turner.com/toon/big/protected_auth_!/cnvideo/The_Powerpuff_Girls/powerpuffgirls_clip_111_02_2T68Y/THUMBS/powerpuffgirls_clip_111_02_640x360.jpg)
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“We return you to the Vice President, who is now addressing the National Sword Swallowers Association.'
'-the psychotics, the sob sisters, the skin merchants, the saboteurs, the self-styled Sapphos, the self-styled Swinburners, the swine, the satyrs, the schizos, the sodomists, the sissies, the screamers, the screwy, the scum, the self-congratulatory self-congratulators, the sensationalists, the snakes in the grass, the sex fiends, the shiftless, the shines, the shaggy, the sickly, the syphilitic-” — 2 likes
'-the psychotics, the sob sisters, the skin merchants, the saboteurs, the self-styled Sapphos, the self-styled Swinburners, the swine, the satyrs, the schizos, the sodomists, the sissies, the screamers, the screwy, the scum, the self-congratulatory self-congratulators, the sensationalists, the snakes in the grass, the sex fiends, the shiftless, the shines, the shaggy, the sickly, the syphilitic-”
“Conflicting stories continue to circulate concerning the death of the President. A second White House announcement has now called attention to the President's schedule for the day, pointing out that no mention is made there of dying. Also released was the President's schedule for tomorrow, wherein there also appears to be no plan on the part of the President or his advisers for him to die. 'I think it would be best,' said the White House Bilge Secretary, 'in the light of these schcedules, to wait for a statement, one way or another, from the President himself.” — 2 likes
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