Johnny Cardinale hits high notes, low laughs

At 8:00 p.m. Friday night, Johnny Cardinale, the stand-up musician-comedian made his debut here at Rose-Hulman in the ARA...and what a mixed debut it was.

The advertisements posted around the Union proclaimed that Cardinale “has been compared to Adam Sandler.” By whom exactly, and how he was compared, is what I would like to know.

As a stand-up comedian, Cardinale’s act wasn’t fresh. The jokes were run-of-the-mill generically humorous anecdotes about his journey to Rose that weren’t unfamiliar ground to anyone in the audience (in fact, I’ve heard some students crack a couple that he used at lunch the other day). Kudos to the comedian for making his show fit the situation... too bad it fell flat (after all, bashing on The Haute is funny for only so long before the jokes just become sad truths).

Cardinale’s delivery was silky-smooth however. Compared to other comedians that have come to Rose and seemed to make up their routine on the ride over, Cardinale would not have been out of place on Comedy Central or a larger stage in the Big Apple or the Laugh Factory in L.A. (where... coincidentally... he has performed). Truly, he seemed professional on the stage. Perhaps his rehearsed routine and clean jokes combined to seem artificial and lack that punch and sting that Rose students, in general, seem to respond best to. Oftentimes, during his stand-up routine, I felt like I was waiting for the punch line... which never really came.

But then, Cardinale picked up his guitar, and the show did a 180. Suddenly, the “oh goodness, sigh, I’m going to have to sit through thirty more minutes of this,” turned into “this guy’s awesome!”

Cardinale’s satirical use of songs and clean delivery, while detrimental to his vaguely Dane Cook-esque stand-up routine, was the perfect comedic combination for his musical routine. Cardinale seamlessly combined songs from many genres and eras, including a couple of fantastic parodies of John Cougar Mellencamp (where he smashed all of his songs together to prove that they are, in fact, one song) and James Blunt (and his nasal I’m-singing-words-but-good-luck-figuring-out-what-they-are style). The similarity between Cardinale and Sandler is their expert use of music as a satirical device, but the similarities end there. Sandler’s pieces are characteristically off-color and border on offensive to just about everybody. Cardinale, with his uncanny ability for mimicking an artist’s vocal style, is the better satirist, using the songs’ very lyrics to point out how foolish some things really are while simultaneously keeping the show PG-13.

It’s too bad Cardinale insisted on doing a stand-up routine. If he had another 15 minutes of solid musical content (and left the stand-up at the door), his act would seem much fresher, more original, and would have been more entertaining. After all, no show can live on an exceptionally strong second half alone.