Gig review: Dean Friedman, Glasgow Cottier Theatre

DEAN Friedman settles himself comfortably at the piano, at the beginning of his seasonal solo Scottish jaunt (including extensive Fringe gigs) and proceeds to romp through a four-decade back catalogue of grown-up pop, wit and wry humanity.

The New York songwriter, affably laid-back and clearly among warmly-vocal Glasgow devotees, switches between piano and guitar to range expansively from the Noel-Coward-Meets-Kermit-the-Frog ragtime of I’m Not Sorry to See You Go to a ukulele-driven droll ditty about climate change. He unleashes his wayward treble holler in old favourites such as Ariel and Well, Well, Said the Rocking Chair and cranks up unabashed schmaltz in McDonald’s Girl – a song once banned by the BBC because of its supposed product-placement.

It’s not all whoops and laughs, however, as he delivers such compassionate observations as Shopping Bag Ladies and Under the Weather. The latter may be a sympathetic message for a sick friend, but that doesn’t debar some sly asides:

It could been a whole lot worse

And I’d have to come up with a whole other verse

By the way I think I’m in love with your nurse…

There is also, of course, his hilarious riposte to the English band Half Man Half Biscuit’s curiously titled number The Bastard Son of Dean Friedman. The sorely-slandered Friedman’s scurrilous ditty, A Baker’s Tale calls into question “Biscuit” singer Nigel Blackwell’s own and allegedly exceedingly unnatural origins in a bakehouse: never was revenge so sweet – or so surreal.

Rating: ****