...a friend of mine from my early 80s sojourn in Greenwich Village as a member of
Pete's a brilliant singer/songwriter/guitarist and a heck of a nice guy (who I hadn't seen in at least a quarter of a century), and as you might expect, we got to reminiscing about the old days. And at one point I asked about another mutual musician pal I'd lost track of, the very very funny old school folkie Erik Frandsen.
(That's Erik in the photo on the left, and yes that's the late great Dave Van Ronk on the right.)
The song below, which I post here to give you an idea of Erik's work, is his hilarious ode to the holiday just past, "Christmas in Brooklyn." (Which, by the way, is even better than my other favorite New York themed yule classic, "Christmas In Hollis" by Run-DMC. So there.)
In any case, Pete replied that Erik has had a whole new career as an actor, and that for the last year or so he'd been playing a recurring character on The Colbert Report. Why I hadn't gotten the memo on this is beyond me, but in any case here's Erik as Hans Beinholtz (the existentialist and aggressively depressing fictional UN ambassador from Germany.)
I should add that Erik also showed up on last week's Colbert finale, but as the unicorn Abraham Lincoln...
...which was almost too disturbing for words.
I should also add that I recently mangled one of Pete's best songs in the recording studio, and that after hearing the results, Pete graciously declined to throw his drink in my face.
More on that musical crime against nature later in the week.
3 comments:
Erik is a longtime FB friend. He appeared in last season 2-part finale of The Blacklist, and as noted, on Colbert often.
So, it's been revealed at last! Van Ronk was your fashion guru. :-D
That's some good stuff there Steve. Erik's Hans Beinholtz character has been a favorite of my on The Report. Somewhere along the line, I thought I saw Hans doing stand-up as well, but it was a taped Colbert bit. Here's a not so high-quality video link.
http://youtu.be/Eo2eH3-R09I
"Dis guy knows vat I'm talking about"...his delivery is priceless!!!
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