Recap The Gomers' Slappy Hour Variety Special at The Frequency

Those mischievous Gomers went out of their way to give the local press a song and dance about their new Slappy Hour Variety Special, so damned if Decider wasn’t going to see how Friday’s kickoff at The Frequency measured up. Even before things got started at this happy hour show, local songwriter Sean Michael Dargan was warming up on his bagpipes, outfitted in kilt and all. DB Pedersen, best known in Madison for building music out of loops, throat-singing passages, and animal noises, was hanging around and drinking, which is usually a sign that some mildly disturbing antics are going to go down.

The Gomers proper got the show off to a pleasantly odd start. The first set featured selections like “I Been Over Dere,” in which Gomers guitarist Stephen Burke re-writes the Johnny Cash hit “I’ve Been Everywhere” to namedrop a few dozen places in Wisconsin, and “Forcefield,” an awkward song about people with bad breath. In between, an iPod spewed out equally silly transitional bits, including a Rod Serling-style riff on the birth of Jesus.

After a few songs, the band fired up a projector aimed at a small screen at the back of the stage and played a live soundtrack for the silent Harold Lloyd short Just Neighbors. Keyboardist Dave Adler cut into the slapstick tale of suburban mayhem with some narration here and there: “Violence is funny… so are midgets.” Multi-instrumentalist Biff Blumfumgagnge switched between an electric fiddle and some sort of tiny guitar, using the instruments to emulate everything from a flute to an accordion to a synth. Up in front of the stage, Pedersen stuck two slide whistles in his mouth and also supplied the voices of dogs and chickens.

After another round of songs and another Lloyd short (Are Crooks Dishonest?), the band cleared out. Jonathan Zarov took the stage in black jeans, shoes, shirt, and leather jacket. Zarov is a publicist for the Overture Center and used to be in an improv comedy group that didn’t swear. So imagine the delight when he introduced himself as corrupt Illinois Governor Rod R. Blagojevich and asked, “Do we have any cocksuckers from the media here?” The word “fuck” punctuated just about every other sentence as “Rod” (looking more like a skinny bald guy trying to be Lou Reed) announced he intended to raise money for his defense by auctioning off his mother (another local performer, Jodi Cohen). The kicker? The lucky new owner of “dear, dear, golden motherfuckin’ Ma” would also receive a milkable “Serbian man-sheep” with the purchase. At this point, Pedersen re-appeared in a red kimono with a couple of bulges in the chest. He pulled it open to reveal two latex gloves, tied to his body and full of cream.

Zarov and Cohen then proceeded to literally milk him into a bucket, as little drips of cream squirted onto the stage and onto Zarov’s black jacket. Pedersen (who has worked on a sheep farm) croaked, gibbered, and bleated out a creepily accurate sheep impression. They poured the bucket’s contents into a little Tupperware container, put the lid on, and passed it around, asking the crowd to shake it until it turned into butter. As the sticky container made its rounds, Rod, Ma, and sheep led the crowd in a chorus of “Old MacDonald Had A Farm.” One attendee grabbed Decider’s notebook to jot this down: “That was just wrong WTF.”