Wednesday, May 7
BEFORE RADIO

(1) "Have you lived here all your life?" "Not yet." (2) "I'd give a thousand dollars to be a millionaire."

Those are two of the best jokes you will hear on "Before Radio: Comedy, Drama & Sound Sketches, 1897-1923"! Only the wonderful folk at Archeophone would dare to commit to CD 27 vintage recordings containing jokes so bad that they were still being told by George Burns and Milton Berle long before the bright idea arose that filth could substitute for humor.

Some of the recordings are spoken, some sung, some spoken with a musical backup--but all of them were tested and honed to perfection on thousands of American vaudeville and British music hall stages before the artists shouted them into a horn and preserved for the public such routines as "How mother made the soup," "The piano tuner," "Zeb Green's airship," "How I got to Morrow," and "Down in Turkey Hollow."

"No news" is either a steal from or the inspiration for a French novelty song called "Hello, hello, James," in which a servant tells his boss that nothing really new has happened and then proceeds to report one catastrophe after another. "How I got to Morrow" is a veritable Abbott and

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Costello string of misunderstandings, while Will Roger's reasons for nominating Henry Ford for president is the only brainy piece and would be dead on target if delivered today.

While there will be more groans than laughs, this CD is a fabulous reminder of what once sent audiences into gales of laughter. And as always with an Archeophone CD, the booklet's program notes alone are worth the price of the set.

PARANORMAL STATE

This is not my kind of show but I should mention that the complete Season One of "Paranormal State" is now out in a boxed set of three DVDs from A&E.

It is centered on a group of young students who investigate "everything from poltergeists to hauntings" (as the cover blurb puts it). Each of the twenty episodes runs around 21 minutes (to allow for the endless A&E commercials when telecast). The information is given in a jumpy sort of way, never probing deeply into whether the informants are making it all up to get on television or truly believe they see what they claim to see.

I am also more than suspicious that much of each episode is staged and the informants are saying what they are told to say. I cannot tell, but the whole thing has a phony feeling about it that is not at all paranormal. But there will be many who like this sort of thing. So there we are.