Talk Is Cheap, Vol. 3

Chronique

For Henry Rollins, talk is so cheap he's practically selling it by the pound. Talk Is Cheap is the third two-CD set so far of Rollins regaling his fans with wit, wisdom, and bad karma at the Enmore Theater in Sydney, Australia, this time recorded during a two-night stand in April 2003. With the passage of time, Rollins' spoken word material sounds more and more like standup comedy, but with a bit more venom than Louis Black and a less precise sense of timing and structure than David Cross, though for sheer verbiage he offers greater value for money than either. On the third installment of Talk Is Cheap, Rollins shares his antipathy towards college students, George W. Bush, auditioning for roles in action movies, 24-hour news channels, law enforcement officers in Texas, and a variety of other subjects, but the best stuff here is where Rollins uncharacteristically talks about things he loves -- the Ramones (he shares a long and hilarious story about seeing them for the first time in a tiny sweatbox of a club), Mohammad Said el Sahhaf (Saddam Hussein's wildly over-confident press officer: "A more charismatic, optimistic man you will be so hard pressed to find!"), and hanging out with heavy duty DEA agents while shooting Bad Boys II. While Rollins goes more directly for laughs these days, he's still offering his fans the aggro they've come to expect from him, and if you've been down with "Hammerin' Hank"'s spoken word program up to this point, this 135 minutes of ranting down under will give you the laughs and the anger you've come to expect.
© Mark Deming /TiVo