The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 36

D2 Weekend The Boston Globe FRIDAY, JANUARY 11, 2008 Comedy Notes To our readers Beginning this week, Sauce will no longer run in the Weekend section. Starting tomorrow, readers can find the column inside Saturday's Sidekick. Roadsteamer rolls with new persona GLOBE CORRESPONDENT Twenty-five years ago, Bruce Springsteen released "Nebraska," a spare and haunting acoustic album that marked an about-face from his arena-rocking Street Band work and the arrival of an earnest singer-songwriter. In December, Robby Road-steamer released "LRP," a spare album that marked a de-3Jtarture from the mock 'n' roll of his band, Roadsteamer, and the nrrival of a hilariously brutal sing-Jer-songwriter. For good measure, Roadsteam-Zer kicks off "LRP" with "AUston recasting Springsteen's "Atlan- jzttc City" as a rfl 1 i i Musician-comic Robby Roadsteamer goes acoustic on his brutally -8oston suburb -filled with desper-Ste rock bands 1 playing for unruly frat boys.

The nar-" rator sings with a broken hope that perfectly mimics the spirit of 'Springsteen's ode to the "We're iplaying at O'Brien's In front of 10 Honey, comp ''your friends and sure they w.show." Roadsteamer is at the Middle East Downstairs (480 Massachusetts Cambridge, 617-864-3278, mideastclub.com) with Township and Ernie and the Automatics tomorrow at 7 p.m. Tickets are $12. He's also at the All Asia (334 Massachusetts Cambridge, 617-497-1544, allasiabar.com) Mondays at 7 p.m. throughFeb.il. April release and forsaking more lucrative club dates.

"With me, it's more about being creative and the output," he says. "I don't need the reaction. I don't need 20 people or 40 people laughing at me constantly." Roadsteamer, the alter ego of Louis "Robby" Potylo (hence started out as a heavy-metal caricature with a Hulk Ho-gan grumble and a Don Rickles-like knack for harassing an audience. But that image began to morph at the CD-release party for last year's "I'll Be at Your Funeral," which sold out the Paradise Rock Club. The thick mustache and heavy-metal wardrobe were gone, replaced more often with Potylo's normal speaking voice and street clothes.

Now, depending on where The soul-crush-. ing aspects of the Boston music scene are a major theme of "LRP" and something Roadsteamer V. funny new disc, "LRP." pecially for comics with Boston roots (Steven Wright, Mike Birbiglia, Jen Kirkman, Bill Burr, Tom Shillue, Joe Rogan, and Jonathan Katz). A few big names didn't make our list (Dane Cook, George Lopez), and a handful of albums were close. 1.

Patton Oswalt, "Werewolves and Lollipops" Video of Oswalt's KFC Famous Bowls routine is still circulating on the Internet months after this release. But there is so much more here, from Oswalt's political "Dukes of Hazzard" analogy to his wonderfully disgusting "Miracle of Childbirth." 2. Steven Wright, "I Still Have a Pony" Wright has not lost a step in the 22 years since he released his first album, "I Have a Pony," a ROBERT VOETVCBS -4J Not enough bright spots to make 'Comanche Moon' shine knows too well. "I'm a comedian," says Roadsteamer. "I have nothing to lose from it, so I thought I'd be brutally honest with a lot of the stuff I experienced." Roadsteamer has straddled the line between comedy and music for the past seven years, performing at comedy clubs with keyboard player Nick D'Amico and in rock clubs with his band.

He's seen the worst of both worlds good bands and good comedians struggling to be heard over the din of wannabes and he's hoping they can laugh at themselves. "I know a lot of musicians bought this album," says Roadsteamer. "If they can hear somebody actually jok ing around about it and making it open, I think it makes it a lot easi er. Fans will have plenty of chances to catch the act over the next month. The full band will play the Middle East Downstairs tomorrow, and Roadsteamer kicks off his first acoustic residency Monday at the All Asia in Cambridge, which will run through Feb.

11. But he'd be just as happy making albums he recorded "LRP" earlier this week for an tin. The richer, more lyrical "Lonesome Dove" miniseries from 1989 followed two former Rangers, McCrae and Woodrow Call, on a journey to Montana to start a cattle ranch. Played magnificently by Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones, the older McCrae and Call were figures of honor and regret, with flaws both eccentric and tragic. "Dove" was based on the first of Larry McMurtry's four-novel saga of the Old West, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986.

The plot of "Comanche Moon," which runs on Tuesday and Wednesday after Sunday's first installment, is inhibited by the fact that it must lead up to "Lonesome Dove" (as well as out of another "Dove" prequel, "Dead Man's The miniseries has to serve as an accurate segue vehicle as much as a story in its own right. Unfortunately, "Comanche Moon" feels more like scenes meant to reflect off "Dove" than a coherent narrative about McCrae, Call, and their evolution into captains and leaders. Written by McMurtry and Diana Ossana, the team who won an Oscar for "Brokeback Mountain," the screenplay has been pieced together loosely and without its own human themes. Both "Dove" and "Comanche" were directed by Simon Wincer, but the 1 Huntington Ave. 0 40- i'vj HZ V- VV ill- deadpan, abstract masterpiece.

3. Mike Birbiglia, "My Secret Public Journal (Live)" A glimpse of Birbiglia's personal stories. Don't be surprised to see a lot more of Birbiglia in 2008. 4. Bill Burr, "Emotionally Unavailable" Everyman Burr is one of the most consistently funny acts around, and this is just a taste of what he can do.

5. Maria Bamford, "How to Win!" The most underrated of the Comedians of Comedy, Bamford is affably riddled with psychosis, with a talent for illustrating her stories with voice and movement 6. Jonathan Katz, "Caffeinated" Incredibly, this January 2007 release was Katz's first album, showing his range with music, sketch, and stand-up. 7. Paul F.

Tompkins, "Impersonal" Tompkins has retired all of this material, a sharp mix of the sarcastic and the conceptual, two things that aren't so easy to blend. 8. Jen Kirkman, "Self Help" Kirk-man's disc feels like a long phone message from a strange, amusing friend. 9. Joe Rogan, "Shiny Happy Jihad" Worth it for his "Dumb People Out-Breeding Smart People" routine alone, this album reminds people why Rogan's not just a game-show host.

10. Tom Shillue, "Overconfident" Unless you happened by you probably never heard of this album. That's a shame, since it's filled with smart material from a sophisticated dork (and talented comic). Comanche Moon Starring: Rachel Griffiths, Val Kilmer, Adam Beach, Elizabeth Banks, Linda Cardellini, Wes Studi, Steve Zahn, Karl Urban On: CBS, Channel 4 Time: Sunday, Tuesday, and Wednesday 9-11 p.m. in the Rangers' lives, including Maggie (Elizabeth Banks), the mother of Call's son, as they head toward their inevitable fates.

Cardellini is fine, if wooden, as the sweetheart that McCrae loses, while Banks never quite seems to have located Maggie's personality until the script requires her to cough with significance. Playing the aristocratic war hero Scull, Kilmer isn't as strangely entertaining as Griffiths, even while he goes over the top after being tortured in a cage and a pit with snakes. He gets to simper and sing and be a bit mad, and he dons both a bald-headed wig and an Albert Einsteinian mop of white hair in the course of the miniseries. But still he's just a far-flung and aimless plot point, another tumble-weed blowing through this long, flat miniseries. Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbertglobe.com.

For more on TV, visit boston.comaetvbbg. j- as-' value of your local classrooms. me NIWIMPII IN IDUCATIOM roaaiW i 1 fK rvX you catch him, at a live show or co-hosting Wednesday or Friday nights on WBCN, you'll get a different Roadsteamer. "It's not like I'm alienating the character, because on 'BCN I'm still playing it the way I always have says Roadsteamer. "During the acoustic shows I play it as myself.

During full band shows, I still play the character. I give whatever I feel would be the best representation in any given situation." Last year's laughs Just when you thought the year-end, best-of frenzy was over, we offer you one more list: the best comedy albums of 2007. Comedy albums have been resurgent for roughly the past half decade, and last year was particularly good, es (jl-TST SUITWh-rrow Dr. M. TNfcr I Fri, Jan 11 8pm 41linMMA DVD HI Ww farewell concert Weds.

Jan 16 SomSIOOOwi GONZALEZ THE FORT APACHE BAND sTllrui.JanU fSjLENI STERN Fri-Sat. Jan 18-19 8pm Get the extras you deserve. bgaxtras.com ZEIie Boston tUMobe "COMANCHE MOON" Continued from Page Dl es by her husband, who's captive to a Mexican bandit during much of "Comanche Moon," she seduces the young men of Austin, Texas, them, then spits them out like cherry pits. In the General Store, testing whips she plans to employ on her slaves, humming at an unseemly volume, she is a spectacle of absurdly broad gestures. For the first hour of "Comanche Moon," which premieres Sunday at 9 p.m.

on Channel 4, it looks as though the three-part miniseries might be a fabulous botch, a smorgasbord of bad acting and Western-movie stereotypes that's awesome in its awful-ness. But gradually, the miniseries settles into a more mediocre middle ground that is merely tedious, simplistic, and disjointed, like a six-hour episode of Troop" without Larry Storch. The only decent thing: Steve Zahn, who finds the right pitch between comedy and lonesomeness as hard-drinking Ranger Gus McCrae. When he tells Linda Cardellini's Clara, "You're the only woman who's ever really had my heart" in part 3, it's more evocative than it should be thanks to Zahn's touch. If only he hadn't paid a visit to Inez Scull's parlor (or, as Griffiths puts it, her during a visit home to Aus fulfil I HH "Wasserstein's 1 JmlU.

i Linda Cardellini as Clara, the love interest of Steve Zahn's Texas Ranger Gus McCrae. former miniseries is as grand as ramble across the terrain with Comanche characters Buffalo the latter is not. their Rangers to protect the fron- Hump (Wes Studi), his son Blue And while Zahn manages to be tier from Comanche attack, peri- Duck (Adam Beach), and horse both an individual and a man who odically assisted by the Kickapoo thief Kicking Wolf (Jonathan Joss) could grow into Duvall's Gus, Karl tracker Famous Shoes (David Mid- come into and out of focus with lit-Urban makes Call into a bland dis- thunder), who delivers his geo- tie point as the years pass, tillation of Jones, all stiffness and graphical news reports with an al- Meanwhile, the action repeat-grim superiority. The two men most laughable absence of affect, edly returns to the Austin women wittiest and wisest." Hollywood Reporter (mom 4 by Wendy Wasserstein Directed bv Richard Seer Celebrity Series of Boston THIS SUNDAY! Golden Dragon 3: Acrobats BosioNnKflini "Good old-fashioned rmle-daule of amazement J1 alt the way to the back That's Dallas Morning News Sponsored'11' NOW THRU FEB. 3 B.U.

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