I knew it was inevitable even while I dreaded it…with the release this week of the Prairie Home Companion film, the Internet OTR Digest would contain reviews of the film, and suggestions that everyone interested in OTR should run out and see it. I haven’t, and won’t, so all of my comments here deal specifically with the contemporary radio program and not the Robert Altman film.

What the heck does PHC have to do with OTR?

Understand, I’m not picking on anyone who finds this program mildly entertaining, although I will never be able to understand why. But it annoys me no end when people assume that, because it is one of the few “live” programs on the air, that it somehow has something to do with Old-Time Radio. It doesn’t. Not at all.

First off, I find Garrison Keillor to be about half as clever as he thinks he is. His writing is meandering and pointless, more pretense than prose - those who compare him to Paul Rhymer or Lauck and Goff insult the past. And while Keillor has an acceptable speaking voice, every time he begins to sing I want to gnaw off my leg to escape. I am not a fan of bluegrass or country music (I enjoy true folk music, but the sound of a pedal steel guitar with banjo is worse than fingernails on a chalkboard), and the whole “dramedy” thing (this outfit wouldn’t know how to perform a real piece of dramatic or even comedic audio theater) with amateur actors and terrible scripts gives me a headache.

Other than that, though, I suppose it’s ok.
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