Geoff Berner/Funny

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
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As his entire studio discography and live performances are saturated with Funny, this list has been severely condensed to prevent it from surpassing On the Origin of Species in length.

  • "Phoney Drawl [dead link]", a Take That against colleague Fred Eaglesmith and his supposedly fake rural accent.
  • From beginning to end, How to Be an Accordion Player, Berner's instructional booklet and an essential literary introduction to the fine art of being an accordion player, is this.
  • "Song to Reconcile", easily fulfilling your black humor and (quite literally) Dead Baby Comedy quota for the day, gives us this gem:

"Well, you don't have to love each other, but the band requests that all killing be suspended for the duration of the event. Let's pray to God the human urge to have a good meal, get fucked up and fuck someone hot is stronger than the human urge for revenge. Then maybe we'll get them together... Maybe they'll piece it together. I'm just the accordion player, so I. Don't. Know." (cha-cha-cha)

  • Geoff and Diona's rendition of John Prine's classic country duet "In Spite of Ourselves" from Live in Oslo is as funny as it is oddly heartwarming.
  • "Don't Play Cards for Money with Corby Lund" is Geoff's warning to whomever would challenge his artistic colleague Corb Lund to a game of poker. You will lose.
  • "The True Enemy", in which Berner claims that boredom is the ultimate cause of all suffering and war in the world, and goes on to list causes of boredom such as... stories with Happy Endings, self-help booklets and songs about cars.
  • Mr. Berner's newsletter is the decidedly most hilarious sporadically published anecdotal tour calendar Canadian klezmer accordionists can provide, bar none.
  • Berner's guest appearances in the official Kaizers Orchestra auto-biography arguably turns him into an Ensemble Darkhorse.
  • Terror of Tiny Town also warrants a mention. We have "...'Cause I'm Worth It", a frenetic, slurred Motor Mouth diatribe on the makeup industry (maybe); "Standard Fallout Waltz", in which he lists increasingly pathetic womanly standards to which he has sunk; and "Holes in the Bible" about over-the-top biblical stories that "didn't make it to print," such as a woman who had a thousand children and the natural physical consequences thereof. And these are just the prime examples, mind you.