The Henry Rollins Show

It recently came to my attention that Henry Rollins has a talk show on the Independent Film Channel. I watched it for the first time last night, and it was . . . odd.

I know that Henry Rollins is described as a "spoken word artist," but I mostly know him as the lead singer of Black Flag and the Rollins Band and as a figure from the 80s DC punk music scene. To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what a spoken word artist is. Is it just someone who talks but is not necessarily funny? If so, that pretty much described the first part of the show, which consisted of him talking about corporations or advertising or something while the camera moved around to different "arty" angles.

The next segment was the "celebrity interview" segment. Unfortunately, the celebrity in question was Adam Carolla, whose claim to fame is a mystery to me. This was actually not too bad -- it was rather long (about 10 minutes) and it didn't seem rehearsed or like he was just there to plug some new project -- even if it did rest on the fundamentally unsound premise that Adam Carolla is an "artist." I think that with a more interesting guest, this format would be great. There was sort of an odd vibe to it though, because the lighting was really bright and Henry was unnaturally smiley.

Then there was a little cartoon consisting of Henry talking about how all he does is work and he has no friends except his agent's two little kids, one of whom is in the habit of punching him in his, um, private parts. That was the strange part.

Then Dashboard Confessional sang a song, which was quite good.

It's nice to see someone try something different with a talk show, in this case longer form interviews and no studio audience, but the final product had a weird amateurish air to it. That being said, he has some interesting guests coming up -- like Dinosaur Jr., Peaches, and Thom Yorke -- so I'll probably check it out again.