Don’t tell The Lonely Island, but there’s another comic album out this month, and it’s just as delightfully ridiculous — albeit a lot less raunchy and a lot more heimishe.
Rick Moranis might not be the first actor you’d think would venture into the world of jokey music. In fact, it’s likely you would not think of him at all, seeing how he retired from acting in the ’90s. But on Tuesday, the star of classics such as “Spaceballs,” “Parenthood” and “Little Shop Of Horrors” released “My Mother’s Brisket & Other Love Songs,” a collection of tunes in which he seriously owns his Jewish heritage.
In addition to the title song, a ballad about his favorite Shabbos dish, other tracks have names like “Pu-Pu-Pu,” “Live Blogging the Himmel Family Bris” and “Belated Haftorah.”
“In the past if I were to have come up with stuff like this, this filter would have been on it,” Moranis told The New York Times, referring back to his days writing for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. “We would come up with something, and one of us would say, ‘No, no, no, it’s too Jewish. Can’t do it; it’s too Jewish. This time, because I was essentially going to make this record on my own, I could just say, ‘The hell with it.’ ”
This might seem like an odd career choice, but not so much when you consider his last project. In 2005, Moranis, who quit acting to spend more time with his family after his wife’s death, came out with “The Agoraphobic Cowboy,” a humorous country album that was nominated for a Grammy.
We hope he has the same mazel this time around.
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