Musical History Tour: Jimmy Fallon - The Bathroom Wall (2002)

"(I Can't Play) Basketball" by Jimmy Fallon

The only person to really benefit from the Tonight Show's Leno/Conan/Leno hosting shuffle was Jimmy Fallon. After a six-year stint as one of SNL's most popular cast members and a misguided turn as a film star, Jimmy Fallon fell into Conan's open seat on Late Night and thus became the natural heir to the Tonight Show desk. (Unlike for Letterman and Conan, Fallon's Late Night tenure felt more like on the job training for future, bigger stakes.) Leno lasted four more years before retiring. Jimmy took over as host of The Tonight Show on February 17, 2014 and has been behind the desk since. Before he was on TV, Jimmy Fallon was a stand up comic. While he was on TV, he released his first comedy album The Bathroom Wall in 2002 on DreamWorks Records.

Jimmy Fallon's hefty bag of impressions impressed Lorne Michaels enough to hire him for SNL where he was a valuable utility player: good for celebrity lampoons and silly-voiced bits. His bag also includes musical impressions; he can break out a guitar and a convincing Dave Matthews yowl. So, the album is naturally designed around this skillset—however far that will carry—and is made up half of musical genre parodies and half of his pre-SNL stand up material. The anchoring routine is also divided into halves. The first half is a run of impressions of celebrities vying to be the spokesman for Troll Productions Inc, makers of Troll Dolls. The second is a run of musical parodies of bands vying to write a jingle for Troll Productions Inc. Robin Williams, Jerry Seinfeld, Gilbert Gottfried, then U2, the 4 Non Blondes, R.E.M. et al switch in at breakneck speed, inspiring the awe of recognition. and leave before any one voice or song gets stale and before the audience catches on that the bit is stupid and bereft of actual jokes.

Like any musical parody album, the songs jump through a variety of genres and "parodies" them by contrasting expected lyrical content with actual lyrical content. What if a punk band sang about a snowball fight? What if the Beastie Boys couldn't hoop? What if Prince was an "Idiot Boyfriend"? The characters in these songs are all the same pathetic white boys and the jokes detail exactly how pathetic. Mark Ronson and Justin Stanley handle the production to at least give the songs a professional sheen that helps sell the parodies. But they weren't in the room for the worst musical bit on the album, the closer. A live bit reverse engineered to show off Jimmy's ability to sing off key...I mean, sing popular songs in a way that is vaguely familiar to the originals. The conceit: you can play MC Hammer's "Hammertime" under any 80s pop song. Sure, you can do that, but it doesn't work. It's also not a joke. Good crowd work, I guess.

Back to the stand up material because Jimmy Fallon is more than just impressions though impressions sneak in anyway (see the unfortunate "Chris Rock Was My RA" bit.) The material is all college jokes—roommates, community showers, mini fridges, etc.—and probably been the filler to his routine for nearly ten years at this point (and definitely five years since he was performing the set a year before joining SNL.) But college jokes are timeless especially when delivered to college audiences. On the recording, the college kids are slightly drunk and very generous and unwittingly give voice to the flaw running through Jimmy's whole routine. Impressions and jokes are greeted alike with cheers, not laughs. But Jimmy's a nice guy and the audience wants to have a good time with him and wants him to succeed. So does Lorne, so do NBC executives, and so do his agents. Turns out, doing only one thing well can take you pretty far.

Here is the discography surrounding Jimmy Fallon's debut album:

The Concert for New York City (To Benefit the Robin Hood Relief Fund) (2001 compilation song)

MTV TRL Christmas (2001 compilation song)

The Bathroom Wall

Hammertime (2002 promo single)

Idiot Boyfriend (2002 promo single)

Selections from The Bathroom Wall (2002 EP)

Jimmy Fallon Stand Up