- Forum Clout
- 45,359
I gotta clear up a few tings. Allow The DMAN to cure you of your ignorance.
If you hate Fred, go watch any skit with him on the Channel 9 show, I guarantee you will change your opinion. He was an excellent performer when he had an original character to play. Fred is also more likeable once you understand that he was responsible for so much of the "voice" of the show's humor in the early days. The shift in tone of Stern Show was because it became more about Howard babbling and less of a 'brand' for comedy.
Fred is good at the sound drops. He hits them multiple times, but that's what it's for. He doesn't spam them, he does them just enough and usually at the right spot. And he's quick with the buttons. He would have a relevant sound ready when some topic came up randomly. And his sound spamming was good to drown out Eric The Midget to infuriate him. When I see people crying about Fred's sounds, I just picture them being Eric The Midget wigging out and it makes me smirk.
Fred's responsibilities on the show have included
- Writing jokes for bits (which he was great at, he and Jackie were the backbone of Stuttering John's gimmick)
- Playing characters in bits (Especially on the TV shows, Fred coulda been a fawking Actor, he was truly great at this, especially playing the Nazi Kurt Waldheim Jr which was fucking fantastic, I highly recommend finding any skits with this character. Even this one from YEARS later was good.)
- Hitting the buttons, which as I said, he does masterfully.
- Doing dopey voice impressions that weren't good at all, but added to the aura of the guest being "piled on" and bullied, which made them more defensive.
- Queuing up tapes/files for bumpers, sound beds, ads, live reads, etc. Literally everything on the broadcast is engineered through Fred's board. Howard controlled the mic levels and could trigger audio clips, but Fred was the board-op. Fred was doing it since the 70's so there's almost never been an amateurish error like XM 202 would have constantly.
Annoying shit Fred would do:
- Always side with Artie, no matter what happened he would take up for Artie and find a way to explain why everyone else was wrong and Artie was right. Biggest enabler and most gullible fuck out of everyone. Unless he was just doing a bit to see how low they could get Artie to go (kinda like how people on here will Ribs both side of an argument to give them both fake confidence that they're winning.)
- Trying to outdo Billy West with his own terrible impersonations that sounded nothing like the person. His Jackie the Jokeman voice was awful. However, I do his terrible Steve Grillo voice constantly. "I wanna begged padaydo. One begged padaydo please. Dob chelve ligguh." And his Stuttering John was decent. The Jackie was infuriating though because Billy West did it perfectly by comparison.
- Random outbursts of autistic rage about weird shit. You would see Fred get insulted by Howard over his work, which would probably crush any normal person, but Fred would brush it off. However, Howard would make a little comment about some meaningless little thing Fred does, and he would go absolutely insane and not realize how stupid he looked sperging about it.
Fred's role in the show has been diminished since the late 90's... Originally he was one of the main voices/creators with Howard. It was a collaboration that Jackie, Fred, Howard, and even Robin were able to contribute to, because Howard had so many projects going on across different mediums. Post-1997 when Private Parts bombed, Howard mostly only did the radio show, and they stopped doing 'written' bits altogether. So Fred just became a background character.
Howard always uses Fred as a punching bag, or as an example of what a perfect white man would look like. "Fred works out, he's a boxer. He look hot." Does he?
If you hate Fred, go watch any skit with him on the Channel 9 show, I guarantee you will change your opinion. He was an excellent performer when he had an original character to play. Fred is also more likeable once you understand that he was responsible for so much of the "voice" of the show's humor in the early days. The shift in tone of Stern Show was because it became more about Howard babbling and less of a 'brand' for comedy.
Fred is good at the sound drops. He hits them multiple times, but that's what it's for. He doesn't spam them, he does them just enough and usually at the right spot. And he's quick with the buttons. He would have a relevant sound ready when some topic came up randomly. And his sound spamming was good to drown out Eric The Midget to infuriate him. When I see people crying about Fred's sounds, I just picture them being Eric The Midget wigging out and it makes me smirk.
Fred's responsibilities on the show have included
- Writing jokes for bits (which he was great at, he and Jackie were the backbone of Stuttering John's gimmick)
- Playing characters in bits (Especially on the TV shows, Fred coulda been a fawking Actor, he was truly great at this, especially playing the Nazi Kurt Waldheim Jr which was fucking fantastic, I highly recommend finding any skits with this character. Even this one from YEARS later was good.)
- Hitting the buttons, which as I said, he does masterfully.
- Doing dopey voice impressions that weren't good at all, but added to the aura of the guest being "piled on" and bullied, which made them more defensive.
- Queuing up tapes/files for bumpers, sound beds, ads, live reads, etc. Literally everything on the broadcast is engineered through Fred's board. Howard controlled the mic levels and could trigger audio clips, but Fred was the board-op. Fred was doing it since the 70's so there's almost never been an amateurish error like XM 202 would have constantly.
Annoying shit Fred would do:
- Always side with Artie, no matter what happened he would take up for Artie and find a way to explain why everyone else was wrong and Artie was right. Biggest enabler and most gullible fuck out of everyone. Unless he was just doing a bit to see how low they could get Artie to go (kinda like how people on here will Ribs both side of an argument to give them both fake confidence that they're winning.)
- Trying to outdo Billy West with his own terrible impersonations that sounded nothing like the person. His Jackie the Jokeman voice was awful. However, I do his terrible Steve Grillo voice constantly. "I wanna begged padaydo. One begged padaydo please. Dob chelve ligguh." And his Stuttering John was decent. The Jackie was infuriating though because Billy West did it perfectly by comparison.
- Random outbursts of autistic rage about weird shit. You would see Fred get insulted by Howard over his work, which would probably crush any normal person, but Fred would brush it off. However, Howard would make a little comment about some meaningless little thing Fred does, and he would go absolutely insane and not realize how stupid he looked sperging about it.
Fred's role in the show has been diminished since the late 90's... Originally he was one of the main voices/creators with Howard. It was a collaboration that Jackie, Fred, Howard, and even Robin were able to contribute to, because Howard had so many projects going on across different mediums. Post-1997 when Private Parts bombed, Howard mostly only did the radio show, and they stopped doing 'written' bits altogether. So Fred just became a background character.
Howard always uses Fred as a punching bag, or as an example of what a perfect white man would look like. "Fred works out, he's a boxer. He look hot." Does he?
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