I dunno your age or background, but FWIW I feel like his shtick made a lot more sense in the context of early 90s Canadian media.
The zeitgeist was unpretentious, goofy, "slack", earnest-but-also-ironically-detached. So Gen X, but also MuchMusic in 1993 was a lot more like MTV in 1983, except as run by terminally uncool Midwesterners - it almost had the low-budget energy of public access. Weird Al (who has a similar shtick, now that I think about it) would take over the channel over the holidays, and they had an annual New Years tradition where they'd chuck a Christmas tree off the roof of their studio. One of their hosts was a foul-mouthed sock puppet. Growing up in Toronto, for a time it felt an awful lot like the biggest song in the world was "If I Had $1000000" by the Barenaked Ladies.
Nardwuar fit right in, in that media environment - not to say he wasn't sui generis, even then! But I can understand that, divorced of that context, he might just seem like a weirdo.
It did seem like the 90s were a bit more jovial of a time, and people who grew up during it identify nostalgically with the dolls and merch and sillyness of it all. I guess I never thought otherwise, Nardwuar's always been intuitively compelling to me, because I do think people tend to not let themselves feel vulnerable comedically, particularly in Vancouver, but I have heard of some locals not liking his thing.
Oh man, how’d I forget about the Christmas tree and Ed. You just hit me with the 90s so hard.
I used to watch LOUD religiously and I imagine I thought that made me pretty hardcore. I knew about slipknot before they were cool (I probably thought)!
I came to Canada in the late 90s, entered my tween/teen years around 9/11 and I saw the general tone of [D|V]Js really shift into weird territory as I got older. I also recall watching the Zone when I was 10 and then seeing it on TV about 5 years later when a friend's younger brother put it on while I was over. Was really shocked to see what I felt as really pandering and patronizing behaviour by the hosts where Phil Guerrero and Paul (can't remember his surname) were really down to earth and laid back. There was some measure, at least to my young, potentially overly naive eyes, of sincerity from TV hosts that I never really saw again.
I loved MuchMusic, which is really weird considering I grew up in Texas. For some reason our local cable company didn't have MTV, and so that meant that so much of my adolescence was influenced by TV from Canada.
The zeitgeist was unpretentious, goofy, "slack", earnest-but-also-ironically-detached. So Gen X, but also MuchMusic in 1993 was a lot more like MTV in 1983, except as run by terminally uncool Midwesterners - it almost had the low-budget energy of public access. Weird Al (who has a similar shtick, now that I think about it) would take over the channel over the holidays, and they had an annual New Years tradition where they'd chuck a Christmas tree off the roof of their studio. One of their hosts was a foul-mouthed sock puppet. Growing up in Toronto, for a time it felt an awful lot like the biggest song in the world was "If I Had $1000000" by the Barenaked Ladies.
Nardwuar fit right in, in that media environment - not to say he wasn't sui generis, even then! But I can understand that, divorced of that context, he might just seem like a weirdo.