Rolling Stand-Up Comedy 2012

i can't imagine bootlegs of concerts or standup having much reach beyond diehard music or comedy fans - presumably the majority of the audience for both is not ever going to hear this stuff early

― Mordy, Friday, 10 August 2012 22:05 (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it depends what the concern is, though; there's one thing in which artists are protective of their work & so are sensitive to inchoate versions of it existing or circulating, lest it reflect poorly or impinge on future sales or w/e; but then there's the other which is maybe more specific to stand up comedy which is that the success of the work is contingent on it having some space to breathe? like rock says:

You can’t imagine how rough it was and how unfunny and how sexist or racist it might have seemed. “Niggas vs. Black People” probably took me six months to get that thing right. You know how racist that thing was a week in? That’s not to be seen by anybody.

& like - without getting into a whole other thing about how we need comedians to understand our times &c&c - does make it seem awkward, whether people have enough time/space to work through their process. i don't think the first thing is hugely problematic but the possibility of losing your testing grounds or holding back must be p big changes for comics.

Basically since 2006 if you play a new song live, anyone who has any interest in hearing it has heard a shittily-recorded version of it.

is this really a problem though? a studio recording is a much different object than a bootleg live recording, and most people will want to hear the 'real' version when it comes to music. i've also never heard someone say "i've heard that song before, it's ruined now."

but if you know the joke already...

Well a lot of musicians think a lot about the moment when someone listens to their new album for the first time and all the curveballs they'll encounter; when people started talking about how the new Sufjan had vocoder on it before the album was even released, I couldn't help but wonder how I would have reacted if nobody had told me. I agree it's a much smaller deal; what kind of audience goes to see a comedian, hoping for old jokes?

I guess it's more akin to a bunch of unedited first takes for a new Avengers movie hitting Youtube or whatever

what kind of audience goes to see a comedian, hoping for old jokes?

Steve Martin's old audiences

Gallagher fans

is this really a problem though? a studio recording is a much different object than a bootleg live recording, and most people will want to hear the 'real' version when it comes to music. i've also never heard someone say "i've heard that song before, it's ruined now."

it's a drag in a lot of ways, and most musicians I know now hold back new stuff now. it's not that it's "ruined" - it's that there was this crackle of excitement over an album worth of material that hardly anybody except the hardest of the hardcore would have known vs. the first time you play a new song, it goes into the news cycle. both this & the comedians' complaint is kind of double edged, since you're not getting bootlegged/youtubed unless you're already successful; this is more of a challenge than a huge downer. but at the same time, your early goes at a song that's still getting its legs under it will all be preserved on youtube forever; you don't really get room to try shit out like you used to.

idk I rankle at the idea that this is "worse" for comedians. anybody whose work used to develop in the live arena enjoyed that "I'm in Topeka, what the hell, let me just try this out for these thirty people and see how they like it" feeling - that's gone now. you're not in Topeka, ever. you're always everywhere.

The basic appreciation of music is very different than that of comedy. Laughter is often an involuntary action, and most jokes won't coax it out of a person more than once. You can listen to songs over and over, though, and find something new each time. Comedy is just like a conversation, and if the person doing the talking is saying the same things over and over again, you want to get out quick.

*Genuine laughter is always an involuntary action

yeah aero, you're on your own on this one

though people that upload shaky YouTubes of NOEN INDIAN PLAY NEW SONG NEW NEW YES FUCK are just as dogshit worthless turd people as people chilling in the back of a Gilbert Gottfried show taping it.

The basic appreciation of music is very different than that of comedy. Laughter is often an involuntary action, and most jokes won't coax it out of a person more than once. You can listen to songs over and over, though, and find something new each time.

this is true - music has a longer shelf life than comedy. still, most musicians would strongly prefer that the way most people hear a new song is a recording through a camera phone. most would strongly, strongly prefer that the first time people hear new material, it's either 1) live, where even if the house sound is shitty and your performance isn't aces, you have the benefit of the power of live performance or 2) the version they busted ass on in the studio & in mix to get exactly right. at present, if you choose to play a new song live, you're ensuring that a terrible sounding version of it will be your world premiere. the safer choice is to not play new material until it's been released, which is what almost everybody I know now does, and which didn't used to be the case.

lol

still, most musicians would strongly prefer that the way most people hear a new song isnot be a recording through a camera phone.

I'm with Johnny here; I agree that it's kind of shitty as a fan to get all excited for, say, a new Underworld album, only to see the tracklisting and realize "wait, I've heard 7 of these 9 songs before", on the other hand, it's really cool to have different versions of these tunes that often go in different directions. For the musicians, yeah realizing that anything new is going to be on YouTube does limit your flexibility a bit, but on the other hand I would imagine you're building a lot more hype this way if the new stuff is actually good.

on the other hand, it's really cool to have different versions of these tunes that often go in different directions.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dHZ-oDf4Gqk/ToXwZlr--lI/AAAAAAAAFac/i3yo_WWCqcw/s1600/trey_anastasio_001_010507.jpg

By flexibility I really mean "control over how others are consuming your work".

yeah in fairness this year we in aerosmith were like "fuck it, these new songs are better than anything we've ever written & they're what we want to play" so we just toured 'em all & gave fair warning via the internet, if you don't wanna already know the songs backwards & forwards when the album comes out then don't burn yourself out on live recordings because we feel like touring the songs. also if an audience sings along with an unreleased song, that fucking rules, but if somebody stomps on the punchline of your new joke to show you he's already heard it on YouTube, that would make you murderously angry

the element of surprise/novelty is just way more critical in comedy, especially with the dominant "just a guy talkin baout stuff" framework. no one's gonna want to hear jokes/riffs/bits they've already heard and laughed at, for the most part. pre-exposure directly impacts the audience's reaction and by extension the performer and the material's marketability.

you guys have completely wandered away from the point of stand-ups only FINDING the jokes by working on them fifty times in front of an audience, not the audience hearing the finished joke twice btw

the comedy gig i go to in london every month is always rough and ready, works in progress and never has people recording it, nobody seems to care. in fact the comedians podcast it themselves (haven't heard it, don't know how much editing / polishing goes on).

that said, one week a bloke was sat in the front row with a pen and paper (he was a reviewer) and the comedian called him out about it, thought he was stealing jokes.

it's a very indie club though, none of them are going to be on mock the week anytime soon...

unrelated: saw Jon Glaser do some standup yesterday, I'd never seen him - holy fuck he was so good. He did this whole bit where he pretended to be a dream-median - a comedian who does comedy based on dreams. He spent 10 minutes telling the audience about a dream he had in great detail (ie kinda boring like the way anyone's dreams are), and then adding a dorky one liner on the end. It was great!

And Dave Koechner, who I dont normally like, was fking great too. He has a great bit about Neil Young's "After the Gold Rush" that killed

joke stealing is another issue with stand-up being recorded. Lee Hurst (mostly unfunny English guy who used to be a regular panel-show comedian) was once fined for smashing an audience member's phone up. His problem was with his stuff being recorded then being used by other comedians on TV, to an extent that he was being accused of stealing his own material.

was the audience member calling other comedians to tell them about his jokes?

Punter said he was sending a text, Hurst said the punter was filming him and thought he was probably a writer who sold jokes to famous TV people.

John Glaser was one of the best stand up sets I ever saw

I am a huge fan now

smdh at people who can't enjoy a comedian tell a joke they've heard before.

That said I really enjoy going to new-material nights like Old Rope, where a lot of the vibe is from comedians reacting to how well the (often unfinished) jokes go down.

Why yes, I am a massive Stewart Lee fan, why do you ask?

Also yeah snobbish but one do/don't like line that I'll draw is that I like comedians where it is possible for a joke to be unfinished. Not to get too beret/easel/paintbrush/thumb/squint, but the idea that the joke isn't actually the first thing that comes into your head.

I've laughed at many routines multiple times, it just takes some time. Like when I'm hearing a great album, I just want to replay it every single day until I'm sick of it. Even with the best comedy routines it takes 6 months to a year before I've "forgotten" enough of it that it can be funny again. Like that's the thing with some of Mitch Hedburg's jokes, they're so damn memorable and get so lodged in your brain that it's hard to really laugh at them more than two or three times.

> it's a very indie club though, none of them are going to be on mock the week anytime soon...

ha, i said this and then last night one of the regulars, Thom Tuck, was on Review Show with his edinburgh show where he stars alongside Phill Jupitus and Jo Caulfield. (reviews not that great tbh)

Just got home from a show of Competitive Erotic Fan Fiction readings tonight, where Kyle Kinane wrote and read a piece based on the suggestion from my girlfriend, "The Facts of Life."

Could not stop laughing, and at certain points, could not laugh enough to get the air out.

This was the promo interview for it:

http://blogtown.portlandmercury.com/BlogtownPDX/archives/2012/08/17/qanda-with-competitive-erotic-fan-fiction-creator-bryan-cookplus-a-ticket-giveaway

wow that's a genius idea

It got real AIDS-y, real fast

May have been mentioned upthread, but Todd Barry has a new disc out and it's great.

I love Barry

Heyyyyy, thanks for the newwwws, buuuuddy.

haha

Hugh Grant and 10 friends turned away from Eddie Pepitone's show at the Edinburgh Fringe for not carrying ID; Pepitone's promoter then also kicked out when he tried to convince the bouncers.

(Earlier in the week, Pepitone was regularly drawing two punters and three or four comedians, but getting ferocious WOM.)

WOM?

'Word of mouth', I'd assume. Unless it was just a misspelled 'womb'...which makes slightly less sense in context, I'll grant you.

Man, from everything I've heard, it seems like Edinburgh Fringe really isn't that concerned with ingratiating itself to American comics.

Word of mouth.

His show's in the basement of a pub, and it's the pub's bouncers, so shouldn't be blamed on the Fringe organisers.

(But since they're already putting on thousands of shows across a month with performers from 50 countries around the world in different genres and media, I'm sure they aren't concerned with ingratiating themselves particularly with one genre of performer from one country.)

http://www.edfringe.com/uploads/event/leith-rules-golf_24214.jpg

Leith Rules Golf exhibition is less than 50 yards from the original Leith Links. A fantastic collection of over 300 golfing items from around 1790 to the 1930s, which was the most exciting period in golf development. We have a large selection of golfing prints, trophies and pre-1930 hickory golf clubs to purchase.

WTF, couldn't they have put Dane Cook on instead?

I don't mean to suggest that they should ingratiate themselves to American comics. Just that it is, by most accounts, a very very different scene than most American comics are used to working in, to the point where it seems almost actively detrimental to them doing what they do. No one's to blame, I just think it's a culture clash.

I was agreeing with you rly, but I think you can skip "American" and probably "comics" in the second sentence of that last post. It's an enormous arts festival that takes up every scrap of spare space in a small, crowded city for 25 days a year: very few performers or writers or exhibitors will be used to working in the same environment the other 340. (And certainly most British comics do it at a huge loss, which some might argue is actively detrimental to etc.)

But I'm just happy to have learned which 150 years were the most exciting period in golf development.

Dave Stone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0X-lz9egi0

we laughed a bunch at the new amy schumer comedy central standup

Yeah I laughed a fair amount at it. Wasn't really a fan but I got into it.

i kind of like her but it's weird how she and jeselnik are dating and have almost exactly the same style and delivery (i think jeselnik pulls it off a little better)

they broke up i think

I don't know how I missed this all these years, but Maria Bamford and Jim Gaffigan have an almost identical delivery.

Louis C.K. is making the Tig Notaro set from Largo available on his site: http://buy.louisck.net/news/about-tig-notaro

Greetings to the people and parts of people that are reading this. Hi. This is Louis. I'm a comedian and you bought a thing from me. Well, I'm writing to tell You that there is a new thing you can buy on my website louisck.com. It's an audio standup set by not me but another comedian named Tig Notaro. Why am I selling someone else's comedy on my website?

Well, Tig is a friend of mine and she is very funny. I love her voice on stage. One night I was performing at a club in LA called Largo. Tig was there. She was about to go on stage. I hadn't seen Tig in about a year and I said how are you? She replied "well I found out today that I have cancer in both breasts and that it has likely spread to my lymph nodes. My doctor says it looks real bad. ". She wasn't kidding. I said "uh. Jesus. Tig. Well. Do you... Have your family... Helping?". She said "well my mom was with me but a few weeks ago she fell down, hit her head and she died". She still wasn't kidding.

Now, I'm pretty stupid to begin with, and I sure didn't know what to say now. I opened my mouth and this came out. "jeez, Tig. I. Really value you. Highly.". She said "I value you highly too, Louie.". Then she held up a wad of note-paper in her hand and said "I'm gonna talk about all of it on stage now. It's probably going to be a mess". I said "wow". And with that, she went on stage.

I stood in the wings behind a leg of curtain, about 8 feet from her, and watched her tell a stunned audience "hi. I have cancer. Just found out today. I'm going to die soon". What followed was one of the greatest standup performances I ever saw. I can't really describe it but I was crying and laughing and listening like never in my life. Here was this small woman standing alone against death and simply reporting where her mind had been and what had happened and employing her gorgeously acute standup voice to her own death.

The show was an amazing example of what comedy can be. A way to visit your worst fears and laugh at them. Tig took us to a scary place and made us laugh there. Not by distracting us from the terror but by looking right at it and just turning to us and saying "wow. Right?". She proved that everything is funny. And has to be. And she could only do this by giving us her own death as an example. So generous.

After her set, I asked Mark Flanagan, the owner of Largo (great club, by the way) if he recorded the set. Largo is set up for excellent recordings. He said that he did.
A few days later, I wrote Tig and asked her if I could release this set on my site. I wanted people to hear what I saw. What we all saw that night. She agreed. The show is on sale for the same 5 dollars I charge for my stuff. I'm only keeping 1. She gets the other 4. Tig has decided to give some of that to cancer research.

Tig, by the way, has since undergone a double mastectomy. She is doing well. Her doctors say her chances of survival are excellent. So she went there and came back. Her report from the frontlines of life and death are here for you to... Enjoy.

Please go to my site louisck.com and buy her show. You can buy it HERE.
Thank you. Have a terrific afternoon.

Louis C.K.