Funny And Nice

Eugene Mirman at the Paradise in March

A sidebar to Aspect I of Lucas Lewis’s series on local comedy. Lewis will be recording a set Friday at The Gas at Fantastic Scott. – Nick

By Lucas Lewis

JAMAICA PLAIN — On a warm evening in late April, a crowd assembles in the living area of the Whitehaus, a 3-story Victorian in Jamaica Plain that has been placing on rock exhibits in its basement, and in this specific parlor, for the final number of years.

Only on this occasion, music is simply the sideshow: The main act is the Union Square Round Table (unionsquareroundtable.com), a comedic assortment show that started out in Somerville and is typically held at PA’s Lounge in the show’s eponymous square the final Friday of each month.

PA’s accidentally double-booked this month, so the show moved to Somerville’s progressive counterpart on the other side of the river, JP. It turns out to be a fortuitous move. The area is packed with very first-timers, and it is a younger crowd than the USRT usually attracts. Rockers. Hipsters. Bohemians. Other JP stereotypes seemingly come to life.

Keira Horowitz, who has been involved with the show for most of its 5 years, is encouraged by the turnout. Before she goes onstage to speak about her private history of Jamaica Plain, she says the group will probably attempt other locales, too.

Eugene Mirman, a successful comedian (see “The Studio” and “Onward”), former Somervillian and buddy of a number of of the group’s founding members, utilised to carry out at the show with some regularity, and Horowitz confesses that till not long ago, she assumed he was their main draw. Tonight’s show is evidence to the contrary.

In some ways, the USRT is the type of cerebral, multimedia assortment show you may anticipate from an educated collective of 20- and 30-somethings: sensible (if obscure) impressions, oddball videos, faux professorial lectures aided by PowerPoint and an overhead projector.

But then there are unexpected wrinkles, too, like the married musical duo Cotton Candy performing flawless renditions of actual commercial jingles from years past, or the chocolate pudding cooked in the kitchen more than the course of the show and served at the end by the mustachioed Round Table knight TD Sidell.

As opposed to numerous of the comedy exhibits around town, none of the featured players seemed to be attempting to “make it” in comedy.

“The Union Square Round Table is seven-or-so people who are largely embarrassed by comedy but attempt to do it anyway,” USRT member Chris Braiotta writes in an e mail. “We try to steer clear of a lot of things, but we specially attempt to avoid becoming too significantly like dudes. We are all millionaires, which takes a lot of pressure off.”

Residence exhibits (at times referred to as “basement shows,” for apparent good reasons) have been a staple of the underground music scene for years, and the Whitehaus is 1 of the greatest acknowledged and longest-operating establishments in the city in this regard. Its proprietors attempt not to publicize the exact location lest they draw the ire of the police — “ask a punk” is the classic, though now somewhat ironically invoked, phrase affixed to flyers exactly where an address may well otherwise be printed.

There appears little likelihood of the cops coming tonight individuals are sitting cross-legged on the floor.

Basement comedy exhibits are much less common, although this hardly an isolated incident. For a time, the comedian Jenny Zigrino and her housemates held the King Cobra Comedy Evening not far from right here on Greenough Street — in their living space.

Like “indie rock,” “indie” or “alternative comedy” are rather amorphous terms that encapsulate a broad range of styles. Substitute comedy is the much more dated of the two, beginning with comedians like Janeane Garofalo and now synonymous with comics like Patton Oswalt.

“Alternative comedy wasn’t genuinely a distinct style, there was just a sincerity and an energy to what people were performing, and it wasn’t attempting to locate the lowest common denominator to get on Television,” says Rick Jenkins of its origins, which mirrored the development of his club, The Comedy Studio. “Ironically, all these people ended up on Tv since they were so great and special and different.”

It might not have a clear definition, but it can nonetheless be valuable shorthand, specifically when it comes to describing the kinds of comedy that are on the rise in Boston. According to comedy writer Nick Zaino III, Oswalt has described alternative comedy as merely what takes place when neither the performer nor audience have a preconceived notion of what standup comedy really should be.

Sometimes it indicates a comedian whose material is unorthodox or pushes the envelope. Occasionally it’s as easy as performing a standup show in a rock club.

“I feel at one point it, like music, it started out as a term that meant as an choice to mainstream,” says Mirman. “But the truth is comedy clubs are a creation of the 70′s or 80′s. Most of the places I do stuff (now) have music or trivia.”

And at times they are just a living area.

The Boston Comedy Weblog

Guest Blogger Lucas Lewis

Beginning nowadays, I’m declaring this “Lucas Lewis Week” on the Boston Comedy Weblog. Why? Simply because Lewis is recording a set for the 1st time Friday at The Gas, he’s going to be leaving town shortly, and he’s written this fine, multi-portion piece on Boston Comedy. He’s gotten into very a couple of corners of this scene, and there is a lot to discover. He also interviews me. So in a really lazy way, I am posting something I stated, too. Lewis was not lazy, even though. And you’ll see the fruits of his efforts right now by means of Friday, which includes an extended Q&ampA with Mehran, who will be putting up Criscoteqhue two at Oberon Friday. Take pleasure in! — Nick
By Lucas Lewis

CAMBRIDGE — Rhys Thomas paces nervously in front of the Middle East Corner on Massachusetts Avenue in Central Square. The 22-year-old Beverly native and student at North Shore Community School is preparing to perform standup comedy in front of a crowd for the very first time, at the weekly Corner Comedy Open Mic, and he’s, well…

“I’m a wreck,” he says matter-of-factly.

Thomas has been taking a standup class at nearby ImprovBoston with Josh Gondelman (joshgondelman.com), a young but seasoned comic thought by numerous to be among the city’s best. Gondelman won Atlanta’s Laughing Skulls Comedy Festival last year, and in June he’ll record his 1st CD.

But Gondelman is also a preschool teacher who’s widely thought to be “Boston’s nicest comedian” — a persona he plays with on his site — and his soft-spoken demeanor is no doubt a comfort for fledgling comedians like Thomas.

The impetus for Thomas to really pick up a mic, even so, came as a outcome of one more show put on by tonight’s host, Rob Crean of Anderson Comedy.

“It’s been a thing I’ve usually enjoyed, but I never believed I could really do it,” Thomas says. “I went to see Rob’s show sort of by accident, ‘The Gas’ (a showcase that takes location each and every Friday Evening at Allston rock club Excellent Scott), and that’s the first time I ever saw regional comedy.”

Boston’s neighborhood standup comedy scene is experiencing a second renaissance, producing shows at the rate — if not the profit margin — that made it recognized as a comedy hub in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, when the likes of Denis Leary, Lenny Clark and Steven Wright patrolled the stage.

The Middle East Corner’s Tuesday evening show is just one particular of numerous comedy open mics about town Boston comedians regularly go on to seem on Comedy Central and, sometimes, the key network late night shows and choice shows are cropping up all around the city, from rock clubs in Allston to cramped living rooms in Jamaica Plain.

Not all of this is new, of course, but the manner, scope and character of these independent comedy ventures are exclusive, according to far more than a dozen comedians, club owners and journalists interviewed for this series.

Thomas aside, the cast of characters at the Corner Comedy Open Mic doesn’t appear to veer substantially from these comedians showcased elsewhere on Friday and Saturday nights. In this respect, it is similar to the other main comedy open mics around town: Sally O’Brien’s in Somerville’s Union Square (Monday), Grandma’s Basement in Fenway (Thursday), and The Banshee in Dorchester and Rosebud in Davis (Sunday).

You quickly start to see a lot of the exact same faces.

This is 1 of the issues that sets Boston apart — it really is tiny sufficient that there is a genuine sense of community. There are Facebook groups as properly as the Boston Comedy Softball League. Rather of stealing material, Boston comedians have a reputation for suggesting “tags,” or added punchlines, to 1 one more.

When Myq Kaplan, a finalist on the last season of Last Comic Standing, got started out in 2004, “I didn’t understand how welcoming and supportive and encouraging the Boston comedy scene was,” he says. Kaplan, who has released a comedy album (Vegan Mind Meld), now lives in New York — a place that, simply because of its size and scale, lacks the camaraderie of the Boston comedy scene.

“To me it was just extremely supporting,” adds Shane Mauss, who inside months of starting standup upon moving to Boston in 2004 was acquiring prime gigs and invaluable advice thanks to other comedians. A lot of that had to do with the truth that he was good, of course, but it really is a sentiment echoed by most of the comedians interviewed.

Possibly when Rhys Thomas conquers his nerves a small far more, he might discover the very same thing. In spite of getting petrified, he gamely delivered his material, which was based on the premise that he’s worried about men and women who are telepathic due to the fact he feels like his brain is a messy apartment. A line about there being “porn everywhere” got a laugh.

Ultimately, Thomas was pleased with how his first show went. Contacted a few months later, Thomas hadn’t carried out once more aside from the graduation show for the class he was taking. But he was resolved to transform that.

“I’m nonetheless terrified,” he says, “but in the past two weeks I have began writing out bits that I like, that I’m laughing at, as an alternative of just premises.”

Even with his somewhat peculiar, alternative brand of comedy, Thomas can expect to locate a warm reception.

The Boston Comedy Blog

Zach Sherwin’s MC Mr. Napkins The Album

Boston fans of MC Mr. Napkins, a.k.a. Zach Sherwin, have seemingly been waiting forever for his debut album. Sherwin already had enough hip-hop comedy in his repertoire to fill an album or two when he left Boston for Los Angeles in 2009. It finally happened when MC Mr. Napkins – The Album came out in November on Comedy Central Records. You can see the first couple of videos from the album over at Napkins’ page on Atom.com.

Sherwin was back in Boston playing his CD release party on New Year’s Day, and he’s at the Women In Comedy Festival tonight at ImprovBoston. I spoke with him by phone while he was on the road last week.

How has the first year in Los Angeles been? Is it basically what you expected?

Yeah, it was a fascinating year, man. A lot of really good stuff happened. First of all, it was so exciting to switch things up from Boston. I love Boston so much, and I’ve actually been really fortunate and gotten to go back a lot. This year especially. But I’d just been there for, like, twelve years, so to make such a huge move and be all the way across the country, it was great to do something that dramatic. So on just a very basic level, that was really good.

And in terms of career advancement, it was really an exciting year. I started setting up roots in the L.A. comedy community. My album finally came out. I had my first TV appearance. I did this talking head thing on E!, the E! Entertainment Network, not the club drug. I made a couple of music videos, the first legit productions I had made. I got accepted to the college conference. So it was a really cool year. A lot of really cool stuff happened.

How did you get involved with the Women In Comedy Festival?

You now, I’ve been doing all these shows on the East Coast and I’m around Boston a lot, a d I was hanging out backstage at IB with Michelle Barbera, and she was like, hey, if you’re going to be around during this time, you should come do the festival. And as it turns out, I have three college gigs on my books that weekend. I’m actually going to be doing a college show and then zipping off for my set on the Thursday night at the fest, which is going to be really fun.

That sounds like a whirlwind schedule.

Yeah, it’s going to be fun. And can I say this? Micah Sherman and I wrote a really funny song we’re going to be debuting at the Festival and I’m really excited to perform it.

What’s the gist of it?

It is a parody. This is our second parody of a 1990s hit urban music song. Our first one is a “Regulators” parody. This one is a parody of “This Is How We Do It” by Montel Jordan.

Is this something you’ve recorded or done a video for yet, or is it brand new?

At this point it’s just me and Micah. It’s been really fun. I’ve never collaborated with anybody like this. But Micah and I would just write a draft and then send it via e-mail to the other one, and the other guy would make a pass at revising it and send it back. We probably have five or six drafts back and forth over the space of a couple of weeks. It was really fun and I’m really excited to see how it goes. At this point it’s just going to be a live thing that we’ll get to three or four times over the course of the many shows that will be happening during that time.

Are you going to have time to visit your old haunts or see any of your friends while you’re here?

I don’t know, and I’m actually going to pop down to New York during part of it. Some of my best friends in the world – I should say, some of my best non-comedy friends in the world are people who reside in Massachusetts. And of course I suspend the requirements of living and normal lifing to see those people when I get a chance to see them. The great thing about it is, since I’ve been doing so much comedy in the past few years, my closest friends are other comedians, and hanging out at shows is a legit way to get to see those people. So coming back to Boston, it’s like the epicenter of my comfort bubble. It’s so warm and fuzzy to be back there. I look forward to it for weeks and weeks.

How was the Passim release show?

It was phenomenal. It was great. A bunch of comics did sets. People didn’t do other things so they could be there for that show and traveled from far and wide. I hope it becomes a yearly tradition. It’s always packed, and it’s a super-supportive crowd. That place is great. They have a terrific sound system.

For those unfamiliar with the story, why did it take so long for the album to finally get released? I know it had been mostly done before you even left for Los Angeles.

It was in production forever. I remember telling you about it when I found out about the deal, and that would have been summer of 2009. The release date was November 2010. Why did it take so long? I don’t know that there’s any one answer to that question. There were a few reasons. One is that, as opposed to just an album where a stand-up goes onstage with a mic, does three or four shows and then kind of supervises the editing but it’s mostly done by a sound editor, this was like a studio album. There was a lot of back-and-forth with my DJ. Even though it was already all recorded by the time I left for Las Angeles.

I actually did record it in the last days of my Boston residency. Even though we knew it would exist as of the summer of 2009, there was still a lot of work that needed to be done. So probably five months to get all the recording set up. There was a lot of pre-production that needed to be done with the music. And then recording was only about a week. From there, my DJ needed time to mix it all down. Working on my album was not his full-time job. Scheduling was crazy with that. There were a lot of parties – there was me and my DJ and my management and Comedy Central. I don’t know. But I would say it was only about a year from the announcement to knowing when the release date was. Boy was that not a concise answer.

You had some hurdles to clear with getting permission for music and such, right?

That was occurring at the same time all this stuff was going on. Starting early in 2009, my DJ and I started figuring out what the nuts and bolts of our arrangement were going to be. That took forever. We had a very lengthy process where we were all lawyered up and we were back-and-forthing percentage points and all that. It was complicated. I’m glad we did it, because now when things come up it’s very easy for us to figure out how it should fit.

How does that relationship work as far as writing? How much of what we hear onstage is you and how much is your DJ?

The beats are a hundred percent my DJ. Not a hundred percent… When I was in Boston, I would come in with ideas for melodies and he would craft beats in a tailor-made way to fit the melodies. But I haven’t replaced him with someone in California that I’m working with exclusively or anything. So while we’re doing it remotely, he’ll just send me batches of beats and I’ll pick out the ones that I like and write to them. And then I’ll do little crude arrangements of them in Garage Band and send them back to him and he’ll make a higher-quality version of it tailored to my arrangement. And then I’ll go on with that.

Is there anything on the album that people who knew you from Boston might now be quite so familiar with?

There’s stuff that I almost never perform. I’m thinking of stuff like “Flora Fauna.” And there’s two songs that I wrote after I had gotten to Los Angeles that I certainly performed in Boston numerous times. “Geography Trivia” and “F-Bomb” are both things that I wrote early in 2010. Those are live tracks. We didn’t record them in a studio, we just taped a live show in a great little comedy theatre in Santa Monica that I like to perform at. I definitely don’t have the material to record a second album or anything, but I’ve got a good start going.

Will we hear any of those news songs at the Women In Comedy Festival?

Absolutely. I hate performing old songs for people who have seen them before. It is so uncomfortable for me. I’m hoping to have a ton of new material.

In Los Angeles, are you feeling any pressure to perform traditional stand-up and not do the music as much?

Great question. I have been writing more traditional stand-up. For the E! celebrity zinger show that I did, that was just writing very straightforward… they gave me a list of fifty celebrity moments they wanted me to write one-liners about. There was zero hip-hop chops involved in doing that. Which was really fun to find out that I could do. It was fun to do that for the first time and get it on TV. That’s a cool way for that to go.

I don’t know that there’s any pressure to write more traditional stand-up, but I’m doing all these college shows, and they’re an hour long. And it’s just not acceptable from a performer or audience standpoint to just get up onstage and spew out an hour of hip-hop where I finish the song, say “thank you,” and then say, “DJ, drop the beat.” So I’ve been working on writing more jokes or stories or even just things to say between songs. And that’s been really great. I love having that hour playground of a college show where there aren’t really industry eyes on you. Those are really safe havens for me to play around with telling stories and doing crowd work. I don’t feel comfortable doing that in the comparatively exposure-[driven] world of Los Angeles. Writing stand-up is super gratifying, and knowing that I have the raps to go to, it’s just being able to do another thing, which I think as a performer you always want to welcome in.

How comfortable are you with that? It sounds like a process you enjoy. Is it something you think you could fill a whole show with if you needed to?

How long a show? Like an hour?

Well, do you think you’ll ever get to a point where you’ll do a full headlining set without using a song?

God, that would be really cool just to be able to do. A lot of my material is about rap. At least at this point, it’s sort of like a bridge phase where I’m telling stories about things that have to do with rap stuff. Well, that’s actually not overwhelmingly true. I’m starting to expand the subjects a little bit. I just did a show in Los Angeles where I was like, “Okay, hit the beat,” and the apparatus that they had that was going to be playing my beat totally shit the bed. I had to just go and tell jokes, and to my pleasant surprise, I did eight or nine minutes of just stand-up and it went great.

It wasn’t like a “prove yourself” comedy club crowd, it was a friendly hipster audience. But it was awesome and super-exhilarating. The people who run the show were looking kind of panicked because they know I’m a musical act, and I was like “It’s okay, it’s okay.” And I just did a stand-up set and it was fun. It went well. And afterwards I thought, wow, that just happened.

To answer your question, I would love to have that much stand-up material. In a show where I’m doing raps and stand-up, it’s great to have more material that you can use in an hour. If I had an hour of stand-up, I would have so much material to have at my beck and call. I hope it does happen. It would be cool to start doing that.

Obviously, the focus is on the music. That’s what you’re known for, so you wouldn’t want to diverge from that too much, I would think.

No, but on the other hand, I’ve been starting to take a long view. I’m not going to be able to be an informed, young comedy rapper for twenty more years or twenty-five more years. And even if I could, I don’t know that I’ll want to be. I love hip-hop music. It’s the artform I was into before I was into comedy. But it seems advisable to develop more tools in my toolbelt, like being able to write for TV, and being able to write scripts, and just branching out a little bit. I at least want to try to be able to do that stuff before I decide that it’s not for me. So yeah, I’m not going to stop writing hip-hop songs, it’s the thing that I do, and the reason I’m doing this. Doing jokes is a new thing, and that variety and novelty are great. It’s really refreshing artistically and creatively. To succeed telling a story that has no hip-hop to it, it’s just exhilarating. I’m familiar with having good sets with songs, so to have more stand-up is very rewarding.

Do you get vastly different audiences in Los Angeles than you would at, say, The Comdy Studio here?

I think the Comedy Studio audiences are pretty unique and special. There is one venue out in LA that I think is kind of comparable, the West Side Comedy Theatre. It’s like a cross between The Comedy Studio and ImprovBoston. It is an improv theatre. It’s smart and friendly and community-oriented. They give me a lot of stage time. It feels like my home, my comfort zone in LA.

I think the audiences at the Comedy Store or the Laugh Factory or the Hollywoon Improv – they’re good. They’re comedy club audiences. They pay a lot and they have to buy drinks and they want you to do a good show. And then I have this cool little hipster room going in Echo Park where there’s always people there to see comedy, there’s always a bunch of people who don’t know there’s going to be comedy in the middle of Sunday night dinner and drinks at this place. And they’re also really cool. So I don’t think the crowds are awful or way less receptive to performance or all jaded by the industry. The people I’m performing are aren’t.

What’s next for you when you get back to LA?

When I get back to LA, I’m working on a bunch of videos that I’ll be putting up on the Internet. I’m doing some really cool collaborations with some friends who live in Los Angeles who are doing cool stuff. I’m really excited to keep the tour stuff going as much as possible. I’ll be doing more live dates around the country. I love traveling. It’s so invigorating. It gets me in a good place creatively. I’m hoping to do more stuff like the talking heads thing I did. It was so fun and such a cool, different thing to do. And I write every day, man. I’m just trying to get as much music and material out there as possible. That engine is cooking, too.

Women In Comedy Festival – Musical Comedy Royalty: 10PM, $ 12. Mainstage. With MC Mr. Napkins, The Micah Myq Club, and The Princess of Parodies – Traci Kanaan. ImprovBoston, 40 Prospect Street, Cambridge, Ma, 02139. 617-576-1253

The Boston Comedy Blog

Dave McDonough is the April Comic In Residence

Each month, The Comedy Studio picks a comedian to be the “Comic In Residence,” playing each and every show on the schedule. For April, the Studio has chosen a bit of a ringer in Dave McDonough, who starts his run tonight. McDonough won the Boston Comedy Festival’s competitors in 2009 and has opened for Doug Stanhope and other people. He’s got a deadpan style that has drawn natural comparisons to Steven Wright, but McDonough has a lot more of a scatological bent.

The Marshfield native has often loved watching stand-up, and it came all-natural for him to transition from class clown to comedian. He says he likes to listen to Bill Burr, Louis CK, Rodney Dangerfield, and Don Rickles, a mix of edgier local comics and classic comedy idols. “Pretty significantly any comic who says whatever they want,” he says. “I like edgy comics. Not that you can’t be clean and funny it’s just that I feel it’s a lot more enjoyable to be a jerk sometimes.”

I gave McDonough the usual Comic In Residence Questionnaire.

When did you begin doing comedy?

I did my first show in 2000 then I quit until 2004. I quit because it was a lot tougher than I believed it would be. I did not comprehend how significantly work you had to put into it. I came back simply because I couldn’t quit thinking about it and I thought I may well be very good if I put the time in. Also I lived far from the city at the time and that also dissuaded me a small.

How typically have you played the Studio?

I play the studio pretty typically, probably each and every other month or so.

What other clubs do you play?

I also play at Mottley’s, Dicks Beantown Comedy Vault, and Nick’s Comedy Cease. My preferred club to carry out at is the Studio simply because of the space itself and the audience and I’m not just kissing ass.

What neighborhood comedians have influenced you?

Tony Moschetto and Gary Gulman. I saw Gary prior to he did Last Comic Standing and you could just inform he was going to be big. He actually produced it search straightforward just a actually good writer. And Tony was genuinely dry and type of out there, extremely clever and approachable. Watching him made me realize that becoming truly dry and appearing like you don’t care can sometimes draw the greatest laughs.

What is the average number of gigs you have played in a month just before this?

I’m rather lazy, so the most I’ve ever carried out before this is possibly amongst fifteen and twenty.

How will you approach your time — operate on new stuff, refine older stuff, or a mix of each?

I program on attempting a lot of distinct sets, some new stuff, some clean stuff and some dirty stuff.

What do you expect to have gotten out of the encounter when the month is over?

My timing and function ethic are two factors I want to work on. If I create some new jokes or tags then I’ll be pleased but I’m truly just trying to get down what I have to a point exactly where I cannot screw it up.

Do you program to make comedy a job, or is it something you do as a hobby?

I don’t do stand up for a hobby, I take it extremely seriously so hopefully inside of the following few yrs I’ll be undertaking it full time.

The Boston Comedy Blog

Ken Reid’s Firsts of Fury

Ken Reid debut’s his new show Firsts of Fury tomorrow at Mottley’s Comedy Club. He’ll be talking about firsts in his life, continuing his trend of storytelling comedy, joined by Mehran, Lamont Cost, Jenny Zigrino, and musician Mark Lind. If all goes well, you’ll see this show often at Mottley’s. And more of Ken Reid is a very good factor.

I spoke with Reid final evening in this interview, a tribute to Mystery Science Theater 3000. We talked about Firsts, Reid hosting at The Comedy Studio, and dipped into the Bag of Pop Culture to check Reid’s considerable knowledge.

I learned a lot. My personal 1st — this is where I learned that I search like a Walt Kelly drawing in profile.

Ken Reid’s Firsts of Fury: 8PM, $ 12. Ken Reid hosts a night of comics talking about their “firsts,” with Mehran, Lamont Price, Jenny Zigrino, and Mark Lind. Mottley’s Comedy Club, 61 Chatham Street, Boston, Ma 02109. 877-615-2844

The Boston Comedy Weblog

Kate Clinton is in Boston tonight for Fenway Health

Kate Clinton celebrated thirty years in stand-up comedy on March 21. Since then, she has established herself not only as a stand-up comedian but as an author and columnist with The Progressive magazine, and overall as a satirist and astute observer of modern politics. She was out from that first performance, and a lot has changed in the LGBT community in thirty years, something we spoke about in our conversation a couple of days after her anniversary.

Clinton is currently on her Glee Party Tour, and though there is no stop currently listed for Boston, she will be in town for fundraising events for the Fenway on April 9 and May 7. She’ll also renew her longstanding relationship with Provincetown and the Crown and Anchor when she begins another summer run there on May 28.

Clinton, a former English teacher in Syracuse, NY, is always personable and witty, a fun interview. We explored a lot in this conversation, from her stand-up origins to teachers’ unions, and she graciously indulged my tangents (some of which have been expurgated for the sake of space and sanity here).

So did you do anything to celebrate thirty years on Monday?

Yes, I was in Charleston, North Carolina and I bored friends with the long story of how I got my start. And then I took a nap… No. I can’t believe it. It seems so quick on the one hand and then if I add up all of the hours spent circling Newark, it’s really kind of a long career. But the actual performing and doing what I love to do is exciting.

It seems like you just celebrated twenty-five years, and then five years went by so quickly.

I know. I think I was recovering from the twenty-fifth anniversary tour. My people were like, are you going to do a thirtieth? And I was like, no. They were like, [gives a relieved sigh].

Do you remember your first official gig? What was March 21, 1981?

It was in Syracuse, New York. I had been talking about wanting to try stand-up comedy, and my best friend got sick of it and just booked me in a club. We hung up a poster. It was a bar called Ms. Adventure. [laughs] It had a picture of me and we cut it up to put my head on the poster. We jammed in about 180 of my closest friends. And I did probably 45 minutes.

That’s a lot for your first gig.

I know. I know.

How much of it was funny?

Oh, well… It was a very codependent crowd, laughing. And then a friend of mine actually heckled me. I said, “What are you doing?” She was from New York and she had black turtlenecks aplenty, and she said, “Well, you’re supposed to heckle in a comedy club.” And I said, “Stop it.” It was like, total high school English teacher still. And she shut right up. I was like, “Stop it.” I was like, “Rita, what are you doing?” She was like, “You’re supposed to heckle.” “Cut it out.”

You don’t often get to call your heckler by name. You don’t get to say, “Rita, what are you doing?”

I’ll call them all Rita. I don’t really get that many hecklers. I think I still kind of throw an old school, high school English teacher vibe. The next day I remember I was flat out on the couch, just flat out, and my partner at the time said, she looked at me and she said, “I don’t know if you’ve thought of this but you really have to do it more than once.” It had never occurred to me. I had said I wanted to try it. And in that moment, she became my manager. She was always ahead of me.

Are you glad you’re no longer in teaching?

I do think I’m part of the cadre, the wide cadre of teachers who have destroyed state budgets everywhere with their $ 24,000 salaries. The way teachers are getting roughed up makes me insane. I loved my students, but it truly was the hardest job I’ve ever done. When people say to me, “Wow, you’re doing two shows today!” I’m like, I used to do five day. So no, I’m fine. It’s the hardest job.

So what do you make of collective bargaining in Wisconsin and the teachers’ unions?

You know, I think it’s really, as Rachel Maddow has been blasting away, night after night, it’s really not budget balancing. It’s punishing unions who did not support the person who won. I just think it’s a scandal.

They’re saying that teachers’ unions al support Democrats and it becomes a feedback loop, that they do favors for each other.

Do the Republicans have to have all of those people? They’ve got their own things, can’t we have one?

So what’s the biggest change since you started, and what’s still the same?

For my thirtieth anniversary, I am going to put out at the end of the year like a “best of,” a highlights reel. I have nine other CDs, so I’ve been listening to all my CDs. The three early albums, the tape, and then the CD. In 1981, or ’82 when I did the first album, I was not talking about gay marriage. It wasn’t even on the horizon. There’s that. There’s the whole issue of gays serving openly in the military, was not even on the horizon and we have it now. We had Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and then we had it repealed.

So I just think one of the biggest changes that I can see is, a couple of things. First of all, I came up through a very lesbian circuit, but now, it’s definitely a very LGBT circuit. I think that during the Clinton, because he was able to say “gay and lesbian” without spitting up, a lot of people came out. So I think there’s been there’s been much more visibility and people coming out at an earlier and earlier age. I just read this study that debunked the whole thing about women in college having same-sex experiences, and they’re really not doing it much. Well, because they’re all doing it in middle school. It’s astounding.

I was at a conference in January called the Creating Change Conference, and I think there were 2,700 activists from all over the country and different countries. And probably fifty percent of them were under thirty-five. And have jobs in the gay movement. That’s astounding. I hear young people talking about career moves, like, I’m leaving my job with my national organization for my statewide organization, but I hope to go with a national organization. Wow. We used to just do this at night. They have real jobs. So that’s amazing.

When you first started, were you out onstage?

Oh, god, yes. A lot of my friends just thought it was a sophisticated career death wish. And I called myself a “feminist humorist.” Isn’t that adorable? And it ran together, it was a typo, so I called myself a “fumorist.” Then those morning drive time shock jocks had to talk to me. Like, “Hey, little lady, ‘feminist humorist?’ Isn’t that an oxymoron?” They all said that. And I was like, “Yes, you’re half right.”

Do you think LGBT comedy is its own genre?

You know, I think it probably certainly was in the first twenty years. But I do think it’s a genre in the mainstream now. Before you had to do so much explaining to get to the jokes, with like footnotes. But now people know gay people, they know gay issues. It’s not like they were ignorant, definitely I don’t think homophobic, just homo-ignorant. So I think it can be part of the mainstream. It’s on LOGO, it’s on Sirius Radio. There are venues for it. And I do think that it’s certainly more a part of the mainstream than when I started.

When I started, I remember I was out of the closet in L.A. and I did a lot of lesbian material, and club owners said to my afterwards, “You can’t be doing that gay stuff.” And then I went back to the same club probably ten years later and the guy said to me, “I think I’m going to do more gay stuff.”

Well, were they talking about comedy?

Yes!

Okay.

Or they wanted to watch. I’m not sure.

That could be an even bigger change. So when did you first start playing Provincetown? I know it’s been eight years or it will be eight years at the Crown and Anchor.

I think I started in maybe the late 80s, in ’86, ’87. I did a couple of years at the Pilgrim House. Then a number of years at the Post Office Cabaret. Then back to the Pilgrim House, which had been rebuilt after a fire, I did a number of years there. And then the last have been at the Crown and Anchor.

So you were there pretty early in your career.

Oh, yes. And I was there for longer and longer periods of time. I think the first time I performed there it was a weekend, then let’s do two weeks, and then let’s do a month, and then one summer I was moving back to Upstate New York and I thought, why? So I found an apartment to rent. Now I’m so blessed I have a house that I think I bought in 1990. I feel bad for friends who come and perform in Provincetown for the summer and it’s completely away from their home. I’m very lucky.

How important has Provincetown been in your career? It’s something you’ve been doing for so long.

Well, you know it’s just an opportunity for me to write every day and try it out at night. So by the end of a summer there, I have a lot of material. It’s good for a workshop, creating stuff. The danger is that there’s just so much to talk about, just about Provincetown, you can write great material about Provincetown that is nearly useless in, you know, Northern California.

I would think also for someone like you who writes about current events and the news so much, being in one place to digest that would be a big help as well.

Right. Right. I was on a cross-country flight to a show, and that night a woman said, “I can’t believe you didn’t say anything about Terry Schiavo. Well, it had happened while I was flying. I think the challenge also is, when I listen to my CD, to have universal enough material, that stands the test of time.

I think people may think political humor is just so reactive that you naturally hae a chunk on something that happened that day, just because of your reaction. I’m assuming in some cases that’s true, but this is hard stuff to make light of a lot of time.

I know. I went to Charleston and did a show last weekend and I looked at my show and thought, well, they should be crying. It really is the challenge of what comedians do, is to transform that thing. And that’s exhausting sometimes. And I also think it’s great to be known for doing really topical stuff, but I like a comedian who can sort of contextualize things or try to make it into a bigger picture. Like there’s this part and parcel, some of these people who cannot accept having a black president. You can say it all you want, but the old white guy is really nervous. That’s what’s happening. So to be able to take that information and put it into a bigger picture, is less a daily and perhaps more like a monthly thing.

How long does it take you to digest something? Say something happened today, how long is it before you have a good couple of minutes on it that you’re comfortable with?

That’s a great question. My career has changed a bit in that I’m doing a lot more conferences and dinners and different types of shows. A lot of times I’m slicing up a routine to be the emcee. That’d change things a little bit. I would say after maybe two or three times I can place it. Like maybe something at the front of the show will be very topical and maybe of that day, but maybe after two or three performances, it will be in the scabrously irreligious part of the show. [laughs]

Does something ever happen in the news, and you see that it’s incredibly sad, and you know you have to write about it because you feel some obligation to find some way to make this funny?

Well, like Japan. I have found if you take that to… You can’t do Gilbert Gottfrief type of thing where you lose your job in the Afflac commercial. I think it really is more about if you can personalize it. For example, in Charleston, I was whining about the weather, and then, it’s not a hilarious joke, but I can mention, I just don’t feel I can complain anymore after Japan.

Lady HAHA Clip 1 from Kate Clinton on Vimeo.

The Gilbert Gottfried question, I think that brings up the fact that a lot of the best comedy is uncomfortable. And I think some comedians use that as their rule of thumb, if they feel uncomfortable about something they need to react to it and say something. And I think sometimes that’s the context for something like what Gottfried said. But not everything that’s uncomfortable is edgy or worthwhile saying.

Right. And I do think if you come from a baseline of compassion, you can do it. But if you’re really mocking, you just pounding on somebody, I think you’re in dangerous territory.

But there are a lot of comics who border on nihilistic that I enjoy.

I bet you do. [laughs] “Who’s that one guy laughing?” “It’s Nick!” I’ve been talking about race and racism much more in my show. It’s time for white people to talk about racism. It’s past time, actually. It’s not black people’s job. It’s our job.

So I do this whole thing, and then at the end, I say, sometimes I like to go up to old white guys in mesh caps, maybe they’re looking out at something, and I look out with them for a while, then I just kind of say, “Embrace your extinction.”

Wow.

In the high school teacher way that I can do. And people gasp.

What are the Fenway Health dates you’re doing? Are those open to the public?

They’re fundraising dinners for the Fenway. They’re open to the public. The first one is the Men’s Dinner, and then a month later there’s the Women’s Dinner and I do both. I used to just do the women’s dinner, but now, apparently, I’ve amused men as well. I guess I do a little [material] but it’s mostly just introducing people and fundraising.

It turns out I’m a great auctioneer because I’m so horrible at it. I can say, “This is worth six thousand dollars, give it to me right now and we won’t have to go through this.” And I never can remember the last bid. They know now they have to have someone next to me, because I’ll go, “It’s forty thousand,” and somebody will look stricken and have a heart attack because they bid four thousand. So it’s not a full on show, it’s more like fundraising and chastising.

How does the writing versus the performance aspect of what you do split up these days? Has one become any more important than the other?

When I’m circling Newark, I go, I wish I were at my desk. Then when I’m at my desk I think, “Oh, god,” trying to write. But I think one thing feed the other. Sometimes an idea in a Tweet or a little blog becomes part of the show.

What do the next thirty years look like?

Two words. George Burns. I’ll just keep going. See how long I can ride this thing.

The Boston Comedy Blog

Sam Brown from Whitest Children U’Know

Tonight on IFC, The Whitest Children U’Know starts its fifth and final season as a Television sketch group entity. They will remain a loose group functioning collectively, but there are as well many outside projects and concerns tugging at the five individual members to preserve it going. As Sandwich native Sam Brown told me, it’s challenging to keep a sketch show fresh, and it is time to move on. The Kids did handle to sneak a full-length film into the show, called The Civil War On Drugs, a portion of which will end each and every episode. They’ll be screening that on its personal Monday in LA at the Steve Allen Theater.

The Boston Comedy Weblog

Neil Innes plays the Regent Theatre in Arlington tonight at 8PM.

Neil Innes is a significant-minded silly man. He helped produce the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band whilst nonetheless in art school in England, followed Eric Idle’s Sir Robin the Chicken-Hearted around singing about acquiring his elbows broken, and played Ron Nasty, the John Lennon character in The Rutles. He’s an accomplished musician and satirist who sings songs like “I’m the Urban Spaceman” and “Slaves of Freedom.” Death Cab for Cutie took their name from one of his creations, and he’s pals with Yo La Tengo.

If that is not an eclectic enough CV for you, Innes is also a self-proclaimed “Ego Warrior,” and is toying with the concept of branding himself a “Fame Slut.” That’s one of several points we spoke about final week by phone when Innes first arrived Stateside. He tours frequently, but does not get more than to America as well frequently, so tonight’s show at the Regent Theatre in Arlington is a pretty uncommon likelihood to catch him in action. The final time he was this close to Boston was 2004 – he played the Regent then, as well, a great evening of absurdity and music. Or musical absurdity. And duck hats.

Innes is functioning on numerous new projects, which includes a book that could not turn out to be a book, podcasting, and obtaining inspiration by way of the Garage Band home recording plan. Which means even far more Innes to take pleasure in, all of which you can locate at his Internet internet site, InnesBookOfRecords.com.

I don’t have an ending for this introduction. So here’s the concerns.

Are you touring to promote the Anthology?

The Rutles I’ve put to one particular side now. I mean, they’re thirty years old. Even though on the Internet site, InnesBookOfRecords.com, you can nevertheless see the last Rutles song, which is named “Imitation Song.” And there’s a couple of videos, one accomplished by Bonnie Rose, an animation thing. And then one completed by Ed Bertinshaw.

So that is obtainable, but what I’ve been doing not too long ago is, I’ve revisited four half-hour radio applications I did for the BBC Radio 4 known as Innes Own World. And forgotten, it was a lot of perform. I did all the voices in a soap opera. Four episodes. And I did a sort of Present Affairs/24/7 news point named The Breakfast Things. Because personally, I’m totally fed up with 24/7 news. It just drives you mad. Simply because it isn’t actually news, it is 24/7 conjecture, or the really worst, emotional engineering. What’s the most shrill factor, what’s the most panic we can trigger? So I’ve had adequate.

So this Breakfast Factors was featuring Dick Headline, anchorman, speaking to his breakfast points. Like a tea pot and a beverage container and an egg cup. And the headlines are, a child’s modest Wellington boot was located in the garden at lengthy final. That sort of point, with all the dramatic music. And silly adverts.

I started playing around with Garage Band and becoming ready to edit factors myself by trial and error. But it felt more like when I was a painter and I was in art school. You’ve got control more than it. You’re not saying to somebody, go forward a bit, go back a bit. You actually do it. So I started editing the factor, and I found you could ply in all these other factors from Garage Band, lewd music, loops and issues you can put in.

So I put all that with each other and took them to a buddy who’s got all the singing/dancing Pro Tools and whatnot and we made it sound really, actually great. That is basically what we’re traveling with this time around, Innes Personal World, Very best Bits Aspect I and Finest Bits Part II. People have been very positive in the feedback. But it is not mainstream recording. I joke. I say they’re the very first recordings that have ever been recorded in 2D. It is diverse simply because you’ve got extremely-created comedy with stuff you can listen to much more and much more and hear once again and yet again.

Is what individuals see on this tour going to be much more audio sketch comedy or music?

No. What I discovered with the Bonzos is, you can’t make faces on records. You have to do one thing else. What I’m doing this time about is, it’s going to vary, Nick. Some places just want me to do ninety minutes in one go, which I kind of hate. I don’t believe anybody ought to be alone onstage for a lot more than forty-five minutes in one go. I will modify factors. But what I’m happiest undertaking is making this two elements, type of two part, People’s Guide To World Domination. And just laughing at the absurdities of life and featuring immature themes like blowing raspberries and cocking snoots, if you know what that it.

No, I don’t.

Oh. It’s when you thumb your nose. I just feel much more and much more that since of the 24/7, the way the media is now, in your face all the time, and even the great Randy Newman has stated that fear is color-coded now. I assume it’s time that individuals celebrated their individuality, truly, and just stepped aside from the herd. It’s plain to see. It’s like people farming. I feel they treat battery chickens much better. You know what I imply by battery chickens? Intensive farming exactly where they put animals in cages. Television’s almost doing that to individuals, sort of shaking them upside down for whatever disposable income they’ve got. And it is relentless. So that’s what the movement Ego Warriors is about, and what the show’s about, truly. To sort of sidestep from it, to say, hang on, hang on, it’s all quite silly.

That appears to be part and parcel of what the Bonzos were about, as well.

Yeah, I assume so. I don’t feel you adjust your spots. I’m sixty-seven now. But I think I’ve never grown older than six. My naivety is six. My sense of fair play is a six-year-old’s.

What I was referring to was the Back Catalogue on Amazon, not the Anthology. Amazon had that as released July of final year.

That’s proper. It is taken a while to discover out how to do these factors. But final year, I got my catalog back, and now I can really make it available, so people can go and get what they want from it, if they like. The age of the record is practically completed. Some individuals nevertheless like to have CDs, which is nice. But I’m truly moving forward because discovering out about Garage Band. I want to do this podcasting named Radio Noir. Since you can put factors on a shuffle, you know. It’s fairly fascinating. I’ve carried out a number of experiments with it. And I’m also operating on a book, which I don’t especially want to place into book type. I may well narrate it and have those put into the mix on Radio Noir. I’m thinking of calling How Sweet To Be An Idiot: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Neil Innes: Ego Warrior and Style Guru. One thing like that. Absolutely nothing like a extended title.

Ego Warrior and style guru go together very effectively.

I feel so. I have toyed with the idea of adding “Fame Slut,” but I feel men and women wouldn’t believe me.

Effectively, then you wouldn’t get carried in Wal*Mart. I know that’d be crucial to you.

Absolutely. A single day men and women will get what I do. But I do not mind. I’m not in any hurry.

Do you really feel like individuals don’t?

Oh, the ones that do, do. But the vast majority most likely don’t. I do not know, maybe my irony’s a bit rusty. No, but it’s counter, if you like, to the thought of getting in a large crowd and whooping at some flashing lights.

Even though, you know, that can be entertaining, too.

Of course, of course. Somebody’s got to do that job.

We do not want to exclude something.

I may be part of the human immune technique. You in no way know. That would be awful, if all the human race was there for was there for was to sort of make the planet mutate from putting plastic in the oceans. That’s our achievement, that’s our legacy.

I would adore to see you tour with just the flashing lights and encourage individuals to come and whoop, and see if that becomes productive. That’s at least two of the seals broken.

No, but I have written a song called “Stadium Love,” which is on the Bonzos very last album that we did in 2007. And I have been onstage with a smoke machine. And 1 or two twinkling, flickering rope lights, which I utilised for a variety of an Elton John song. But no, after forty years at the cold face of satire, I assume all I’ve accomplished is a graceful state of futility. Somebody’s got to do it.

Nicely, an achievement is an achievement.

Yes, of course it is. Anyway I don’t understand this obsession with fame. I can comprehend wanting cash simply because, as Groucho mentioned, it can’t get happiness, but it is a great down payment. But the fame factor, you are not supposed to be well-known unless you’ve accomplished one thing that you were doing anyway that occurred to be very good. Or regarded as, yeah, that is useful.

People are seeking recognition for existing.

Yeah. Or getting loud and vulgar on television. It’s depressing.

Which they think about a skill, as properly.

Yes, they contemplate it skillful. I assume each now and once again you just have to turn back and marvel at how many godless, brainless, talented, and rich people there are.

Was the reunion a couple of years ago of the Bonzos the last?

It definitely is as far as I’m concerned. I believed just the one particular show, A Night To Bear in mind the Bonzos: The 40th Anniversary, I believed, well, I can bear that. Lovely people, in fact, Stephen Fry, Adrian Edmonson, Phil Jupitus, and Paul Merton came along. And I believed that was going to be it. And then I got a phone call saying, “Do you fancy undertaking some more,” and I stated, “No, I thought that was it.” They mentioned the other folks would like to do it, and I said let them do it. They mentioned, no, no, it is not the band, it is the guests. The guests want to do much more.

So we did twelve really big two, three thousand seaters and a actually ridiculous tour. We had two buses, one for us, one for the crew. And articulated lorry with all this stuff. We did this tour. And Adrian and Phil were on the tour all the way by means of. And that was a actually, genuinely happy bubble to be in. Then we created an album in 2007 and then I felt, we ought to truly leave it alone now, due to the fact the only band I want to be part of is the Bonzo Dog Gaga Band. It was very good entertaining, but I believe it’s run its course. Now, of course, Adrian and Phil are complete Bonzo members, becoming the final phase of the Bonzos.

Men and women possibly do not realize there had been about 4 or 5 phase of it. The initial a single was fourteen or eighteen folks at the Royal College of Art, playing this terrible old twenties and thirties English jazz on a Tuesday evening at the canteen. And then there were nine of us that went out to the pubs. And then it became eight, and then six, and that is when the Bonzos packed in, around 1970, ’71. A thing like that. And then the new version was clearly this century. Odd! Odd to believe the Bonzos have spanned two centuries.

I was hoping it would reach out to the States when I heard about it.

No, I don’t believe so. The Bonzos are related to me, really. They’ve got their adherents, but… let’s put it this way, we’re not halftime at the Super Bowl.

Despite the fact that that would be fantastic to see.

It would be, wouldn’t it? And now, hold up the game, we’re going to play, “I’m Going To Bring A Watermelon To My Girl Tonight.” You wouldn’t be ready to print this or say this, but it would be known as “What the Fuck?”

The Boston Comedy Weblog