All right. “Comedy”. Yup, that’s the concept we’re rolling with. I thought I’d introduce you to some of my gods — who, unlike yours, actually existed. (How do I know? Well, there’s actual audio, video and pictures. Now show me your proof 🙂 See? Nothing. I rest my case.
Before you think “Oh oh — a boring column of comedy sites talking about comedy that we can’t hear for ourselves,” relax. There are some very useful links below, to grab either short samples or entire shows of the comics in question. So party hearty. (Some of the files are in .rm (Real Media) format; don’t be alarmed — just download and install the five-meg freeware player Real Alternative).
I’m focusing on the big influential four, as I see them — Lord Buckley, Lenny Bruce, George Carlin and Bill Hicks. There are others, but life’s too short and this column’s too underpaid to cover them all properly, so I’ve chosen to focus on the genre of “precedent-setting social/political/sexual consciousness-raising” comics.
Once upon a time there was a colourful conman and eccentric of note who had the urge to talk to audiences and do more than just tell simplistic jokes. We’re going back to the 1940s now, and jazz was where it was at. Start off by reading about The First Lord of Comedy. For a slightly deeper layer, try this review about the life of Lord Buckley. Now that you’ve got an overview of the “coolest, grooviest, sweetest, wailingest, strongest, swinginest cat that ever stomped on this jumpin’ green sphere”, dive into Lord Buckley.
Take some time to browse through the verbal jazz scat from the transcripts of some of his shtick, at Lord Buckley’s Mind Bubbles. He also makes it justifiably into the Catalog of Cool, under Hipster Saint.
Let’s step sideways, and move from the Dali-esque “life as performance” concept, which happened to use the spoken word to get points across, over to the verbal powerhouse of
the man Eddie Izzard called “the Jesus Christ of alternative stand-up comedy”: Lenny Bruce.
Now listen to this National Public Radio programme on The Trials of Lenny Bruce.
You’ll notice that unlike the comics of today, who generally have basic preset routines that they vary slightly, Bruce just poured out words and thoughts right there and then — and had to keep backing up to explain and illustrate his concepts as he thought of them. No rehearsal, just pure spontaneous thinking and a desire to communicate in action.
Download and listen to this one-meg file, an eight-minute freeform riff on being Jewish and the colour and nature of God. Note that, even by today’s standards, Bruce is immensely fast in his performance — to him, it wasn’t about “comic timing” so much as illustrating “concepts”. Listen to ‘Don’t Paint God’.
For a range of audio clips on various topics, browse topics and grab the clips at The Complete Lenny Bruce: Audio. The main page for this site is here.
To see how the government at the time was viewing what Bruce was doing, thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, take a look through Lenny Bruce’s FBI File.
It’s funny (if fascism can be funny) to note that in this current government’s misguided quest towards legislating “non-racism” by inhibiting freedom of speech, that if I had to take some of Bruce’s own sketches from 45 years ago talking about racism, and replace his words with local equivalents, I could be jailed. So much for any signs of intelligent democracy. Try this small (300k) clip from the early 1960s of Bruce talking about racism: ‘They’re Moving In’.
Forty years after Lenny Bruce’s obscenity conviction, he was finally awarded a posthumous pardon: First Amendment Pardon.
Honourable mention at this point has to go to George Carlin, who roughly started his career at the start of the Sixties. Here’s his home page, and in the “Media” section, you’ll find some all-too-brief glimpses of his fun and scathing act in action: George Carlin.
Carlin was the brains behind the classic routine that’s become a standard yardstick in pop culture: Seven Dirty Words You Can’t Say on TV. (To my eternal credit and pride, I managed to use at least three of them occasionally on my brief stay on late-night 702 Talk Radio, a few years back — in between the mind-numbing on-air grannies, boring unionists, hasbeen sportsmen and house-painting experts.)
If you want to hear real radio in action, try Howard Stern Shows. Tasteful? No. Funny? Definitely.
Let’s point you towards Carlin’s “Incomplete List of Impolite Words” — it’s a 600k download, and a useful collection of things to avoid saying. Get it here.
That’s what comedy is often all about. Stomping on convention, challenging paradigms and not trying to be something “nice” that your parents would approve of. Or your government. Especially your government.
But back to Carlin, here are some brief audio clips that should outrage the small-minded bigots among us. No, not you, those other ones — the ones who lack the good taste to be reading this: George Carlin Audio Clips.
To get a sense of the thoughtful mind behind the persona, read this interview from Mother Jones.
Finally, the ultimate god in my personal pantheon of deities is Bill Hicks. Coming out of the strict Southern Baptist experience, he began performing comedy from about age 13 — and by adulthood was a force to be reckoned with. If you’ve never heard his comedy, then you’re in for a major treat, and some mind-expandingly cool socially and politically aware comedy. (And by the way, if any of it sounds familiar, yes — Dennis Leary and others have made careers from stealing Hick’s routines and regurgitating his words.)
The thing with comedy is that, while it’s kinda funny to read it, you really need to hear it in action to understand what’s being talked about. So, in my travels online, I ran across an archive of bootlegged Bill Hicks material. And his comedy in performance speaks louder and clearer than any text transcripts. So go grab it while it’s there — here’s Bill Hicks in Montreal doing his show called Relentless.
Audiences in the United Kingdom took Hicks to their hearts, responding to his savagely dry humour — go experience Bill Hicks live in the UK, in Revelations. And yet one more live show: Hicks Live at Igby’s.
Read this short article on the 10-year anniversary of Hicks’s death (he died of pancreatic cancer in 1994): ‘The Last Laugh’. Here’s a page of assorted quotes from Bill Hicks.
Until the next time, if seriousness doesn’t get me.