Stand-Up Pt II

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Josh Clark (0:11)

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here too, and we are kicking off part two of our two-part episode on stand-up comedy.

And I think if I remember correctly, Chuck, it was a couple of days ago, but you said something about alt comedy. We were going to talk about that.

Chuck Bryant (0:28)

That's right.

Josh Clark (0:29)

What is that?

Chuck Bryant (0:30)

Alt comedy is something that came about in the early 90s with a group of comedians performing in, I don't know if that's where the term comes from, but performing in alternative venues.

They weren't performing, and of course, they would all go to perform in comedy store and all that kind of stuff too, and comedy clubs, but they were well known for performing in piano bars or bookstores and things like that. People like Jeanne Graffalo, the great Dana Gould, who is a wonderful comic and human being still, they started out performing at a place called Big and Tall Books in LA. The Luna Lounge in New York and Largo, the original Largo in LA were all home bases for these comics.

Josh Clark (1:20)

Yeah, we did a show in Largo. Was that the original Largo?

Chuck Bryant (1:23)

No, the original was like this little piano bar.

Josh Clark (1:26)

I see.

Chuck Bryant (1:27)

But the new Largo is great too. It's awesome.

Josh Clark (1:31)

For sure. So I mentioned Mr. Show before. If you're familiar with Mr. Show with Bob and David, that is essentially alt comedy at its core. Most of the people associated with the show, if not all of them, were alt comics at the time, in the early mid-90s, right?

Patton Oswalt, Maria Bamford, Mark Marron, PFT, the great Paul F. Tompkins, one of the funniest people alive. Mary Lynn Razcub.

Chuck Bryant (2:02)

She's great.

Josh Clark (2:03)

Yeah. I was like, who is that? I went and looked her up. I'm like, okay. I had no idea that she started out as a stand-up. Yeah. But she was great on Larry Sanders as the booking assistant to you. I think Janine Garofalo, right? Yeah.

Chuck Bryant (2:17)

Janine Garofalo was on that show.

Josh Clark (2:19)

And she's probably more well known by Mainstream America as a character on 24 She was on 24 basically the entire run of the show. I'm not sure what she did though, because I didn't watch it.

Chuck Bryant (2:30)

Yeah. She was great. She was part of that crew.

I know you mentioned Maria Bamford, but if you've never seen Maria Bamford's comedy, please go see it because she's still one of the most original comedians working today for sure.

Josh Clark (2:43)

Yeah. And you said still, because most of these comedians, the ones who are still alive, are still working and still doing stuff, and a lot of them are still doing stand-up. Like David Cross, he's had some Mondo TV hits, like he was on Arrested Development, he was on Mr. Show, he's been on just tons of movies and just killed on all of them. He still does stand-up pretty regularly as a matter of fact. Oh yeah. Does Patton Oswalt still? Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah. So these guys are still doing stand-up, which is really to their credit because most of them, I mean, Patton Oswalt was on, what?

Was it King of Queens?

Chuck Bryant (3:22)

I don't know.

Josh Clark (3:24)

I don't remember either, but he had a huge role in like a major network television show.

Like I just think it's amazing that they're still doing stand-up because as we've seen people like Steve Martin, and Robin Williams, and all that. It's like once they became huge, they left stand-up behind. The early 90s, all comics did not. And they had some other, there were some other characteristics besides just appearing in small like alternative clubs too.

Chuck Bryant (3:51)

Yeah, for sure. You know, it was, I guess, sort of an alternative point of view. And this was in the 90s at a time where alternative music, that was just sort of the buzzword for anything that kind of broke from the previous mainstreams of the 80s. Yeah. So a little more like, they were making like insider references more, a little less like set up punchline and more sort of observational like wry humor about life and telling stories about their lives and stuff like that.

What else?

Josh Clark (4:23)

They eschewed the racism generally, homophobia. Essentially, if you're familiar with Don Rickles, imagine the antithesis of Don Rickles.

Chuck Bryant (4:33)