enough comedy jokes

Enough comedy jokes!

It is a truism - or it should be one - that you can tell the worth of

a comedian by how funny he is when he's not being funny, when he's not

in the middle of a bit. Most stand-up comedy is the entertainment

equivalent of an ass-grab - obnoxious, unwelcome, and a more about

trying to overpower than to connect.

In a sense, Steve Martin's stand-up was one long bit - a goof on the

whole notion of entertainment - but at the same time, he rarely

sounded like he was a doing a bit. (And it was when he was

indisputably doing a bit or being self-consciously "zany" that he was

at his weakest - the whole "wild and crazy guy" Czech brothers act,

for example.) Building an onstage persona based on parodying onstage

personae is a tricky thing to pull off, and can have a very short

shelf-life. (One of the reasons Stephen Colbert is overrated -

absolute heresy, I know.)

Martin pulled it off by weaving in and out of this persona, coming at

it from all angles. In one short routine from the early 80's - shortly

before he gave up stand-up altogether, he parodies the classic

"pissed-off, no bullshit" comedian simply by saying "fuck" a lot and

acting like a cynical prick, giving the audience the "real deal." He's

not doing a character, just subtly altering his delivery, making the

knife slip in more cleanly. Since his usual parodic targets were

Vegas-type performers, it's great to hear him take a subtle swipe at

the new, "angry" comics who were, for the most part, doing the same

thing as the old, phony Vegas comedians - dressing up mediocre

material with a lot of hip bluster. (Speaking of which, a terrible

thing happened to George Carlin when he decided to play the pissed-off

anti-establishment man - religious figures are often hypocrites? as

are politicians? we care too much about money? shocking. - rather than

do what he was better at: being a kind of hippie Jerry Seinfeld, or

Lenny Bruce without the balls.)

Why Martin had to leave stand-up is demonstrated by the second side of

his "Wild and Crazy Guy" album. The first side has some of my

favourite material of his - lines that only he could deliver, like

"Let's face it: some people have a way with words, while others... oh,

not have way, I guess" - and there's a sense of real interaction with

the audience, which sounds roughly nightclub-sized. Most of the second

side was recorded in what sounds like an arena full of fans ready to

scream at the slightest sign of Steve Martin-style wackiness. He both

gives in to it and struggles against it; there's some funny stuff

there, but the loss is palpable. He was funnier when he was able to

wrong-foot an audience, keeping them in a constant state of

uncertainty as to whether or not what he was saying was intentionally

funny.

Anyway, here's A.L. Kennedy on Martin's new memoir of his stand-up