Album Reviews

Listen: I did stand-up comedy in Boston before any comedian at any comedy club in Boston got his sorry ass on stage and opened with “Hey, how you guys doing?”

I know that to be a fact because I began doing my stand up in Boston back in 1976 before there were any comedy clubs in Boston.

I played the Inn Square Men’s Bar (not what it may sound like today) in February of 1976.

I opened for bands like Television and The Jam at The Paradise Club. That’s how it used to be for comedians. You opened for a band. It was fun and adventurous because the audience was there to see the band and hear music. If you could get them, they appreciated the comedy instead of a crappy music act. If you didn’t get them, it sucked for you. Once I opened for Root Boy Slim and the Sex Change Band. The audience was filled with ringers who kept shouting "Root! Root! Root!" and I couldn't shut them up. Them's the breaks. But at least the audience got some variety

Then came “The Comedy Factory, “The Laugh Assembly Line,” “Haha’s” and other places where all you got were comics. One, after another, after another. And when comics congregate and watch each other and the club owners have expectations and demands (a laugh every X seconds), you end up with homogenization and echoes. That’s when I got out. I also probably didn’t have the stomach for it: the traveling, the cheap motels, the rejection, etc.

Having grown up watching comics open for musicians at nightclubs where my parents took me (Catskills hotels, Ben Maksick’s “Town and Country” in Brooklyn), the cannibalistic comedy club scene didn’t appeal to me.

So when I was pitched this best of the Boston Comedy Festival two CD set, I figured it would be worth a listen if just to hear the recent “state of the art” there, though most of the comedians aren't Boston-based.

If you listen to this double disc set (and you should if you're a student of stand up), you, like the people in the audience at Emerson College and The Berklee College of Music, are guaranteed to laugh because there are some funny lines. The problem is, few of these comedians are intrinsically funny people, with the big hearts necessary to connect on a fundamental level. They are comic journeymen who have learned a trade. They are not artists.

You can bet announcers or TV commercial actors wish they were legitimate actors but they’re not because they are all technique and no heart and they have no stomach for really exposing themselves. That’s the tough part. That’s why a guy like Artie Lang from The Howard Stern Show is so popular now. He’s lovable and vulnerable and exposed. And of course, he's truly fast-witted and funny.

None of these guys are that. They all sound like they are announcing a comedy routine, not living one. They are holding back. They have created two dimensional characters or worse, no character. Their world-views are mundane, not unique. You don’t come away from any of them with any insight beyond the obvious, even as you laugh at some funny, if trivial and not particularly original observations. Occasionally there are some truly funny and inspired observations, but they are few and far between and the comedic “songs” being sung are melodically mundane and rhythmically flat-footed.

What makes a “star?” Someone like Richard Pryor or Lenny Bruce or Chris Rock (though he's lost it lately) or Jackie Mason (when he’s not being a reactionary putz): guys who elevate you using comedy and who have a unique tonality and melodic style.

The laughter is the means to a higher plane. They break free of earth orbit. The laughs add up to far more than laughs and they are orchestrated like a symphony, with small laughs, bigger laughs, crescendo laughs and show-stoppers. Even a guy like Bill Maher, who is very funny and engagingly casual doesn't manage to add it up to the inspirational level. I've seen him live and he's got great lines and wonderful observations, but he's kind of a sourpuss and keeps at arm's length. So while you walk out with your laugh stomach full, your comedic soul remains empty.

These Boston Comedy Fest guys get rhythmic laugh blips out of the audience. They are unable to orchestrate laugh colors and laugh dynamics. That takes artistry. These guys are journeymen. They are mostly opening acts.

Then again there’s the popularity of Dane Cook, who is simply not funny at all yet he’s the biggest comedian ever I think. So what do I know?