Wait a minute, if that’s…

The world of comedy is a wacky world indeed.
On the show I play the three basic types…
Musical, Sketch and Stand-up.
The first is the most common, there are many reasons for this
but the basic one is that musicians of all genres can, and do,
dabble in the humorous.
Even the most serious have produced a funny piece or two.
Johnny Cash, Hank Thompson, Steve Goodman, Arlo Guthrie,
Bobby Bare, Tom T. Hall and Oscar Brand are some of the
multitudes of great artists that have made me laugh.
Sketch comedy is the rarest of the lot.
There are a lot of skits but they have been created by a rather
small group of performers…Monty Python, The Frantics, The
Royal Canadian Air Farce, The Dead Alewives, Landry and Biener,
and a few others, comprise the vast majority of what’s out there.
Sad but true.
Then you have the stand-up folks.
An argument can be made that there are more of them than all the rest.
I would respectfully, but strenuously, disagree.
There are a lot of them to be sure, but not all are pure stand-up
comedians.
Standing on a stage, in front of a crowd, mic in hand does not a stand-up make.
And I’m not even talking about the quality of the material.
Delivery is everything…rambling, pissing and moaning and profanity laced
diatribes are not the stuff of comedic legend.
Those attributes would guarantee you a place in my family but exclude you,
in my humble opinion, from the ranks of the stand-up comedy hall of fame.
The following gentleman is a pure stand-up comedian, and one of the most
underrated of all time.
Don’t be confused by his delivery or his rather unique usage of paraprosdokians.
His wording may very well be the smartest of any comedian ever.
This is a video of his older E=MO2 and Live at the Hasty Pudding Theatre material.
There is nobody quite like…Emo Philips!

Absolutely classic stuff!
More to come in the days ahead…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *