Episode 99 - London
Guest:Lock the gates!
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Really?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Pow!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:And it's also... Eh, what the fuck?
Guest:What's wrong with me?
Guest:It's time for WTF!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:With Mark Maron.
Marc:Okay, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuckineers?
Marc:What the fuck nicks?
Marc:What the fuckanots?
Marc:What the fuckaroos?
Marc:They keep coming.
Marc:If you want to send them, go ahead and send them.
Marc:It's always nice to hear from you.
Marc:I try to read all your emails, as you know.
Marc:This is Marc Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:This is the podcast that people are listening to.
Marc:The groovy one.
Marc:Why did I just say that?
Marc:I don't even know why I just said that.
Marc:I'm in a hotel room in Atlanta, Georgia, folks.
Marc:I'm in the home of Coca-Cola.
Marc:I am in the home of CNN.
Marc:I am in the cradle of the South.
Marc:Is that what you call it?
Marc:The cradle of the South?
Marc:The cradle of the Confederacy at one time?
Marc:I have no idea.
Marc:My history is rusty.
Marc:But there was a time where I judged the South.
Marc:I still judge.
Marc:Of course, I judge.
Marc:We all judge.
Marc:It's part of the fun of being alive is struggling with our judgments of things and finding out we're wrong most of the time.
Marc:But I do.
Marc:I do come here quite frequently.
Marc:And there was a time and I've once said that we've all made fun of the South and I have gotten emails from you guys.
Marc:saying that i'm a little hard on the south but i have to be honest with you i was just stereotyping i was being uh narrow-minded in a sense i was doing something for effect because i've met nothing but nice people uh in my trips to uh to georgia and tonight uh i got two shows at the laughing skull lounge i've done a couple already uh what the fuckers are coming out they're they're introducing themselves we're hanging out a bit it's it's been great fun
Marc:I still I still will stand by my statement that there is an ignorance in the American South that runs so deep.
Marc:It actually has integrity.
Marc:I will stand by that.
Marc:But that does not diminish the fact that there are a lot of great people in this town, a lot of open minded people and a lot of what the fuckers.
Marc:And I'm glad you came out.
Marc:I also want to say a heads up.
Marc:If you have not seen the Entertainment Weekly blurb, we are on the must list.
Marc:Very exciting.
Marc:Don't know how that happened, but I'm grateful for it.
Marc:It was a nice little thing to happen.
Marc:One other.
Marc:Do I have one other thing I wanted to say?
Marc:I know I had something else on my mind that I wanted to thank you people for or say something positive about.
Marc:Oh, I did the now show.
Marc:In England.
Marc:Now, I didn't know that was a big deal, but it's a weekly comedy show on the BBC.
Marc:I did jokes that some of you might have heard before, but it was pretty exciting to be at the BBC.
Marc:All in all, it was very exciting to be in England and not be paralyzed with fear about being abroad or being eight hours ahead of my hometown.
Marc:or being around a culture that is different than mine.
Marc:I don't know where that fear is going, but I have to say it's high time that it left, and it makes me happy that it has.
Marc:London is a great city.
Marc:I had a great time there.
Marc:It's a real city.
Marc:It's an international city.
Marc:It's a culturally diverse city.
Marc:There's a lot of exciting...
Marc:Stuff there.
Marc:I ate good food.
Marc:I went shopping.
Marc:I met interesting people.
Marc:The audiences were spectacular.
Marc:And I'm starting to realize that comedy is becoming truly an international business.
Marc:That not unlike when I was in Ireland or when I travel anywhere to Glasgow or even to Australia, that because of
Marc:just the ability of the internet and the ability of technology and the ability of travel, that it really is an international business.
Marc:Doing a gig in London is no different than me flying to Georgia.
Marc:It's really come to that, that Americans, and I wish more British guys would come here.
Marc:I think it's a little more difficult for them.
Marc:I can't quite figure out why.
Marc:I think that there's only certain types of British acts that can make it in America for reasons that I'm not sure of.
Marc:They seem to have to have a lot of push, and they really have to reach out to the Anglophile audience.
Marc:I have to be honest.
Marc:I've never been a huge British comedy guy.
Marc:I respect Monty Python.
Marc:I respect Benny Hill.
Marc:Of course, who doesn't respect Benny Hill?
Marc:I mean, Benny Hill.
Marc:Huh?
Marc:Benny Hill?
Marc:I'm being slightly sarcastic.
Marc:But I never knew a lot about British stand-ups.
Marc:And honestly, there wasn't a huge British stand-up culture at the same time as there was in America.
Marc:I mean, I've talked to a lot of British guys, and they pretty much say that stand-up was an American art form, which I appreciate.
Marc:But I think there was a time where British comedy was just really goofy shit and guys in dresses.
Yeah.
Marc:And quite honestly, I condescended to British comedy a bit because I just didn't know.
Marc:I didn't know where to start.
Marc:I didn't know where to get into it.
Marc:I didn't know where the entry level was.
Marc:And I still don't.
Marc:And I just I wanted to feel like I wanted to see whether or not we shared something that of course we do.
Marc:You know, in my in my whole experience of dealing with the British people, when I when I perform for them, not all of them, not collectively, but the people that came to my shows, I don't know what I was thinking just because they speak in that accent does not mean they're better than us.
Marc:And that was my assumption that because of that accent, they must be judging me.
Marc:It's ridiculous.
Marc:I mean, they are just as self-hating as we are.
Marc:They invented certain things.
Marc:They invented us on some level.
Marc:They invented America in some respects, but obviously their empire crumbled long before ours.
Marc:So their self-esteem is not in the best of shape and hasn't been for decades.
Marc:So they even have a jump on us in terms of the whole empire collapsing thing.
Marc:So we had a lot more in common than I ever would have imagined.
Marc:And it didn't take that long for me to find it within them.
Marc:And I had very satisfying shows there.
Marc:And I wanted to connect with some of these British comics.
Marc:to see if we had the same things in common that I have with American comics.
Marc:Is the British comic mind or disposition similar to that of performers I know here?
Marc:And of course it is.
Marc:So when I went to the UK, I wanted to interview some guys.
Marc:I talked to my friend, Brendan Burns, who's been on the show before.
Marc:Australian guy works in London a great deal.
Marc:He recommended that I talked to Adam Bloom, a working comic in the UK.
Marc:And also he said that him and I should have a conversation because it would be an interesting conversation because we're both very intense and we're both very frenetic or something.
Marc:So I sought out Adam Bloom and I had a conversation with him.
Marc:And then I wanted to talk to Harry Deansway.
Marc:Harry Deansway is a guy that runs a magazine there.
Marc:The editor and publisher, I guess you would say, of The Fix magazine, which is a UK comedy magazine.
Marc:It used to be a regular, you know, a hard or a paper or what do you call it?
Marc:A real magazine.
Marc:Now it's an online magazine.
Marc:But he's sort of an arbiter of alt comedy taste and comedy in general in the UK.
Marc:I thought I'd talk to him, which I did.
Marc:And I also talked to Tim Key, who is the new golden boy of British comedy.
Marc:He's sort of an eccentric standup performer who does his angle is poetry or reading poetry that he has written.
Marc:He's a quirky, odd act who I was actually in Kilkenny with, and I did not get to see him in Kilkenny.
Marc:But he did have a hard time in Kilkenny, and as all of you know, so did I. So we ended up talking about that a bit.
Marc:And I talked to Reggie Watts.
Marc:Now, I know a lot of you might know Reggie.
Marc:Maybe you don't.
Marc:He's an interesting performer.
Marc:He's a musical act for the most part.
Marc:But he does stand-up.
Marc:He's a singular performer.
Marc:And he was in the UK at the same time I was.
Marc:So I thought that maybe I would chat with him.
Marc:about what it's like to perform abroad.
Marc:Obviously, music is significantly different than stand-up in a lot of ways, but he does a comedic musical performance, and he's a sweet guy, and he's a smart guy, and his act is very original, and he was fucking hanging out with Brian Eno.
Marc:Are you kidding me?
Marc:Brian Eno, Reggie Watts was hanging out with Brian Eno.
Marc:Brian Eno is great.
Marc:Brian Eno changed my life.
Marc:I mean, when I first heard Brian Eno, it just completely changed my mind about what music could be.
Marc:And over the years, he's done such amazing, beautiful stuff.
Marc:He did invent, originally invent a type of music that,
Marc:that, you know, could be considered annoying now because of what people have done to it.
Marc:I think he was really one of the first people to do that sort of layered, synthesized build to nothing that you hear in, you know, yoga studios or fancy spas.
Marc:But I've been listening to music a little deeper, a little more intensely because I'm starting to realize, as I said to you, that
Marc:That joy is hard to come by for me and I'm starting to get old and I'm starting to realize that maybe I have to reach out and find it and appreciate it and not be afraid to do that.
Marc:I was on the plane coming back from London and I was watching movies.
Marc:On the plane, they had a film library of classics.
Marc:I watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and I was just elated.
Marc:It's such a funny, sweet movie with such great scenes, and I realized there are things that make me feel good in life.
Marc:Why don't I do them?
Marc:Why don't I do more of them?
Marc:Why don't I revisit certain things, certain beautiful things that I have liked in my life?
Marc:Why don't I take a trip somewhere that makes me happy?
Marc:Why do I got to put things off just because, ah, it's a pain in the ass.
Marc:I got to order a thing and then go to a place.
Marc:I got to pick it up at the other thing.
Marc:Well, it's just I'm done with that.
Marc:It's time to engage.
Marc:I don't have much time left.
Marc:Who knows how much time any of us have left.
Marc:And I just bought a book by Grill Marcus, who wrote Lipstick Traces and Mystery Train.
Marc:I guess you would call him a music critic, but he's he's more of a cultural critic and he uses music as his as his portal into assessing history and art and time and everything else.
Marc:He's sort of a lyrical, poetic writer, and he's got a new book called Listening to Van Morrison.
Marc:Now, I came to the Van Morrison buffet late.
Marc:I always found Van Morrison a bit annoying, and I think I trivialized him or put him into a box in my head.
Marc:I think he always made me uncomfortable, and I should have sought that out more than push it away.
Marc:And after reading a review by Lester Bangs of Astral Weeks, I got into Astral Weeks, and it was mind-blowing to me.
Marc:And I'm a huge fan of TB Sheets,
Marc:And I don't know the full Van Morrison catalog, but I bought this book because it looked interesting.
Marc:It's basically meditations.
Marc:It's basically pieces that Grill Marcus has put together over assessing and interacting with the entire scope of Van Morrison's career.
Marc:And if you listen to the music while you read the pieces, it's spectacular.
Marc:And it just made me realize that
Marc:There is depth to anything that we decide what the depth is that either it exists or it doesn't exist.
Marc:But in order to navigate that depth, you have to engage in it and you have to go the distance with it.
Marc:That active listening or that active living or active seeing.
Marc:And creating a life for a piece of art or for something that moves you is something that you do.
Marc:It's something that you put into context in your life or you see in the history of what's outside of you.
Marc:It's up to you.
Marc:Either you can feed or you can appreciate as deep as you want whatever it is that moves you.
Marc:Feed on it or love it.
Marc:So your last name's Deansway, right?
Guest:Yeah, that's right.
Guest:Harry Deansway.
Guest:Yeah, that's right, yeah.
Marc:Now you are sort of an arbiter of taste, and you are sort of an entrepreneur and a guy who is trying to define something, to define a niche within the British comedy community with what is now an online magazine, The Fix.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And this was a hard copy magazine for a while.
Marc:And what was the intention of putting that out initially?
Guest:Well, the initial intention was I felt I used to be a stand-up comedian.
Guest:That's what I started off doing.
Guest:And filmmaker.
Guest:That was like my primary interest.
Guest:And I found that there were, I was seeing really sort of talented other comedians who were doing gigs, you know, to...
Guest:not bad crowds, doing really well, getting big laughs.
Guest:And then that wasn't translating to success on TV or more mainstream success.
Guest:And so I was wondering, so how come it's working where it works on this level in the comedy club where it's just an audience and a comedian and they're laughing and it's going well, but that isn't progressing to the next level.
Guest:And then I realized that it was because,
Guest:there was no, nothing behind these comedians.
Guest:Right.
Guest:There was no community.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There was no community.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Whereas, so if they went to a TV person, they're like, well, who are your fans?
Guest:And all they can say is, well, I did, I've been doing a few gigs and they've been going really well, you know,
Guest:yeah yeah whereas the idea behind the magazine was to build a fan base for this type of comedian and then when they go to see tv film people they've got something behind them well they can bring your magazine yeah they can say look i'm in the fix this has however many thousand readers and uh you know
Marc:And it was a reaction against, I have to assume that you don't have anything against mainstream comedy, but you just felt that it was too closed.
Guest:Yeah, I'm not a snob.
Guest:I appreciate it.
Guest:It's not some mainstream comedy that's great if it makes you laugh, but it's not what floats my boat, as I say.
Marc:But as you're seeing now, part of your work is seeing fruition in that many of these comics that may not have been mainstream at a different time are now becoming mainstream.
Marc:And that's just by virtue of the fact that you created a market or you helped create a market.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, let's use Stuart Lee as an example.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I know he's interviewed on this podcast.
Guest:He was he was about to give it all.
Guest:I had given it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Given it up for four years.
Guest:yeah yeah and um it was sort of he just sort of had come back into it as the fix had started yeah and we we put him on the cover almost like straight away yeah and um i'm sure not sure how much of an effect it had but all of a sudden you know he put it people in tv were seeing him on the cover of a magazine again his you know he was getting back into comedy and i think it you know really helped put him back in people's
Marc:minds right yeah uh so on that level that's how that worked yeah how can people find the the fix uh www.thefixonline.com because i just find that a lot of americans and i'm included in this i i just don't know you know we seem to be sort of uh insulated over there that you know we don't really think that you know comedy exists like we know it elsewhere or that you know it has the same relevance but but certainly there's a
Guest:Oh, it's really, it's like it's never been more vibrant now than it has been for 20 years.
Marc:And do you think that's because of things like The Fix and because people are able to find their own audiences now?
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:The internet is completely the reason for that.
Guest:All of a sudden, you know, you don't need a manager or TV to get a fan base.
Marc:Right, you just need a ridiculous video.
Guest:Yeah, or whatever, yeah.
Marc:To get someone's interest.
Guest:Yeah, you can control the medium of communication yourself.
Marc:Do you find that people here have had success with that?
Guest:Starting to, yeah.
Guest:I mean, I think you're still fighting laziness of creative people.
Guest:You know, a lot of them are lazy.
Marc:Yeah, that's part of the breed.
Marc:Yeah, the more talented, the more they just refuse to engage.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:And do the work.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that's, I mean, the internet hasn't alleviated that problem.
Marc:So what do you think of Edinburgh then?
Marc:You know, you're going up there and what, you know, I mean, I had a miserable experience.
Guest:A lot of people do.
Guest:Honestly, I don't like it up there.
Guest:It's too much comedy.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It's too many shows on.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, like this year, 906 comedy shows.
Guest:How many of those people are going to get a TV show out of it?
Marc:Well, is that really the, I mean, see, this is the other thing about this idea that, you know, when you say there's no mainstream and yet the goal is still to become mainstream.
Marc:I mean, you know, that's what we're talking about.
Marc:See, you know, so it's sort of this weird thing is that, you know, as opposed to seeing comedy,
Marc:that we're talking about as alternative, what we're really talking about in the terms we're talking about is a redefinition of the industry itself.
Marc:We're just calling it this because this is how your generation is going to rise through the ranks and become show business.
Marc:So then what is real alternative comedy?
Marc:Are there still people around that will not ever be mainstream yet are spectacular?
Guest:Yeah, well, Stuart Lee is a prime example of that.
Guest:He's successful.
Guest:He's not mainstream by any stretch of the imagination.
Guest:But he earns a comfortable living for the work he does.
Guest:And he can't ask for any more than that.
Guest:He writes for newspapers.
Guest:He's got his own TV show.
Guest:He can do tours and make money and make a nice living out of it without having to sell out his principles.
Marc:Right, so the drive is really to find your people.
Guest:Your niche audience.
Guest:It's all about, for me, since I've started doing the fix, it's about having a niche audience.
Guest:The number, the figure I have in my head that I'd like to reach is like maybe 100,000.
Guest:And if you can buy into your stuff 100,000 people, that's... Sure, if you can get them to pay something, sure.
Marc:Yeah, I find that you can find...
Marc:100,000 people.
Marc:But they're much more likely to hang around if they don't have to pay anything.
Guest:Yeah, that's true.
Guest:But I think the key is to get them to pay for it.
Guest:How are you going to do that?
Guest:Well, that's the big question, isn't it?
Guest:Well, what do you got?
Guest:Well...
Guest:Well, it's giving them something that's worth paying for.
Guest:My philosophy for the magazine has always been, if someone's funny, write something funny, and if someone reads it and goes, that's funny, then they'll come and see you, rather than my opinion on whether someone's funny.
Guest:How about, here's me, this is what I'm funny, come and see me.
Guest:That's always been my philosophy.
Guest:Let's showcase the act for what they can do.
Guest:so you have them actually write stuff yeah it's definitely it's always been about that the the develop working with them to write stuff oh that's interesting approach and that works yeah i think so i think you know you read a funny article you laugh and you know oh that person's funny whereas you read one person's opinion on it i mean that's relevant you know they can get their quotes and everything for their posters out of it you know it's useful yeah but i think the way we do it's much better
Marc:Now, let's just talk about like right now in terms of who's working like in your world.
Marc:So because this is like my show is primarily listened to by an American audience.
Marc:And as I said, I'm guilty of this as well.
Marc:If they were to seek out some British comics that they might not know who they are, who would they be?
Marc:I mean, Tim Key is one.
Marc:Stuart Lee.
Marc:Stuart Lee, of course.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But some of the younger guys.
Guest:The younger guys.
Marc:Mark Watson?
Guest:Mark Watson's an interesting guy, actually.
Guest:He's an interesting act.
Marc:Yeah, I've seen him before.
Marc:He's very quick.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And he seems fairly improvisational.
Guest:Yeah, he's great.
Guest:I'd check him out, Mark Watson.
Guest:Newer, sort of really newer acts.
Guest:There's a double act again called Cardinal Burns who are like sketch sort of stuff.
Guest:They've got a few viral things online worth checking out.
Guest:They work really well on film.
Guest:They do a lot of film stuff and they're really good at that.
Guest:But then they've also got a live act.
Marc:What about that dude that used to have the big collar and the glasses?
Guest:Oh, Harry Hill.
Guest:Yeah, he's that is quintessential English humor.
Guest:That is like archetypal.
Guest:Is he mainstream?
Marc:Oh, he's he's he's he is mainstream, but he keeps his sort of because he seems odd because a lot of people who are British just by virtue of the fact that they're British would be alternative acts where I live.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What do you attribute the inability for a bigger number of British acts to cross over to the States?
Guest:Well, I think it's the same as music.
Guest:It's just a big job.
Guest:You know, it's a big country.
Guest:If you want to break it over there, it's a lot of work.
Guest:So if you're doing well over here, it's hard enough to break here.
Guest:To go over there and do that, you've got to go over there for a year.
Marc:Yeah, and then also here, because of the intimacy of the industry.
Marc:I mean, if you get on TV, you're in.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:that's that's an amazing gift you know in america you know everybody gets on tv yeah i really at some point comics not comics yeah very very little it makes very little difference right that that you know if you you know i've had two half hours on comedy central you know and i'm not a huge act i mean if you had two half hours in england i mean you'd have a good run for a few years yeah definitely it's just a much bigger situation yeah yeah yeah yeah interesting and i can understand what do you think of americans that that move here in general
Guest:Well, I prefer American comedy to British comedy.
Marc:But specifically, without mentioning names.
Guest:Oh, well, it's an easier playing field for them, right?
Marc:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You think so?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, they're in America.
Marc:Right, but the comedy they do in comparison to the comics that you respect who are American and have come up in America.
Marc:I mean, the Americans that come here are doing something different, aren't they?
Guest:yeah some are but then some sort of like i think rich hall who i'm an absolute massive fan of yeah you know he's he's got a british sensibility about him he is american but right he's been here a long time yeah but he's someone who's really integrated into it i think he's a prime example
Guest:Right.
Guest:He was quite successful in America, wasn't he?
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:He was a different act when he was an American comic.
Marc:He was a little more quirky.
Marc:I think he really found his voice here.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But then there are people like Reginald Hunter, who doesn't work at all in the States.
Guest:No.
Marc:no no no there was a guy named dave foley i think not dave is that his name yeah yeah like i remember you know being in the san francisco comedy competition with him a million years ago but he never had he never surfaced at all in america uh renee hicks was another one who was here for years uh i know those other two i read the hunters become absolutely massive now he's huge over here
Marc:Yeah, so that's interesting.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And why?
Marc:Why?
Marc:Yeah, I mean, what does he represent in that he can't, he's not known as like, well, here's this guy from America now.
Marc:I mean, he's known as the British American in a way.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But what is his material like?
Guest:Well, it's quite political.
Guest:Political.
Guest:In fact, his whole shtick is an outsider view on Britain.
Guest:That's his whole angle.
Guest:It's like he'll talk about that.
Guest:That's what his act is.
Marc:Well, I've met him and I've seen him work.
Marc:I met him in Australia and he was doing a festival there and he actually brought me on stage in the middle of his show because he wanted to go get a drink and it was very peculiar.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But he's a very nice guy.
Marc:I always wondered if it was an easier go for them to build a career here.
Guest:Because Canadians do it as well.
Guest:Yeah, I think it is.
Marc:And Hicks did it to some degree.
Guest:I think it's a smaller mark.
Guest:It's what I was saying.
Guest:It's the reverse of what I was saying.
Marc:But you sort of have to take the piss out of your own country to do it, right?
Marc:A little bit.
Guest:yes or no yeah but it's the reverse isn't it it's like we're we're you know we're small and you're big so to go over there it's it's a bigger you don't get as much going the other way do you know like we were saying no you don't get as much british there's so many america's so huge and it's such a you know you really have to go you really have to get a lot of money and publicity behind you yeah that's what i'm saying so that's why you don't get a lot of british people going out but then it's cheaper to come over here right it probably works out as better odds isn't it
Marc:yeah i hope so if you're a new comedian we'll see what happens yeah yeah yeah well you're doing well all right i'm doing okay we'll see what happens if i don't if i don't ruin it myself we'll be all right well harry gainsway thank you for talking to me and uh it's uh the fix online dot com dot com yeah great thanks man all right cheers man
Marc:Well, you know, I was sort of fragile last night for reasons I can't quite understand.
Marc:And my guest in my flat, my temporary flat here in London is Tim Key.
Marc:Do you call yourself a comedian or a poet?
Guest:Was that rhetorical?
Marc:No.
Marc:Does that mean was I taking the piss out of you?
Marc:No.
Marc:No, no.
Marc:I mean, did you?
Guest:I would say the doing comedy began before doing poetry.
Yeah.
Marc:Oh, it did.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:So the poetry is actually... The poetry is about four years old.
Marc:It's a vehicle, though.
Marc:You were a comedian.
Marc:You started as a comedian.
Marc:You didn't start as a poet who said, this isn't working out.
Guest:No, I started as a comedian who said, this isn't working out.
Guest:I'm one of those comedians who sort of, to make it work, needs to add some poetry.
Guest:That was it?
Guest:Yeah, it was frustrating.
Marc:Oh, that's hilarious.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Here I thought it was the other way around.
Marc:I thought, like, this guy was an honest poet.
Guest:No.
Marc:No.
Guest:Oh, what?
Guest:You thought it was an honest poet who was suddenly exploited and sort of pushed into the comedy world.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And doesn't know he's funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's a better story, isn't it?
Guest:Yeah, this poor little autistic fella.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Doing his little poems.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:No, it's... That should be the story.
Marc:Make that the story.
Guest:Okay, it's that.
Guest:Okay, good.
Marc:I've been a poet for about 15 years now.
Marc:Yeah, good.
Marc:That's amazing that you finally found your audience through the comedy venue.
Marc:That's unusual.
Guest:Yeah, it is weird because I know a lot of people do it the other way around where they sort of do their comedy and then land upon like a bit of poetry.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:I've known many people that have gone right into poetry.
Guest:Mine's a much more romantic route.
Marc:I think so.
Marc:I think because yours has a happy ending.
Marc:A comedian becoming a poet is a very sad thing, isn't it?
Guest:We see it all too often.
Marc:Aren't we?
Marc:I think I'm on the way there myself.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Oh, I sensed you were quite close to doing a poem last night.
Marc:Yeah, very close.
Marc:Free form, free verse, not structured.
Marc:No.
Marc:Yeah, I think there were poems within what I was doing.
Guest:I saw, through my prism, I sensed the whole thing was basically a poem.
Marc:I think that's a fine way to look at it.
Marc:That's certainly what I'm gunning for, is that universal truth.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I'm fucking tired of it.
Guest:Of comedy.
Marc:Oh, God.
Marc:Last night, it was just exhausting.
Marc:And you were there last night.
Marc:But we don't need to talk about me.
Marc:Because we did Meet and Kill Kenny, and we both had a bad time there.
Marc:i i did all right oh wait a minute wait a minute that you're changing your story all around i feel cocaine was the making of me oh my god that's the first time where i really felt completely in control over like a large audience you are lying i am not gonna let this go i'm not gonna let this pass i from what i understood after our conversation last night that you i mean you were you were at the end of the europe up there
Guest:Yeah, it was certainly close to the end of my rope.
Guest:I found it quite fiddly in Old Kilkenny.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I felt like, yeah, there was a sufficient amount of things to try and overcome there.
Marc:So tell me the experience.
Guest:Well, my experience of Kilkenny was a little fiddly.
Guest:I did a couple of gigs, which didn't go that well.
Guest:And then I did another one, which was a little worse.
Guest:And then I had the worst gig of my life.
Guest:And then finished with one slightly worse than that.
Guest:That was me.
Guest:And the thing was is that if they were bad, I mean, those rooms were packed.
Guest:There were hundreds of people.
Guest:Yeah, it was almost sort of, it was pretty much out-of-body experience time.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:See you later.
Guest:Watching myself just, I mean, like, it was sort of watching myself deteriorate from, I mean, to just being like a guy in front of a... A lonely, raw guy.
Guest:I was just sort of watching myself thinking, oh, poor guy.
I mean...
Guest:Look at him out there.
Guest:How's he going to win them back?
Guest:He's just a guy.
Guest:And at the end of it, just silence and me sort of beckoning over to myself and saying, come here, come on, let's get out of it.
Guest:I know that exact feeling.
Marc:Now, you do a very specific thing.
Marc:I think that with guys like you who do a very specific thing and it's becoming popular and it's interesting and it's unique, that you can't really...
Marc:in the middle of it go, oh, this isn't working out.
Marc:How about a little dancing?
Guest:It's true, yeah.
Guest:I kind of, well, I mean, I do and I don't do a specific thing.
Guest:I mean, you know, it's still kind of broadly, I'd say, comedy.
Marc:No, but it's like you're a character up there in a way.
Guest:I mean, I know it's certainly a little heightened, you know, and it's kind of, uh, over the years, like I started doing this about three or four years ago, the poetry.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that was a character.
Guest:I'd say like, it was, uh, I was, I portrayed a kind of drunken poet.
Guest:Uh huh.
Guest:And then, uh, you know, as I've done it more and I've kind of, um, become more, you know, grown into it and stuff.
Guest:And, uh, I did, I, it's much looser and things.
Guest:And so now I'd say it's, it's much closer to being like, you know, a persona.
Guest:It's like, it's just me, my stage persona.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So, but I mean, the problem I have is like, I kind of, I guess, one element of what I've done in the past certainly is a bit divisive at the top.
Guest:Right when I start, I don't mind playing that game a little bit where some of the audience are loving it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And some of the audience are thinking, I have no idea what's going on.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Some of the audience are hating it.
Guest:Right.
Right.
Guest:So I mean, even like in my Edinburgh show last year, I was kind of doing that right at the top.
Guest:But then my aim was to kind of get people right back on board pretty quickly.
Guest:But there's still a little bit of jeopardy in the air.
Guest:And there's a little bit of, you know, people a bit fascinated by what's going on.
Guest:But primarily I'm doing the same job as you are, you know, trying to make people laugh.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But in Dublin, that was kind of a mind doing.
Guest:Like I'd start off by doing something a bit divisive.
Guest:often lose maybe 90% and then I'd just let it go too far that I couldn't bring it back.
Guest:Yeah, it's interesting when that happens.
Guest:It was interesting, yeah.
Guest:You're rolling the die.
Guest:Yeah, it was deeply interesting.
Guest:It fascinated me.
Guest:In not a good way.
Guest:No.
Guest:It was an unhealthy fascination.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, it's a risk.
Guest:It's a gamble.
Guest:It's a gamble.
Guest:Yeah, it's like taking a car off, you know, going so far to the left that you're almost off the road and then swinging it back in.
Guest:And you've just taken it too far and it just goes over the cliff.
Marc:Well, what is it that you do in that first few minutes?
Guest:Well, what I do is, like, I do these poems, and I start off with a poem that is generally, it's not, I have, like, a few, like, poems.
Guest:I've got loads.
Guest:And some are funny.
Guest:Some are, they're funny, you know, they're written to be funny.
Guest:Others are kind of written to be deliberately difficult to put your finger on.
Guest:They're just a, they're just a kind of a nonsense.
Guest:Troubling?
Guest:Yeah, well, they're just, like, they're just nothing, you know?
Marc:Well, they don't have any, you mean, like, so you present one, and they don't have any closure, and they don't make sense, and people are expecting something, so you're fucking with their head.
Guest:Yeah, so I just present usually like a three or four line poem where if you like it and if you sort of think, oh, I kind of like this guy, this is quite funny, then with that poem your reaction might be, ah, I don't know why, but I find that kind of quite funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But there's nothing discernibly funny about it.
Guest:So if your reaction is, well, I don't think that's very funny, then you can then back that up by analysing it and thinking...
Guest:Yeah, in fact, that's not funny.
Marc:I'm sure of it.
Marc:I've done the math.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So why is he... Right, I'm interested to see what this guy does next, because right now I hate this guy.
Guest:Hate.
Guest:But that's the thing.
Guest:Like, my act is, you know, it kind of works.
Guest:It's kind of fine.
Guest:But that was what I found in Kilkenny.
Guest:Like, there was a lot of people just kind of staring at me.
Marc:You divided them very effectively into everyone not liking you.
Guest:I don't think I divided them.
Marc:Yeah, you're right.
Guest:Yeah, you did.
Guest:It was you and them.
Guest:Yeah, I divided myself from them really early.
Guest:And they just kept stepping back further and further.
Marc:When I was in Kilkenny, you know, and people who listen to this program, you heard me go through all that because I was fighting to try to get to find material that I could make work there.
Marc:on a tangent how did you like did you so you were having like a few problems in kilkenny yeah did you find it made it because you do your podcast and you kind of talk a lot about it yeah did that help you well it helps me but you know there there is a line where we have to draw where this is a liability you know we can do pretty much whatever we want we've picked an amazing job and one of the bad things about the job is that you may bomb sometimes
Marc:It doesn't matter where you are in your career.
Marc:So I think as a grown-up comedian, you have to walk away from it and say, bad night.
Guest:But that's the funny thing.
Guest:What really staggered, what really shook me was the fact that that was definitely my worst gig I've had.
Guest:Incontrovertibly, like the gigs when I just started.
Marc:Because there was so many people.
Marc:I think the difference is that when you have a room of 400 people, and they don't get it at the same time, it's daunting, and it's a horrible feeling.
Marc:Because bombing for 50 people, who gives a shit?
Marc:Or getting three laughs in a room full of 75 people, or even 125 people, that kind of bomb, that's like a comedy club bomb.
Marc:But really having 400 people look at you, looking at you going,
Marc:What the fuck is this guy doing up there?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:It's horrendous.
Guest:Yeah, that's a good description of what was happening.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That was it, yeah.
Guest:It's horrendous.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, there was a bit of that.
Guest:it's because you're looking at them looking at you something expecting something there was no no one heckled like no i i think it was like shock there was assumed it was assumed that that would not be the done thing i think it was assumed that this is not a situation where you heckle the guy this is not a situation where you know this could be a bit of a feeding frenzy and we could like duff this guy up a bit i think it felt bad for you if we heckle here this guy will um that'll be it this guy this guy is at his limit
Guest:I mean, I was like, by the end of it, I was starting to talk about the gig and sort of, I was sort of pretty apologetic.
Guest:Well, not apologetic so much as just baffled.
Guest:Like I said, I honestly, like, this was not the plan.
Guest:That's what I was saying.
Guest:I did not plan to just stand here and be absolutely bullshit.
Guest:That was not what I was planning to do.
Guest:And it was kind of...
Guest:you know i got a laugh right at the end i can't remember what it was i got a big laugh um i think i started like saying that i i was not the no one walked out i was i was focusing on the fact that no one walked out and then uh contextualizing that by saying that i was first on the bill so it would be big it would be a big move to walk out like there was a lot and uh people like started laughing yeah and then like people were applauding and i sort of um
Guest:I sort of ascertained that people were sort of applauding the concept of further acts.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And applauding the idea that there was a future beyond me.
Guest:You were getting off.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A future beyond me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:People started to dream.
Guest:Of a world.
Guest:People started to dream of a world where I wasn't in front of them.
Guest:And I mentioned this.
Guest:I talked about that.
Guest:And I welcomed back the host.
Guest:And there was like a really warm applause.
Guest:It was almost like they kind of thought, oh, gee.
Guest:Good luck to him.
Guest:Good luck to him in his next endeavor.
Guest:And during that applause, I came back to the mic.
Guest:Because I think I thought of some other wisecrack.
Guest:so I started approaching the mic and I think someone heckled then I was like buffeted back like as in that good lad well no no that's enough I mean we still mean that you should go but you go with our best wishes
Guest:Oh, that's spectacular.
Guest:It was genuinely, it was genuinely hideous.
Guest:When I wore Dawn for the final gig and it started badly, it's just very, everything becomes very simple in your mind when you sort of have a flashback.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're having a flashback to exactly that situation.
Guest:A traumatic experience.
Guest:It's not a great deal of flashing back you have to do.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This was bad yesterday.
Guest:This was bad about 60 minutes ago.
Guest:yeah it was it was right after yeah it was amazing so you bounced back well what i did was i had a the next gig was i just wanted to just uh i didn't know how badly i was you know it you know how deeply it had affected me so the next one i suppose you just aim the next one i aimed like to to uh get a laugh at some stage possibly or a smile something
Guest:yeah but the next gig was nice and at the end of them i said you know thanks for that because i don't know what you did i didn't know what i was you know if this had gone badly i don't know what i would have done and this is back here in london oh this is like you know a small nice intimate yeah you know nice you know if that goes wrong then i don't know what i would have done right and then i had another couple that week
Guest:And then crucially, I had like a new material night where I just booked a place out with my promoter and just did an hour and a half of new stuff, all new, completely new.
Guest:And that just completely started to get everything moving again.
Marc:Oh, that's great.
Guest:Because what I did in Kilkenny was increasingly as I got more confused by the whole thing and more drawn into myself and more kind of embattled, I relied more and more on older stuff.
Guest:That's the worst.
Guest:It's a funny thing.
Guest:I just need to get out of this.
Guest:I need to get through this gig.
Marc:Then you hate yourself more for doing the older stuff.
Guest:Yeah, the last go I did, I opened with what was probably my best poem from three years ago, which would always kill.
Guest:I'd always hold it back in the gig, and it would be like 10 minutes in, I'd do that and really milk it.
Guest:Did it work?
Guest:Oh, it was a dreadful start.
Guest:No, it didn't work.
Guest:Well, I mean, some people laughed, but I also knew I had nowhere to go because it disrupted the whole shape of my act.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you open with your closer, kind of.
Guest:Yeah, kind of.
Marc:Well, you want to read some?
Guest:A poem?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I didn't mind.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And for the American audiences, where can they find your stuff mostly?
Marc:Tim Key?
Guest:Do you have a website?
Guest:You can go on my website, timkey.co.uk.
Guest:Timkey.co.uk.
Guest:Or there's a website called The Invisible Dots.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:That's where you can get my other book, and I've got an album, which I'm releasing this month.
Marc:Oh, great.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because I find that you're one of these up-and-coming, interesting British acts that, of course, people in my country know nothing about.
Marc:Do you have any plans to go to the United States?
Guest:I go to New York a fair bit.
Guest:I sometimes film my poems.
Guest:The guy I film with, my director, he lives in New York, so we shoot a lot in New York.
Marc:And do you do any stage work there?
Guest:I've done like a couple of gigs.
Guest:Not much.
Guest:Where?
Guest:I did one gig at the UCB a couple of years ago.
Guest:How was that?
Guest:Did it go all right?
Guest:Yeah, that was good, yeah.
Guest:And then did one at the comics.
Guest:And did one with a girl called Jessie Klein.
Guest:Yeah, I know Jessie.
Marc:Oh, you did her gig down the village?
Yeah.
Guest:um i don't know where it was it's like in a bookshop yeah it's in a bookshop right over in uh little italy uh the some housing works bookstore yeah that's it yeah yeah yeah she was great these are playing cards yeah these are playing cards because like i do some when i write my new stuff i tend to put it on uh on playing cards so i can uh because i read my poems on stage
Marc:And so you, oh, you bring the deck of cards up there?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, is that just a... It's just a, it's just what I kind of work out which ones I'm going to do.
Marc:Do you mention the cards or do you do a trick or shuffle them?
Guest:Don't mention the cards, don't do a trick, just kind of, just throw them down once I've done them.
Guest:On the floor?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah, on the floor, yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:This is a short one.
Guest:Rosemary Welsh.
Guest:This is poem 975.
Guest:Rosemary Welsh.
Guest:The blind adult film actress.
Guest:Cut herself on some braille.
Guest:She had to do her scenes left-handed for a week.
Guest:It's about a prosy.
Guest:Well, like a porn star.
Guest:This one's about impulse buying.
Guest:Scotty got into impulse buying.
Guest:Until he only ever bought things by impulse buying.
Guest:oftentimes he would buy a v-neck instead of say a nectarine in spite of his hunger on one occasion his torso a stink owing to a lack of soap he cycled into town but bought a denon amplifier on the day that he starved to death he bought viagra and tickets to see the bootleg beetles off ebay he did a bit about viagra last night that was funny
Guest:yeah it's uh it's pretty pretty pretty nasty stuff yeah but very fun this one's a bit shorter okay i counted to 100 and said i'm coming but it was a trick and she had left me that's it yeah relationship stuff here's one okay wear a pair of jeans she said again holding up the wranglers no either oh go on wear the jeans
Guest:No either.
Guest:But I just think, since I've bought the jeans, it'd be nice for me at any rate if I saw you in them.
Guest:No either!
Guest:Hitler stormed out.
Guest:It's about, um, it's a war poem.
Guest:I got that.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Now I got a picture of the Hitler in Wranglers.
Guest:Yeah, good picture to have.
Guest:It's nice.
Guest:That's how he would have wanted to be remembered, I suppose.
Guest:Yeah, sort of an American cowboy image.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Sat on his Jeep.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Give him another one.
Guest:Oh, another one?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Hang on.
Guest:This is kind of a bit more longer and a bit tender.
Guest:I like that.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I'll listen to it in that way.
Guest:Okay, so, yeah, if you can look a bit more earnest even.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:The most beautiful girl in the world, in brackets, a Chinese girl, works at a toll booth on a motorway, in brackets, in Sichuan province.
Guest:Several thousand modelling agents have been through and paid the toll in the last five years.
Guest:While she's been working there.
Guest:But never through her booth.
Guest:So she's never been spotted.
Guest:That's quite a sad one.
Guest:And as the years go by, so her eyes become dull and her allure diminishes.
Guest:It is almost too late.
Guest:The skin on her hands is toughening.
Guest:Her hair is becoming coarse.
Guest:Sad.
Marc:That is sad.
Guest:It's quite sad.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've just started doing that one, and that's exactly the reaction it's always gotten.
Guest:I don't even know whether people are thinking, all right, next, or whether they're thinking, that's sad.
Marc:Yeah, well, I mean, how many of those kind of poems do you do in the act where... One.
Guest:What?
Guest:Where there's nothing discernibly funny?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Um...
Marc:But not in an absurd way.
Guest:Of anything of any length, I would only do that once.
Guest:I'll often have one or two little ones that you just think, I don't know, that's kind of peculiar.
Marc:Peculiar is okay, because that can still be funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But that's a little sad.
Guest:Yeah, that's a little sad.
Marc:And how do you come off of that to get the laugh?
Marc:Do you sort of play it like that?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I kind of like would... I don't know how, actually.
Guest:I've only done it a few times.
Guest:I suppose I would...
Guest:Yeah, I'd usually eke a laugh out of them somehow.
Guest:Yeah, by saying, maybe that's not funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My whole act is just doing a poem and then saying, maybe not.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I'm glad it's working out for you, man.
Guest:Yeah, it's all right.
Guest:It's interesting to see you in the context of just having met you that once in Kilkenny.
Marc:Yeah, now we know each other a little better.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And had I known you were so shell-shocked and war-torn.
Guest:I dread to think what I've done if it had been an extra day.
Guest:I don't know where I would have gone after that.
Guest:Yeah, people would have been like, you're that guy?
Guest:I heard of you.
Guest:You're that guy.
Guest:Yeah, it was amazing.
Guest:Well, it was good talking to you, man.
Guest:Yeah, good talking to you.
Guest:Thanks, Tim.
Guest:Thanks for having me.
Thank you.
Marc:My guest is Adam Bloom, who is a British comedian.
Marc:And you're from Britain the whole time?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You grew up here?
Guest:I grew up in London, yeah.
Marc:Yeah?
Marc:See, I'm kind of curious about Jews.
Marc:I'm curious about Jews in London.
Guest:I'm as un-Jewish as a Jew can be.
Guest:My mother's not Jewish.
Guest:And my parents got divorced when I was five.
Guest:You can probably tell that by my face.
Guest:And I live with my mom, so I've had the non-Jewish side of my family bring me up.
Marc:oh okay i've still had the shtick i've still been around the stick but i haven't had the culture so much are you saying you don't like jews as a half jew no they don't like my mom but you are you close with your father yes but uh yeah yeah the weird thing about me is that like i i don't i know culturally that jews are certain people have a certain idea of what jews are like in the states you know but here i i don't i can't even i don't know much about british culture
Guest:Well, Jewish culture is a very, very, very, very small dot in the population of the country.
Guest:In the world.
Guest:No, but in New York, you can feel the Jewishness, can't you?
Guest:Right, yeah.
Guest:Are you from New York, by the way?
Guest:No.
Guest:For the people listening, we met two minutes ago.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Literally.
Guest:All I know is you're a comedian, and I like what you do from the clips I saw this morning.
Guest:And that's it.
Guest:And that's what's quite nice about this meeting.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:It's like a first date, and it's a little bit awkward.
Guest:But it's not awkward.
Guest:You know what I mean, though?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was walking out.
Guest:It felt slightly like I was...
Guest:going on a first date or visiting a prostitute or something.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:I don't think that's going to happen.
Marc:But maybe we could have a conversation.
Guest:Take the mini skirt off.
Marc:We're giving that a wrong message here.
Guest:I'm sorry.
Guest:Let me change.
Guest:So, but no, but Jewishness, you go to New York and you just, New York to me feels Jewish.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:People have got a Jewishness about them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The Jewish cultures sort of rubbed off on everybody else.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And in London, you know, there are so few Jewish people in England, at least, and most of them in London, somewhere in Leeds, and the rest are dotted around individually around the rest of the country.
Guest:You hardly notice them.
Guest:Because they're afraid to talk.
Guest:They don't stop.
Guest:That's what they've been dotted about.
Guest:So, yeah, so it's very... I always feel like if I was... If I'd grown up in New York with my Jewish dad...
Guest:uh he's in new york no no no hypothetically sorry he's from london but but i would be absorbed in jewish culture i've been completely removed from it i almost feel like i i've got to make some kind of uh what's the word pilgrimage back to it sure yeah yeah if you want but you're not you're not held to it because your mother's not jewish so there's no yeah there's no uh no reason no the guilt's built in yeah yeah
Marc:But it's built in through, usually, yeah, I mean, well, they must not, it must be difficult.
Marc:Do you have brothers and sisters?
Marc:I've got my older sister.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So I watch some of your stuff, and you're very funny, you're very intense, you're manic.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You've got good jokes.
Guest:Thank you.
Marc:You seem very popular.
Marc:Do you have a big following here?
Marc:No.
Guest:I've had a burst of success.
Guest:I've been doing it 16 years, and I had a burst of success.
Marc:Isn't that interesting?
Marc:Because, like, I saw some early clips.
Marc:It's funny on the Internet.
Marc:Nothing ever goes away.
Marc:No.
Guest:And then there's, like, recent ones, and then it's like, oh, look, he's grown up.
Guest:Well, the time, the bleached hair stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What happened to me without giving you a sob story was I kind of exploded.
Guest:Well, okay, I exploded onto the scene as in first gig to making a living in a year and a half and then up to regular television four years in.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And as a 27-year-old who...
Guest:bursting with ideas the industry went mad for me yeah and that fizzled out yeah and now i've plateaued yeah and i've got now is i haven't got a huge volume but what i've got is i'm in a quite an interesting situation because i get recognized probably three or four times a day yeah sort of you know on average and these are people who've probably seen me on tv years ago sure so they go hey are you um you're a comedian aren't you it's not so much adam bloom which is what it was 10 years ago so i'm slightly living in the shadow of my own
Guest:Of your self.
Guest:Of your successful self.
Guest:But I put on weight, which makes it harder to hide in that shadow.
Marc:Yeah, I think that's the first indication that your success wasn't as big as... I thought it was.
Guest:No, no, no.
Marc:It was probably plenty big.
Marc:But like, because I have the same thing.
Marc:It's like, you're that guy.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Like, if at this point they were going, you're Adam Bloom, then that fucking success, you've plowed yourself into their heads and they'll never forget you.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Fuckers.
Guest:Yeah, no, sure.
Guest:What I think I learned from that is that, you know, you have to keep hitting them regularly.
Guest:You know, I mean...
Guest:You know, the day after I had a sort of half hour special on TV, you know, it was everywhere I went.
Guest:And then two months later, it was, you know, a few times a day.
Guest:But they remembered my name.
Guest:But of course, 10 years later, why should they remember my name?
Guest:So what happens is, of course, a face on a poster.
Guest:sells tickets because people recognize that's that guy.
Guest:If I had an advert saying Adam Bloom with no picture, that would be a harder thing to sell tickets with.
Guest:I've still cashed in on that success, but I'm not building on it.
Marc:I don't know what it takes sometimes.
Marc:I've thought about that myself in terms of you can't make people like you.
Marc:You can't make people remember you.
Marc:All you can do is do what you do, and if they come, they come.
Guest:You and I may fall into the slightly cursed complement of comics, possibly.
Marc:A little bit of that.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So therefore, you know, the people who fully realize how good what we're doing is are people who don't make the decisions.
Marc:That's true.
Marc:Or are there the people that say like, wow, you're really great, but we just don't know what to do.
Marc:What do you see yourself doing?
Marc:So how long have you been married?
Marc:One and a half years.
Marc:And you just went right into the baby thing?
Guest:No, five months later.
Guest:You were with her for how long?
Guest:Seven years yesterday, by the way.
Marc:Oh, so you waited about six years to get married?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you had the baby.
Marc:And you're how old?
Marc:39.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Well, that's good.
Marc:Did you find yourself, were you a heavy-hearted, bitter man before you had a child?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:I've got a few issues.
Guest:I've got a few issues.
Guest:And there's another side to me that sometimes can pop up.
Guest:I've got quite a short temper.
Guest:Me too.
Guest:I have an anger problem, we call it.
Guest:My 2000 Edinburgh show, 2007 Edinburgh show, was about anger management.
Guest:The crux of it.
Guest:I don't like comedy that happens from funny things.
Marc:Anger ruined my marriage.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah, sure.
Marc:I mean, don't get too sad.
Marc:But I talk about it a lot, but you went to anger management?
Marc:We didn't get there.
Guest:We had a row on the phone.
Guest:We never even got to the session.
Guest:Who?
Guest:Me and the anger management guy.
Guest:No.
Guest:Are you serious?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I rang... This was the crux of a whole Edinburgh show, 2007.
Guest:And I don't like comedy that is based on a funny story where it just happens.
Guest:If an old lady slips on a banana and lands in a dustbin, that's a funny thing to see, funny thing to tell your friends at the pub.
Guest:I hate comedy that's based on
Guest:And the funny thing happened.
Guest:But if you tripped her, then... If I tripped her, at least I put some input into why the comedy happened.
Guest:Yeah, good point.
Guest:But I'm... And I will allow that.
Guest:But I don't like... I just don't like... Oh, I saw this funny thing the other day.
Guest:Really?
Guest:You're an accountant, then you saw an old lady slip on a banana, and now you're qualified to be a comedian.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But the...
Guest:what happened so this contradicts my theory the exception that proves the rule in everything I've done in comedy I went to see an anger management guy and he he rang me back I left a message he rang me back I found him on the internet and he rang me back and we spoke and we arranged a meeting but he said here's the address to send a check to I want you to send a check by tomorrow I will send you a text with the address of where your meeting is and
Guest:But please make sure this check is sent by two days time the latest others the point will be cancelled Now what happened was the two days went by and he never sent the text and I thought well I'm not sending a check for appointment I don't even know where the address is so he created a bit of a no-win situation So I sent him a text and look I don't feel comfortable sending a check not knowing where the address is I never see the text So I'm counting the appointment now the truth of the matter is there were gut reactions going on here and
Guest:As I spoke to him on the phone, he bigged up where the beautiful place that the meeting was going to be at.
Guest:I thought, self-promotion is never good.
Guest:You're going to go, this is a wonderful place.
Guest:You're coming to a wonderful place.
Guest:You own the place.
Guest:You're going to say it's wonderful.
Guest:That's already the sign of something just already slightly iffy.
Guest:There were other things I can't even remember.
Guest:But you know when your gut's telling you something's wrong?
Guest:You're talking to a con man and you're going...
Guest:doesn't mean there's something wrong here well these gut reactions are far more important than than you know usually they're right yeah yes because it's your subconscious telling your stomach to tense up right right so i had these things going on but then so what it was was partly an excuse to get out of the meeting but the other thing was you don't tell people to send checks and then not send addresses and also you forgot to send me an address why can't you send me an address there and then anyway
Marc:Right, yeah, because if you didn't get the money, you could just say, when I got there, we didn't get your money.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Marc:It just seemed shady.
Guest:It's shady.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And at the very best, I'm professional.
Guest:Right.
Guest:At the very best.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I got a voicemail saying, hi, you know, I'm just going to say that I thought your excuse was feeble and weak.
Guest:You could have rung me.
Guest:You could have emailed me.
Guest:And you're a complete waste of time.
Guest:And I'm glad I'm not working with you.
Guest:Goodbye.
Guest:And hung up.
Guest:That was the anger management guy?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And he got angry.
Guest:So...
Guest:so yes that was it can't practice what he preach yeah yeah so the idea of me having me you know that when i described to you before it sounded like the problem is me yeah but i stumbled across a very very dodgy bloke who uh i did some research on he wasn't as qualified as he claimed to be um he created a company called the british association of anger management was actually uh him you can call yourself the british association of anything call yourself whatever you want isn't that worrying no sure
Guest:of course it's worrying the other thing is as well that the website stop them no but the British Association of Stoppers and what he had was a picture of a woman attractive girl pulling an angry face and holding a fist and it had British Association and my instinct first time first moment
Guest:was that doesn't look like an official British company.
Guest:British companies don't have pretty bold punching fists.
Guest:It just looked a bit like it would almost be bad taste of a British association.
Guest:Like a satire.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:It looked like a parody.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:It just didn't.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:And it didn't go.
Guest:So those little gut reactions, I've got to trust those gut reactions more.
Guest:Yeah, I do too.
Guest:Because usually they're right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So what ultimately happened?
Guest:Well, I did an Edinburgh show.
Guest:I then went, so I finally realized I had to go and see someone about it.
Guest:Played the voice message.
Guest:And it was great playing the message.
Guest:Sure, yeah.
Guest:Another thing is he can't sue me.
Guest:You know why?
Guest:Why?
Guest:It's a recording he knowingly gave me.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Did you look into that?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Or did he try to sue you?
Guest:No, I looked into it.
Guest:No, he doesn't even know you did it, does he?
Guest:No.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I wrote to him.
Guest:I said, I'm doing an Edinburgh show about you.
Guest:I'm letting you know this so that it doesn't creep up on you.
Guest:Well, that was pretty decent.
Guest:Yeah, well, I told Ed Byrne.
Guest:Do you know Ed Byrne?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And he said to me, yeah, but you and I both know.
Guest:He's a very old friend.
Guest:He went, you and I both know.
Guest:That was also you just letting him know that it's happening.
Guest:So I had to go, yeah, yeah, you're right.
Guest:That was also a fuck you.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:It was.
Guest:But he wrote a really angry, threatening letter back at me.
Guest:We've worked sentences in capitals.
Guest:Which could just be a result of him dribbling on the cap slot key.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:He's yelling.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And it's like the irony here is just delicious.
Guest:There's a man whose job is to control people's tempers.
Guest:He pressed send.
Guest:The beautiful thing about emails is you can't go over them before you send them.
Guest:He happily... Boom.
Guest:you can say boom yeah that's also the dangerous thing about i've got a bit about that the dangerous thing about a descend button is that you don't have to say you know you can prepare the whole thing and go oh do i want to say this yeah you know what i mean it's that one second yeah if you prepared a sentence to me in an argument yeah in your mind and just press send yeah it would be easier to say something horrible so contradictory it kind of you know it makes it easier because you can take your time on a letter sure but it also makes it easier to say something horrible because you only have to press one button to get it out don't you
Marc:Right.
Marc:But, you know, there's always that thing where people are like, you know, just that's one of those ones you don't send.
Marc:You know that?
Marc:I mean, that's that's that's the thing about like I've sent emails like that where, you know, the rage is right there and you see you feel so righteous.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But the weird thing about anger and I think this is the only lesson anyone has to learn about it.
Marc:And I don't know that I've learned it is that just just give it a take a few breaths.
Marc:Give it a minute.
Marc:Walk.
Marc:Take a walk around the block.
Marc:Because when I hear people tell me that, because I have it, and I'm in a new relationship, and I fly off the handle over nothing just to get a reaction, to get someone upset, because I'm upset.
Marc:But literally, that thing where if you're a prideful person, and people are like, just sit down and take a breath.
Marc:Go in the other room.
Marc:Fuck you.
Marc:Fuck you.
Guest:We're doing this now.
Guest:That happened to me last week.
Guest:We did?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My wife sent me outside.
Marc:did you go yes oh good for you yes so adam bloom it was a good conversation do you feel better yes i do feel better you've reminded me that i love comedy ah then i've done my job oh thanks thanks we're off to have lunch now bye
Marc:So you got a little food in your beard, Reggie Watts.
Guest:It's on now.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:How are you, man?
Marc:Have you had coffee?
Marc:Are you awake?
Marc:You in it?
Marc:I'm awake enough, yeah.
Marc:You can just talk into that mic like it's a stand-up mic.
Guest:Hi, how are you?
Guest:Yeah, that's perfect.
Guest:All right, great.
Guest:So what the fuck, man?
Guest:England.
Guest:I know.
Guest:England.
Guest:Land of Ingles.
Guest:And you're hanging out with Brian Eno.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was yesterday, yeah.
Guest:And I will tonight, too.
Guest:Get out of here.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:He's having a singing.
Guest:He has this singing thing where people come by and sing like standards and other sheet music like stuff.
Marc:But what was it like hanging out with Brian Eno?
Guest:What'd you do yesterday?
Guest:He's the shit.
Guest:I've known him for a while.
Guest:I've known him for like five years now.
Guest:And this is the first time I've been to his studio.
Guest:I've always seen him in festival settings.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But...
Guest:It was great, man.
Guest:I mean, essentially, it's so weird, because I never really knew him.
Guest:I didn't know him as fans know him.
Guest:I knew of him, and I knew that he produced U2.
Guest:That was it?
Guest:That was kind of it.
Guest:So for me, getting to know him was more like just getting to know a friend.
Marc:Oh, that's amazing.
Guest:So it was nice.
Guest:So being in the studio, I don't have that preloaded, like, oh my god, he's done this and this.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:It's more like...
Guest:I have a little bit of a sense of that, but most of it was just me watching him work in the studio and him just going like, well, let's try this, Reggie.
Guest:Hook up your thing here.
Guest:And we just kind of fucked around.
Guest:Did you make any good sounds?
Guest:oh yeah definitely we did this like probably like a 10 12 like a 12 minute jam where i had the microphone going through my loop my delay machine and then he was he had that routed through his own effects so he was affecting my performance while and so and then i was like putting the microphone on guitar strings and like i'm doing weird noises and he was like messing with the effects and he was recording the whole performance
Guest:And essentially, that's what Brian does.
Guest:He just does jam sessions, takes bits and pieces of things, and then he just stores them.
Guest:And then he might use them for something in the future.
Marc:That's wild.
Marc:It must be the benefit of having a billion dollars from being the most incredible music producer on the planet to just hang out and have people over to make noise.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:The freedom of that.
Guest:I mean, it is freedom.
Guest:But, you know, the weird thing is, like, you can't.
Guest:He's such a normal night.
Guest:Not a normal guy.
Guest:But he's very calm, and you don't get that from him.
Guest:You don't feel that.
Marc:Oh, sure.
Guest:But some people like that.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Marc:Yeah, I'm not belittling his talent.
Marc:I'm a huge fan.
Marc:Oh, no, no.
Marc:It's enviable to have the freedom to hang out.
Guest:That's true.
Guest:No, absolutely.
Guest:But I think he does it in such great style.
Marc:Now, how many times have you been here?
Marc:To the London?
Guest:Yeah, to England in general.
Guest:I have been here probably one, two...
Guest:I don't know, probably like seven times or so, maybe.
Marc:Over the last, what, five years?
Guest:Over the last five years.
Marc:Now, I don't know if people know Reggie Watts, but he's sort of... You've been on the periphery of the comedy scene in New York because what you do is really a musical performance.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But it's very funny.
Marc:I mean, I think what threads it along and makes it different is that it is...
Marc:comedy to a degree yeah but it's really a musical performance yeah it's pretty deep and you use a lot of machines and you use your voice and things are looped around for as long as i've known you that was really the first time i saw a long set right and yeah you were to me you were just that guy with the hair yeah there's the guy with the hair what does he do i know i know and for years everyone's been saying like reggie watts is a genius you gotta go see reggie and i'm such a fucking douchebag because in my mind it's like well he does music comedy right i don't like music comedy
Guest:right and then i went and saw you and it's very uh moving it's very it's a big production yeah but but it's all stream of consciousness yeah man i mean you know the gig that you saw i was like it took me a while to get rolling i was so tired but like but yeah i mean essentially what it is is uh you know i go out there and i just start talking about shit i mean basically it's it's very simple it's like i call i call it bullshit music bullshit music bullshit music
Guest:Essentially, it's just me going out, having some idea in my head, kind of.
Guest:I go out and I just start talking.
Guest:And then at a certain point, I'm like, well, I should do a song.
Guest:And then I do a song and then I go back to talking.
Marc:But it's not just a song.
Marc:You do sound loops with your voice and other elements.
Marc:So in a sense, every performance, even if you're using similar musical themes, is different.
Guest:That is correct, yeah.
Marc:Even if you have songs, the way you're going to do them on any given night, not just musically, but in terms of texture, are different because of the way you use the machinery.
Marc:That's absolutely right.
Guest:Yeah, that's totally true.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, that's funny you picked up on that.
Guest:No one's ever really picked up on that.
Guest:But if I'm using a similar template, I fill it with different things.
Guest:Right.
Guest:If I'm like, oh, it's this kind of a groove.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it's a totally different song.
Marc:It's just interesting to me that, you know, because I'm not... You know, I listen to that type of music in terms of using technology like that, but not in hip-hop, really.
Marc:And I've never been in the sense of...
Marc:sampling or even... I'm sort of a purist when it comes to music, but when you see it happen in real time, when you use your vocals and then you create musical rhythms with your hands or your mouth or whatever sounds are going on, and then loop them into a layered thing, it's very interesting.
Marc:It has its own organic nature, even though it's looped.
Guest:Yeah, I know, because it's really at the whim of chaos.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Isn't it all...
Guest:It is.
Guest:Yeah, you're right.
Guest:It is.
Guest:Although some things look less so than others.
Guest:Well, I mean, I think part of performing is about managing chaos.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Yeah, I agree with that.
Guest:I always see it that way.
Guest:People see it inverse.
Guest:But I tend to see it that way.
Guest:Like you're surfing chaos.
Guest:It doesn't matter how much written material you have or how improvised you are.
Guest:Essentially, that's what you're always doing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I think so.
Marc:So now in terms of performing over here, what are the differences?
Marc:Because I know in New York, I mean, you're building a following.
Marc:You're doing well.
Marc:People are starting to know who you are.
Marc:But do you find what's the difference in performing for the Brits?
Guest:Well, for me, I use an English accent a lot when I perform, even when I'm in the States.
Guest:Just for fun?
Guest:Just for fun.
Guest:I don't really know why I do it.
Guest:Because you like to fuck with people's heads.
Guest:Okay, there's that.
Guest:But that little thing.
Guest:But, I mean, the great thing is I get to use the accent.
Guest:I remember the first time I came over, I was really nervous.
Guest:Because I kind of like, it's not that I'm like, now I'm going to speak in an English accent.
Guest:It just kind of naturally happens because it's my default accent.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But so when I did it, I was like, oh, no, they're going to they're going to find me out.
Guest:They're going to hate me.
Guest:And everyone thought I was British.
Guest:So he pulled it off.
Guest:So I got lucky.
Guest:I was like, OK, good.
Guest:You know, not I mean, if you held it for the whole show.
Guest:Well, for I mean, in my first time I came over.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But like this show, I switch accents.
Guest:You know, I noticed that.
Guest:I like doing that.
Guest:But but that helped a lot.
Guest:And then I just love the humor, man.
Guest:The sense of humor that Brits have is just like they're great.
Guest:Their greatest shows like their greatest exports are so fucking brilliantly funny because they're so good at dry, dry, dry, hyper cutting, sarcastic humor.
Guest:And it's so absurd and silly, but like right on the nose.
Guest:And so I'm a big fan of their comedy.
Guest:So when I come over, I employ some of the cadences or some of the timing and stuff like that.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like what does that mean?
Guest:Well, it's like, you know, when you're telling a joke, usually in the US, it's a little bit more...
Guest:it's a little bit more open in a way.
Guest:Like, um, it's still all about timing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But, um, but the Brits have a very specific cadence, you know, like every English speaking country kind of does where, you know, like that's why we don't do the things that we should.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it's up to, you know, there's this cadence that they use and they respond to it.
Guest:And so, um, you know, and I'm like, I've, I've been watching that since I was a little kid on PBS, like British programming.
Guest:So that's really ingrained in my, my head.
Marc:So you actually, you know, try to talk in the same rhythm that they speak in order to be understood.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, you know, and it's not necessarily like, I mean, they still get like if I was speaking like a hip hop dude or whatever and I was talking.
Marc:But that's a universal language.
Guest:People get it.
Guest:Essentially, they'll get anything.
Guest:There's plenty of comics that come over here that have really thick... There's this Dutch guy.
Guest:He has a really thick Dutch accent, and they're still laughing because he still sets up his punchlines.
Marc:But that's interesting as a musician that you pick up on the rhythms by which...
Marc:I mean, because music is sort of beyond boundaries.
Marc:Unless you're playing something specifically indigenous to a certain country, it's something everybody can be sort of enchanted by, whereas speaking is different.
Marc:But this is the same language, but you pick up on the rhythm of that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, it's fucking cheating.
Guest:I know.
Guest:It's like mimicking.
Guest:What are those birds called?
Guest:Those mimicking birds?
Guest:Minor birds.
Guest:Yeah, minor birds.
Guest:They can make any sound.
Guest:It's almost kind of like that.
Guest:So it's almost like as a kid, I heard... So that's why sometimes I go into gibberish language and people think it's a real language.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Because the cadence sounds like, and the syllables.
Guest:True, like you're saying something.
Guest:Yeah, it sounds like I'm saying something.
Guest:They're like, oh, and I'll throw in like an actual Spanish word once in a while.
Guest:And they'll be like, oh, yeah, he's speaking Spanish.
Guest:Some dialect.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm like, no, no, that's not a real language.
Marc:So, but like, okay, so did you, where did you train for this music thing?
Marc:Where did this come from?
Guest:Where are you from, musically, in life?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I grew up in Montana.
Guest:My parents got me into piano lessons because I guess I was really big into Ray Charles when I was a little kid, like about three or four or something like that.
Marc:I was just listening to his country album.
Guest:Isn't that crazy?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Him and Charlie Pride.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So interesting.
Guest:And Commodores have a song.
Marc:Well, that whole album to me was like, it seemed like a very classy fuck you.
Guest:Yeah, that's right.
Guest:He's like, deal with this.
Guest:I can also do this.
Marc:You are my sunshine.
Marc:I'll show you how that sounds.
Guest:People are like, uh.
Guest:I wonder how people were.
Guest:Yeah, because if they didn't know it was him, and they just heard the song Cold, I bet you they would have loved it.
Guest:And then they were like, oh, a black dude did this.
Marc:So, okay, so you're in Montana, you're digging Ray Charles, and your mom sets you up with the piano lessons.
Guest:Yep, yeah.
Marc:And that's what started you.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I started playing piano when I was around, I think five technically, but I was messing around when I was four.
Guest:And...
Guest:Yeah, that's where that came from.
Guest:And I just always loved music as a kid.
Marc:Always.
Marc:Now, I guess the question has been asked me, but I'm not a musician, so it's a sadder question when directed at me.
Marc:Why comedy?
Marc:Why did you choose to gravitate towards that world?
Guest:You know, I remember... I'm sure I had moments before this, but one of my most...
Guest:uh memorable i can't stop laughing this is so hilarious moments was the muppet show yeah when they would have those muppet news flashes and it would be that weird reporter dude with the big like the big very pointy nose and the glasses and he'd start reporting it was reporting and i just remember him saying like uh there are reports of unidentified uh unidentified objects falling to earth and so he doesn't even finish it in this gigantic bell
Guest:Like a huge bell just crashes on his head.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's it.
Guest:And then it cuts to another thing.
Guest:And for some reason that became the most hilarious thing in the universe for me.
Guest:And I've always seen things.
Guest:I always love silly things, like really silly things.
Guest:And then, you know, I remember first seeing Monty Python, you know, and I thought it was a medieval movie.
Guest:on pbs because they're doing a marathon yeah yeah and the holy grail and i thought it was a medieval movie because you don't all you see is the hill in the beginning yeah you hear the horse coming i'm like oh this is great i love knights and like i was always fascinated with old stuff like that and then all of a sudden over the hill comes the dude with the coconuts yeah yeah like yeah yeah like he's riding i remember that and i just lost it yeah like that though so those moments of silliness and then when i was on the playground i loved music
Guest:And kids used to I used to pretend I was a radio.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And kids and I had like these little cords sticking out of the belt and my friends would pull on the cords and I would change radio stations and I would sing other songs.
Marc:That was your early work.
Guest:That was my early work.
Guest:That was my green period.
Marc:It's very nice that it's completely aligned with what you do now.
Guest:I know.
Guest:That's what I tell people.
Guest:It really hasn't changed.
Guest:All my friends who look at videos from Great Falls that still live there, they'll be like, you're doing the same exact shit that you did in high school.
Guest:I'm like, yeah, it is.
Marc:Now, have you toured over here in Europe and Britain?
Marc:Is it something that you're going to start doing more?
Marc:I mean, you had like 400 people in there the other night, right?
Guest:yeah yeah around there yeah yeah yeah i mean you know and in a theater that holds more than that you're always like oh i wish it was full but it's fine i i mean that's the plan i think the plan is to uh is to come back and do more like a uk proper tour i've done like i've done like bristol and then gone to brighton and then done a game one show yeah just one show it was like one offs what sides rooms um you know like 180 to yeah 250 uh-huh something like that uh-huh
Guest:Sometimes opening for people.
Guest:I've opened with Beardy Man has a thing that he does called Beardy Man's Complete and Outer Shambles.
Guest:He's another beatboxer guy.
Guest:It's really funny.
Marc:Is that what you call what you do?
Guest:I guess.
Guest:I don't really... I mean, people call me a beatboxer, but I'm not really...
Guest:I would say I'm a vocal, a live vocal composer, a compositionist or something.
Guest:But it's more like, I'm not even using any of the techniques that beatboxers use really.
Guest:And so everything that I've generated, like all my techniques are all just me.
Guest:It's my version of like Bobby McFerrin slash Fat Boys slash Michael Winslow from Police Academy.
Guest:Sure, I know him.
Guest:He's a comedian.
Guest:Yeah, and he's a comedian, too.
Guest:I've seen him, and he's funny.
Guest:Super, hyper, hyper... With noises.
Guest:I mean, it's very specific.
Guest:It's very specific.
Guest:It's more like, here's a routine based around these, you know... Because I think you're fundamentally an entertainer, but you're a musician.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:I mean, if you were to take the template that you use as a performing model, it's really a cabaret act, almost.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, it is.
Guest:It's like a one-person.
Guest:It's kind of like a one-person show, but I never really... I think the difference... I was thinking about this the other day.
Marc:But it's sort of like you come out, you schmooze, and then it's like, let's do a song.
Guest:Yeah, that's true.
Marc:And then you do a little doo-bop-bee and a little goofy shit, and then like, let's do a song.
Marc:That's true.
Marc:So it's really structurally almost Vegas.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, you're right, you're right, you're right.
Guest:But it's just like, it's kind of like a shittier version of Vegas, because it's like, a thought is never really completed.
Guest:Do you ever think about doing Vegas?
Guest:you know who knows man i think that's a little bit too big for me i you know i thrive i the thing i noticed is like i thrive better in like more kind of quasi like theater or like kind of artistic well you like to be uh you know you take the risk of being inconsistent because you never can be given that you know you can go to the you can go to the keyboard you can go to the loop machine or what do you call that uh it's a loop machine yeah
Marc:So I think that when you do something that requires consistency, which means like, all right, what's your monologue?
Marc:How long is that going to run?
Marc:What's the second act or whatever?
Guest:Then that would probably drive you crazy.
Guest:Oh, totally drive me crazy.
Guest:I mean, that's why the act is the way it is.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's how I function on stage.
Marc:You like the feeling of improvisation.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I love it.
Guest:I mean, it's not like I can't perform with other people.
Guest:You know, like some people think like, well, this guy, you know, we shouldn't have this guy.
Guest:But like, but oftentimes I'll be with other people and, uh,
Guest:I mean, it's like playing in a band.
Guest:It's no different.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, you just listen to each other and then you make a collective statement as opposed to a singular statement.
Marc:Like with Brian Eno, you weren't saying, I got this.
Marc:Yeah, totally.
Marc:Thanks, Bri, Bri.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's cool.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Turn your toy off.
Guest:I'm working with mine right now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've got enough effects on this thing.
Guest:No, but no, not at all.
Guest:I love working with other people.
Guest:Well, that's a musician thing, I think.
Guest:It is, yeah.
Guest:That's the one thing that saves me.
Guest:I think if I was just hyper solo focused, I think I would go crazy because you're not social.
Marc:Now, what's this thing you posted on Twitter the other day of some girl doing your song on YouTube?
Marc:In a cute way.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:No, that was so weird, man.
Guest:Yeah, my booking agent, Andrew, he sent me an email with that link.
Guest:And when I looked at it, it only had one view.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was awesome.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so he totally caught it right when it was up.
Guest:And so I posted something on there and I was like, you know, so I'm like, yeah, you're feeling it or something like that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's so weird.
Marc:It's just this little girl doing your song?
Guest:It's a little girl doing Fuck Shit Stack.
Guest:That's your song?
Guest:That's my song.
Guest:Fuck Shit what?
Guest:Fuck Shit Stack.
Guest:She's in her bedroom.
Guest:Classic YouTube.
Guest:In her bedroom, obviously in front of her computer.
Guest:And not really rapping to the beat at all.
Guest:So it's completely out of sync with the beat.
Guest:And there's tons of reverb on her voice.
Guest:It's a really weird video.
Guest:I've seen it a couple times.
Guest:First time, it was hard for me to watch.
Guest:Second time, I kind of got into it a little bit more.
Guest:Third time, I was like, oh, I kind of like this.
Guest:Because it's so weird.
Guest:She doesn't do the whole song.
Guest:She only does it up to...
Guest:the chorus oh it's funny it's pretty pretty funny well maybe we should uh we should go out with that song here it's good talking to you reggie oh man absolute pleasure thanks mark you take some plug then some shit then some fuck then some shit you gotta fuck shit stack a fuck shit stack take some plug then some shit
Guest:Okay, that's it.
Marc:That is the rest of the London stuff.
Marc:I hope you enjoyed that.
Marc:Please go to WTFpod.com.
Marc:Get on the mailing list, will you?
Marc:I'm putting some effort into that.
Marc:Send us a few bucks if you can.
Marc:Could you?
Marc:I'd love to have your money to support our cause here because we want to keep this for free.
Marc:We want everyone to have it, and we'd like you to donate what you can.
Marc:And please go to the WTFPodShop.com.
Marc:We've got two premium episodes up there, very funny.
Marc:There's one where Morgan Murphy says some pretty racy, risque, and embarrassing stuff about me.
Marc:And then there's another one where me and Michael Ian Black get into a fight.
Marc:Go to PunchlineMagazine.com because he's good to us, I'm good to him.
Marc:JustCoffee.coop, available at WTFPod.com or JustCoffee.coop.
Marc:Get the WTF blend and I get a little bit of money.
Marc:A little bit, 10% a bag.
Marc:You buy a bag of that stuff, I get 10%.
Marc:What else do I have to tell you?
Marc:Our next show is going to be our 100th show.
Marc:I cannot believe it's happened.
Marc:I cannot believe we've done 100 shows.
Marc:It's hard for me to believe I have 100 friends.
Marc:But I do.
Marc:And I've got a lot of more friends than you guys.
Marc:So thanks for listening.
Marc:I've got thousands of friends.
Marc:Thousands of people really know me really well.
Marc:Probably better than I know myself.
Marc:Thank you for that.
Marc:I'll talk to you later.
.
.