I'm a big fan of stand-up. I love the old stuff a lot (Richard Pryor, Billy Connolly, Bill Bailey) and I'm happy to see so much emerging talent that has hit the scene in the past decade with smart+critical content. (Sarah Silverman, Bo Burnham)
My fav one right now is Stewart Lee. He is often called the "comedian's comedian" and I think people here appreciate smart content so you might enjoy him. ("Content Provider" is his latest show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1UCt5iItcw Stewart Lee is incredibly smart without being overly offensive - something that gets old after some time (e.g. Jimmy Carr or Franky Boyle I both like but it's a bit shallow imo and lacks an overreaching arc in their story).
Lee is more demanding than shows that are made for mass-audiences (Michael Macintyre, etc) and will probably always remain on the fringe. He also has some great tips about writing vs not writing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrXVaytvJtQ incredibly intelligent guy which seems to defy all the traditional rules of the trade. He also helped Noel Fielding and Julian Barrett become popular with "The Mighty Boosh" material at the Edinburgh fringe. (TMB is incredibly obscure but once hooked people usually either love it or hate it (it's hard to feel just partial about it).
And that was what won me over! Other comedians would insult the heckler... but his response, oh gosh.
If it's too hard to understand, here's a little bit of the transcript of the end:
STEW: "Huh? But, I can't do something else now."
[LAUGHTER]
STEW: "This is what I do. I can't-- There isn't-- There's not time..."
[LAUGHTER]
STEW: "...to construct a bespoke act based around you."
[LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE]
STEW: "It doesn't give me any pleasure to have wasted your time. I genuinely apologize. I genuinely do, because I've been in that situation myself, with kids, where I've got a babysitter, and I've gone to something, and it's not what I'd hoped. I'm genuinely sorry. I can't really-- I can't really say any more than that."
MAN: [INAUDIBLE]
STEW: "What? I can't do what you want me to do. I can't do it."
[LAUGHTER]
STEW: "I'm genuinely-- I'm sorry. I'm sorry I've annoyed you. I'm sorry that you got here and it wasn't what you hoped. But I can't just change now. And also, you know, objectively, I have a mortgage and I have children. What I'm doing now, I'm seeing a degree of a financial return for it. And that feat-- I was going a long time since I started to break even. I was about 36, 37... ticked over, and... I mean, how long can I carry on working at this level? 10 years before it starts failing? I don't know. But it would be a gamble to ditch this..."
[LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE]
STEW: "...to try and fulfill whatever it is you think I should do. Even if you're right, I've gone too far down this road to... I'm as a much a prisoner of my expectations of myself as you are of yours. And that is the common ground that we have.
[LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE]
STEW: "So, my wife had been away--"
For my first time, I will now gladly watch the comedic bit by him
Not sure obscure is the right word there, mighty boosh was pretty huge about a decade ago. Unless you mean the approach to the humor?
Iirc Lee first got Fielding and Barrett working together when they worked on a show he done around 1997 but beyond even he would stress that it would be a stretch to give him credit for their successes.
I dunno about saying Lee is on the fringes either, he's had 4 seasons of a show on BBC that only ended a couple of years ago. He's on the fringes relative to guys who aggressively court mass audiences but he's almost surprisingly popular for how arch be can be. It's hardly Daniel Kitson (a big favorite of Stewart Lee's who is well worth checking out) levels of critically adored but unknown.
yes ofc sorry, with "obscure" I didn't mean "not well known" or in any way negative. afaik TMB falls under surreal comedy and that was I was trying to say.
Actually Noel Fielding himself has repeatedly called him an inspiration and "uncle of our comedy" so these aren't my words. Indeed, though Barratt and Fielding had worked together in the past, the first seeds of the Boosh were sown while working as part of Lee's Edinburgh show King Dong vs Moby Dick in which Barratt and Fielding played a giant penis and a whale, respectively. Lee returned the favour by going on to direct their 1999 Edinburgh show, Arctic Boosh, which remains the template for their live work. ->(from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Lee#1989%E2%80%931993:...)
I think TMB stands on it's own and deserves credit for something that has never existed before in this way and I'd never suggest that they "got it handed to them" in any way.
Lee, even he is famous now, will never fill an O2, Royal Albert Hall or Apollo. Unlike others you won't see him on Mock the Week, The big fat quizz, or any other panel show. I don't mean to say he doesn't cut it for that, but not doing these things seems to be part of his brand. He is actively trying to stay the underdog. How much this is Stewart Lee or just Stewart Lee the character talking, I can't say.
Just watched Content Provider. (Have to be careful what I write here - am imagining Lee reading it out mockingly in his next show..) - great stuff. Thank you!!
i don't mean to start a fight but neither of these comedians are even remotely smart or critical (re silverman the episode of louie on fx about marc maron where she describes her own humor as "gee did i do that" and burnham is a meme star).
i'm surprised you appreciate pryor and lump them in with him. in my humble opinion you almost have to be poor and black to be funny these days because really good comedy is about transgression (with a few standout exceptions like mitch hedberg/steven wright) and there's nothing transgressive about people in power either taking pot shots or being purely critical. it's why dennis miller was never funny (and nor is bill mahr). you have to be outside of power for a criticism to be transgressive. this is why chappelle's last two standups were hollow - he's too fat, too rich, too comfortable. go back to first hbo special where he talks about the hypocrisy of the lewinsky scandal, or to his second (post chappelle show) special where he talks about incongruence of how the media treated elizabeth smart and erica pratt. in his most recent special his attempt to contextualize cosby drew eye rolls because it's quite plausible he himself will be eventually accused (this is not a statement about his moral character but simply his relationship to power).
but of course it can't be purely criticism right - there has to be showmanship and surprises and vulnerability.
i think hands down the funniest comic of the last 10 was patrice o neal. i've watched his last special probably 15 times and what i admire about him is that he gets you to be complicit in the transgression (e.g. the value of a white woman bit, gender roles in the office, relationship dynamics) by a sort of socratic dialogue where the you yourself actually (by virtue of acceding) deliver the punchline. he's also incredibly smart and vulnerable in that show in discussing his diabetes and similar challenges most people face with things like work ethic. sadly he died in 2011.
and yes both chappelle and o neal are raucously vulgar but it's directly in the service of punchline, rather than the punchline itself.
louis ck was an exception in that he was white and male and etc and still funny but only because he often identified with power (e.g. the picking white vs black joke). it was in that identification that you grew to trust him over course of the show and warmed up to the more absurd jokes (like fucking a dead kid and bag of dicks). he also was very clever in how he revealed the irrationality of culture (raising my kids gay and cutting grass around gay people on your lawn). but now (after his scandal) he's not relatable anymore. listen to his leaked special where he tries to pretend to be ashamed of not being as politically active as the parkland kids and it's hollow - you end up suspecting that he really doesn't empathize with them.
Like Bill Bailey, Burnham is known for writing funny, clever songs; he's not some jackass like Jake Paul. He also wrote and directed the movie "Eighth Grade" which shows him to be a smart, thoughtful person.
I assume Sarah Silverman was lumped in with Burnham because of her current show "I Love You, America" but she's 48, 20 years older than Burnham, and a national comedy figure since the early 90s.
> she describes her own humor as "gee did i do that"
By describing her humor that way she's engaging in the very thing she describes, a recursive joke.
He's the stereotypical 'oppressor' as one might consider it these days, but his joke about moms having the hardest job in the world where he says 'Really? How many moms died on the last season of Ice Road Truckers?' cracked me up. Maybe it's funny because he's just so willing to transgress that it's almost refreshing.
I rank Bill Burr as a top comic right now - his off the cuff wit is just fantastic. He did election coverage with a bunch of other seasoned comics and had them all in fits for the entire ordeal. His podcast is the same: him just being hilarious about everything. And his interviews are awkward and brilliant at the same time.
The one classic comedic tool I think he lacks is jokes that reference themselves within bits (Eddie Murphy was great at this).
> "The one classic comedic tool I think he lacks is jokes that reference themselves within bits (Eddie Murphy was great at this)."
I miss that too. Guess not every comedian uses all tools from the box consistently. If you don't mind artists with "funny accents" :) then Ross Noble (guy from Manchester living in Australia) and Billy Connolly are brilliant in this. Ross Noble is a genius in the way he spins elaborate stories and plots inside the mind of his audiences. His flavor is also often surreal (e.g. never put a blanket over an owl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFA7_Q-tpHg ... <-- needs to be watched as a whole to see his back-referencing and layering ... but just to give a taste) ...
hooked since his bit about thinning the herd by sinking cruise ships. :D priceless. I like his personal views a lot (on SJW'ism and the metoo movement) which he explained on Joe Rogan's podcast. Despite covering difficult topics he refuses to be pushed to the left or right. Love the guy!
Comedy sometimes comes in the form of transgressiveness, but that's a really easy form (kids do it almost instinctively), and it's tough to do professionally without being considered hacky or unoriginal.
I know where you're going, though. More generally, I suggest that good comedy is more generally about surprise (not a new idea, Aristotle is recorded as having said it first AFAIK) and that transgressiveness is just one option for doing that.
IMHO Steven Wright was more consistently funny than Mitch Hedberg.
"Is a hippopotamus a hippopotamus, or just a really cool Opotamus?" - Mitch Hedberg.
Louis CK (in the leaked set) presented himself as transgressive since he was playing the part of a victimized white male who can punch up at snowflakes. Nothing he says is extremely controversial though except perhaps the 'asians are women' line, and at this point you can actually hear groans in the audience
Patrice O'Neal and Norm McDonald are really outstanding. Took me a while to really get Norm - but once there, its impossible not to be fascinated. He is unique and very much his own man.
I've gotten really into standup, since it fills a weird niche. I love listening to people who care about their craft talk about it (like Jiro or Chef's Table, for example), however that's often hard to come by... except for comedians! Since their job is to talk, and they all tend to be pretty free during the day, there's thousands of hours of comedians talking about their craft online.
If you're looking to get started with a podcast, I recommend WTF, You Made It Weird, Good One and The Old Ones. Guests worth listening to (on any podcast) are John Mulaney, Bo Burnham, Mike Birbiglia, Conan O'Brien [1], Bill Burr, Louis CK on WTF (I know I know), and Kumail Nanjiani/Emily Gordon. And all three Harris Wittels episodes of You Made It Weird are heartbreakingly worth listening to.
The Comedian's Comedian podcast (http://www.comedianscomedian.com/) is another take on exactly that: comedians talking about their craft. The guests come from all over the world, but the host (Stuart Goldsmith) is English and so it skews a bit more in that direction. Recommended guests depend on your taste, but I think most people would find the Stewart Lee episode interesting. The Jimmy Carr episode was also very enjoyable -- surprisingly so to me, as I always considered his standup rather cynical, crude, mean-spirited. Getting a peek behind the curtain changed my perspective a bit. Of recent episodes, my favourite was probably the one with (Finnish stand-up comedian) Ismo.
A couple of others that half-qualify:
* Adam Buxton's podcast is much sillier and more of a banter/chat show, but a lot of his guests are comedians so they sometimes cover similar ground.
* Richard Herring (Leicester Square Theatre Podcast) is at least as silly as Buxton and much cruder, but again, many of his guests are comedians and occasionally the conversation is surprisingly insightful.
My fav one right now is Stewart Lee. He is often called the "comedian's comedian" and I think people here appreciate smart content so you might enjoy him. ("Content Provider" is his latest show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1UCt5iItcw Stewart Lee is incredibly smart without being overly offensive - something that gets old after some time (e.g. Jimmy Carr or Franky Boyle I both like but it's a bit shallow imo and lacks an overreaching arc in their story).
Lee is more demanding than shows that are made for mass-audiences (Michael Macintyre, etc) and will probably always remain on the fringe. He also has some great tips about writing vs not writing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrXVaytvJtQ incredibly intelligent guy which seems to defy all the traditional rules of the trade. He also helped Noel Fielding and Julian Barrett become popular with "The Mighty Boosh" material at the Edinburgh fringe. (TMB is incredibly obscure but once hooked people usually either love it or hate it (it's hard to feel just partial about it).