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Comment count is 16
That guy - 2016-01-29

I remember seeing his 5-minute act a bunch in the early 90's, and he was not good.
Then by the late 90's he was, like magic. 12 years of practice and- presto!


15th - 2016-01-29

If he was reasonable he would have quit after 5-10 years of sucking. It's really remarkable. He's one of my favorites and sets like this make me like him even more. What an idiot.


infinite zest - 2016-01-29

To be fair, this was 1988. Seinfeld-esque humor was what people wanted to hear. Bill Hicks was an exception, but was more often than not booed and heckled from what I've heard during that time. And even Hicks had a couple of routines that I still sort of cringe at, the ones that he'd be most famous for.

Stand-up comedy is a lot like being in a band: if you don't identify with a scene then you don't get booked, simple as that, so people chameleon themselves accordingly. Hell, listen to really early Lou Reed or even David Bowie and tell me that it doesn't kinda sound like everything else out there on the market.


Bort - 2016-01-30

I think Louis CK and Patton Oswalt have told similar stories, that they used to try to tell "jokes" and simply weren't any good, and eventually learned that you need to say what is true to you and find a funny way to do it. Louis CK says his turning point was when he decided to throw caution to the wind one time and told his audience that his infant daughter was an asshole.

Come to think of it, Louis CK and Patton Oswalt are two comedians whom parenthood hasn't wrecked, and in fact they mine material from their kids.


Old_Zircon - 2016-01-30

Just another reminder that possibly the biggest single factor in succeeding in show business (after dumb luck) is to not have any kind of self awareness about how terrible you are. Because the people who actually know how much they suck never stick with it long enough to get good.


Old_Zircon - 2016-01-30

Also even if you never get good, if you really, truly, passionately believe that you're good there's a very real chance people will respond to that and mistake your shittiness for "innovation" (not referring not Louis here, he actually did get good).


Anthony Kiedis.


Mr. Purple Cat Esq. - 2016-01-30

I thought this was pretty good, maybe better than his current stuff?


Bort - 2016-01-30

Found the Louis CK thing I was talking about, it starts at 2:50:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R37zkizucPU#t=2m50s

It wasn't that Louis CK didn't know how bad he was, it's that he started out wanting to do stand-up, and after a few years it felt like it was his career for good or ill. He was never content to be a hack, he just found himself stuck there until George Carlin inspired him to quit with the hackery.


infinite zest - 2016-01-30

It's funny because you listen to early Carlin and it's kind of similar: different material of course but the same kind of stuff that'd appeal to the bridge and tunnel crowd in the 60s. And something must've snapped with him too. I wonder if he was inspired by anyone the same way that CK was by him.

Also that was a very beautiful eulogy. I cried just a little.


That guy - 2016-01-30

You would, Purple Cat, you would.


baleen - 2016-01-30

CK talks about this period of his comedy a lot. He admits that he sucks. He had no idea what he was doing.


boner - 2016-01-30

Read Carlin's "Last Words" -- you will not find a more lucid memoir about a person's career and why they made the choices they did.


boner - 2016-01-30

Also see this interview (several hours) http://www.emmytvlegends.org/interviews/people/george-carlin


infinite zest - 2016-01-30

Who WAS good in 1988? Like I said there was of course Hicks, and Carlin of course too, but I can't think of any others. Maybe Eddie Murphy's stand up in the 80s, but even rewatching Raw it's not as funny as I remember it being.. I was only like 5 when this came out so I definitely wasn't listening to any of this, but I'm curious if there was other underground comedy from that time that's more similar to the Hickses and the Carlins of the time. And I've seen a lot of 80s comedy since we'd get cable for one month in the summer for free when the cable company would try to get you to buy a package and all I watched was Comedy Central, back when they mostly only showed stand-up.


boner - 2016-01-30

Even Carlin was doing relatively weak observational stuff at that time, and he knew it.


boner - 2016-01-30

anyway -- you never know where someone's career will go. carlin says in part 3 of that interview that he didn't find his voice "until 1992". he would have been 55 years old then. that's the age bill hicks would be now. of course, see this stewart lee bit about "i wish i was dead bill hicks": (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSEtMZh2exc) heh.


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