Comedy Superstardom.
It's always been such a weird phenomenon to me. There haven’t been too many comedy superstars - comics that sell out ridiculous venues night after night after night.
- Dane Cook taking a whole young generation by storm in a Beatles Madness kind of way.
- Russel Peters selling out amphitheaters in every corner of the globe.
- Kevin Hart filling fucking football stadiums across the country.
These are some of the few instances of comedians becoming something bigger than just stand up comics. It stops being a show where people are paying to see a person tell funny jokes and becomes a show where people are paying to see a person. Period.
And this concept of comedy superstardom was nonexistent until the famous rise of Steve Martin in the late 1970s. And none of his albums portray this rise as beautifully and well-produced as A Wild And Crazy Guy.
Here’s the Tale of the Tape:
- Recorded: 1978
- Venues: Side A: The Boarding House, San Francisco, CA || Side B: Red Rocks Amphitheater, Denver, CO
- Label: Warner Brothers
I love this album. First of all, it’s actually funny. I know I’ve said it before, but sometimes even “good” comedy from back in the day just doesn’t sound funny to us anymore because rehashing through generations has taken out the surprise in punchlines.
But Steve Martin is the God of Goofy; the Saint of Silly. You feel like a kid again as he talks to you like a clown - even when he’s talking about pussy.
“I WAS TALKING ABOUT HER CAT, PEOPLE! Jeez, you can’t say anything anymore…That cat was the best fuck I ever had.”
But the really interesting thing about this album is the way it was produced. You get a two for one deal with this one.
On side A, you get to hear Martin being a real stand up comedian - with thoughtful, well-timed jokes. It’s pretty crazy how much of a Louis C.K. tone he has in some of these bits - next time you listen to it, note his cadence when telling the bit about dying and going to heaven.
And then on side B, you get to hear Martin be a Comedy Rock Star. And the way it transitions is beautiful. Side B starts with him reading a bogus financial disclosure to the audience at the intimate Boarding House in San Francisco, and as he gets to calculating concert revenues, he reveals his desire to make over $2 million on a single show. A great bit. And as the small crowd reacts, the audio transitions to the loud roars of the open amphitheater at Red Rocks in Denver.
In the late 70s Steve Martin had become a rock star. I’ll be honest, the Side B of this album is not nearly as good, because it’s less laughs and more screams of joy. Martin does less jokes and more characters that he had turned into national sensations. But it is cool how he call this out - almost mocking his own celebrity. The album hams that celebrity up too. The album itself folds out to reveal a full spread portrait of Martin. And inserted in the sleeve is an “autographed” headshot with a backside image of Martin’s scribbled joke notes.
I’ve never understood how stand up can be enjoyed in a venue as big as an amphitheater. One of the most enjoyable things about stand up is how personal it is. But like I said, when someone has risen to that level of stardom, it really stops being a stand up comedy show. Is it an event? I’m not sure. I’m still in awe that Kevin Hart can sell out football stadiums. Those people in the back are just watching the show on big screens. Why wouldn’t they just wait until the special comes out?
That’s the power of celebrity. And acts that have risen to that level have Steve Martin to thank for leading the way. But according to his memoir Born Standing Up — which is fantastic by the way (one of the few books to ever make me cry) — stand up comedy was “just an accident” for Martin. He wanted to get into films. And boy did he.
Steve Martin left the stand up world when he co-wrote and starred in one of the funniest movies of all time, The Jerk — directed by comedy legend Carl Reiner. After that, the rest is history. Martin went on to have a comedy film career that only Robin Williams can rival in terms of the sheer amount of hilarious, likable characters he could transform into.
Martin wouldn’t return to the stage for 35 years. On Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee he said, "My act was conceptual. Once the concept was stated, and everybody understood it, it was done. It was about coming to the end of the road. There was no way to live on in that persona. I had to take that fabulous luck of not being remembered as that, exclusively. You know, I didn't announce that I was stopping. I just stopped.”
But in the short time that he did it, he was a monster. I highly recommend A Wild and Crazy Guy to hear both sides of his talents. There’s a reason it went double platinum, won the 1979 Grammy for Best Comedy Album, and was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for inclusion in the National Recording Registry. Whether he’s making silly, but thoughtful, quips on philosophy and language, or hamming up his TV stardom with hit routines like The Wild And Crazy Guy, and King Tut, Steve Martin knows funny.
