Funny business
The Boston Phoenix – May 8th, 2008

LEFT TO RIGHT: Morgan Murphy, Eugene Mirman, Patton Oswalt, Rob Barry, and Emo Phillips (in cannon.)

As the AltCom Festival arrives at the Somerville Theatre, we look at the roots of the indie comedy boom. By: MIKE MILIARD

“Ashlee Simpson’s new album sold so poorly,” snorted the headline on Yahoo! this past week, that “it was beaten by a comedy album.”
Yup, she of the shiny new schnoz was eclipsed by Flight of the Conchords, whose full-length debut logged in at number three on Nielsen/SoundScan’s best-seller list — the highest ranking for a comedy album since Steve Martin’s A Wild and Crazy Guy charted 30 years ago. But should we be that surprised?

First, Ashlee Simpson is terrible. But more to the point, we’re living in the best and most rewarding time for comedy in recent memory. “Not only in the mainstream, visible sense, with people like Tina Fey and Judd Apatow making comedies,” says Patton Oswalt, who headlines the second night of the (hopefully first-annual) AltCom Festival at the Somerville Theatre on Saturday, “but also in an open-mic sense: there’s this wave of comedians that are just fantastic that you’ve never heard of. There are a lot of new faces coming up. It’s very vibrant.”

Everywhere you look these days, in every medium possible: more funny. Stand-up (Jim Gaffigan, Paul F. Tompkins, Brian Posehn, Jen Kirkman, Doug Benson, Maria Bamford, Andy Kindler) is just the beginning. There’s also television ( Human Giant , Adult Swim, The Daily Show , The Colbert Report ); radio and podcasts (Scharpling and Wurster, Never Not Funny ); books (John Hodgman, Neal Pollack); freeform on-stage whateverness (Zach Galifianakis, Neil Hamburger, Tim and Eric, Glaser and Benjamin); musical comedy (Flight of the Conchords, Tenacious D); viral videos (Sarah Silverman, Will Ferrell); even prank phone calls (Earles and Jensen).

Two decades ago, the success strategy for a comedian was pretty straightforward. 1) Slog it out in an endless procession of glass-clinking laff factories. 2) Hope to be spotted by one of Johnny Carson’s spies. 3) Play the Tonight Show and pray Carson calls you over for a chat. 4) Score a TV or movie role. 5) Repeat step 4.

Nowadays, though, things are different. In recent years, several factors — the rise of alternative performance spaces, a supportive and symbiotic relationship between musicians and comedians, and, especially, the Internet — have changed the rules. Comedians are far freer to plot their own courses. The result is a massive efflorescence of endlessly creative comedy. And we, the discerning comedy audience, are the beneficiaries.

Kingdom of comedy
The AltCom festival — which also features Emo Philips, Todd Barry, Eugene Mirman, The Walsh Brothers, Morgan Murphy, Jim Jeffries, and doktor cocacolamcdonalds (See altcomfestival.com. Disclosure: the Phoenix is a festival sponsor.) — was founded by Southie-via-Somerville stand-up Brian Joyce in emulation of the “small, independently run boutiquey” fests he’s encountered in Europe. It’s an excellent showcase for this comedic boom time. But what, precisely, is AltCom? It’s a slippery term, one that may or may not have any actual significance.

“AltCom stands for alternative comedy, with the ‘com’ part cleverly — and with astounding efficiency — also reflecting that ever-expanding cornucopia of alternative comedy, the Internet,” writes Philips, considered by many to be alternative comedy’s paraprosdokian-spouting paterfamilias, in an e-mail interview. (“Ironically, the Web domain altcom.com seems to have been grabbed up by some Polish Web-domain squatter,” he adds in a parenthetical. “It’s a sad sign of the American dollar’s current sickliness that we couldn’t afford to buy it off him.”)

Mirman is agnostic about the term’s value. “I dunno. Is ‘modern rock’ a thing? Or ‘alternative music’? It sort of vaguely describes something. Is it helpful? I guess. But are there alternative comics who are huge and sell millions of records, or play giant venues? Sure.”

“If you look at the lineup, it’s all comedians that were around before the term [alternative comedy] ever existed,” says Barry. “Emo’s been doing comedy for years. He’s a joke-teller. And I’m a joke-teller. It’s a great lineup, and [AltCom will] be a great show, and it looks like a really beautiful theater. But I’m not walking around going, ‘I’m an alternative comic.’ ”

The best way to define alternative comedy, then, is probably by what it is not. It is not the massively, inexplicably successful Dane Cook, strutting smirkingly astride the stage in a faux-retro T-shirt, product in his hair and unfunny inanities spewing from his mouth. It is not Larry the Cable Guy (“Git ’er dun!”) or alleged joke thief Carlos Mencia.

The comedians on the AltCom bill clearly have a diverse array of material and deliveries. But they also share a definite sensibility — smart, sometimes cynical, probably left-of-center — that’s usually shared by their fans.

An alternate history
It’s not like this happened all at once, of course. What’s now called alternative comedy has deep roots. It starts, arguably, with the near-anarchic madcap routines of the early Marx Brothers films. From there, hopscotch to Ernie Kovacs and Andy Kaufman, with stops at Monty Python, SNL, and SCTV along the way. Troupes like the Kids in the Hall, Stella, and Upright Citizens Brigade — alongside David Cross and Bob Odenkirk’s hugely influential Mr. Show — really lit the fuse in the ’90s.

And we’ve seen stand-up booms before, too, most notably in the ’80s, when the coastal cities and vast swathes of the American heartland were colonized by an ever-expanding sprawl of giggle grottos and ha-ha huts.

Problem is, many of the stand-ups that stood up on those stages weren’t especially funny. “I think there are as many comedians today as there were in the ’80s,” notes Philips. “It’s just that, back in the ’80s, there were also a lot of people doing stand-up who weren’t comedians.”
The Hub, however, was home to some worthwhile specimens. “Boston’s one of those cities where, when people left that city, they partially began the alternative-comedy movement,” says Mirman. “Boston is a fantastic place for comedy, and it’s a fantastic place to start out, and a lot of the people who came from there or are there [now] are fantastic.”

Indeed, things would not be what they are today without artists like Cross, Steven Wright, Janeane Garofalo, Marc Maron, and Louis CK, all of whom are from or got their starts here. Add Brookline’s own Conan O’Brien, and Dana Gould (who wrote for and produced The Simpsons), to the list. “The Boston scene produced so many people,” says Oswalt. “Just name them. I’m a fan of all of ’em. They were a huge force in comedy.”
Mirman (who now lives in New York) doesn’t consider himself a “Boston” comedian per se — “I wish I’d called an album Wicked Retahded, and then I could say, ‘yeah’ ” — but “I’m excited that [AltCom] is happening in Boston. It’s where I’m from.”

Gimme indie rock
After graduating from Lexington High, Mirman headed west to Hampshire College, where he self-designed his major — comedy, natch. “I did a paper on the physiology of laughter for science. I took writing and film classes. Acting. And my thesis was a one-hour stand-up act.”
After graduation in 1996, it was time to get to work. “Basically, I just started doing stand-up, and then just did it and did it.” (Between gigs at the Hong Kong in Harvard Square, he co-founded the satirical Weekly Week newspaper — “Boston’s Only Redundant News Source for News.”)
In 2004, Mirman released his debut album, The Absurd Nightclub Comedy of Eugene Mirman, on Suicide Squeeze Records, erstwhile home to Elliott Smith and Pedro the Lion. In 2006, he signed with Sub Pop for En Garde, Society. Along the way, he opened for bands such as the Shins, Modest Mouse, and Gogol Bordello.

“The way my career has gone is a lot more like a band’s career,” says Mirman. “I have a rock booking agent. I have a rock label.” At the same time, however, “it’s not like I sit in with bands. Or that [bands] tell jokes.”

Except when they do. Such as when Oswalt sat in with Ted Leo and Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard — performing Abba’s “Take a Chance on Me” — to raise pledges for Scharpling’s Best Show on WFMU this past March. Or when Wurster, drummer for Superchunk and the Mountain Goats, calls in to the Best Show each week to wrangle with Scharpling, voice-disguised as a coterie of different crackpots.

Or when SNL’s Fred Armisen — former drummer for Trenchmouth — produces online shorts with Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein at thunderant.com. Or when Galifianakis appears in Kanye West’s “Can’t Tell Me Nothing” video with Will “Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billie” Oldham. Or when bongo-playing Barry breaks up Flight of the Conchords on their HBO series. (Mirman plays the Conchords’ landlord, Eugene.)

“There’s a real good correlation between them,” says Joyce of the music and comedy scenes. “Guys like Todd [Barry] and Eugene are looking for gigs to play, and playing with bands was sometimes almost a better option for them than playing with other comedians. There’s kind of a crossover in the audience.”

Yes, says Barry, who’s opened for Luna at CBGBs on New Years Eve (“a fun train wreck”), and even toured Sweden with Jens Lekman, “it can be great. I did a show with Yo La Tengo in DC, and it was 1200 people standing and listening. It blew my mind, in a way, that everyone would shut up in a place where they were standing — and they weren’t there to see me.”

Oswalt says the symbiotic relationship between comedians and bands stands to reason. “We share similar interests. We share similar lives and schedules. So we’re definitely gonna overlap. I’m a big fan of theirs, and I’m always flattered to find out that they’re a fan of me. They listen to me on their tour bus.”

Wired to explode
One big thing the two camps have in common is the importance of the Web in effecting indie music and indie comedy’s recent resurgences. Just as music was moribund in the nü-metal nightmare years of the late ’90s and early ’00s — only to see a rebirth of sorts thanks to sites such as Pitchfork, I Love Music, and the blog aggregator The Hype Machine — so does alternative comedy owe much of its recent ubiquity to Internet-driven promulgation.

The Web is a boon to audiences and comedians because its promise is threefold: it allows for the easy discovery of new talent; it offers the opportunity to check out comedians’ acts via YouTube or iTunes samples before plunking down $15 to see them live or buy their albums; and it fosters the development of fan communities, which can bond over shared affinities, and proselytize to others online.

Take a site like aspecialthing.com, which started as a Tenacious D message board but soon morphed into an all-purpose comedy free-for-all, a place for fans to compare notes, hype new discoveries, root, rant, and recap. Oswalt has an account there, and since 2004, he’s been engaging in a running dialogue — archived in two separate Q&A threads — with the site’s members, answering questions about the business and craft of comedy, the forebears he admires (Bob Newhart, Jonathan Winters), the works of H.P. Lovecraft, and the delights of five-star dining.

Then there are the podcasts, like the excellent The Sound of Young America (find it on iTunes or, more recently, on Public Radio International), which offer in-depth and informative interviews with comics of all stripes: Chris Elliott, Michael Cera, the guys behind Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and cartoonist Tony Millionaire, to name just a few.

The Web has opened a whole new avenue for comedy: online video. Sites like Super Deluxe, College Humor, and Funny or Die offer multitudinous riches — if you know where to look. Yes, as wired.com opined recently, a lot of what’s on offer is “quantity over quality . . . countless two-minute videos that are more fungal than viral.” But there’s tons of great stuff out there. Seek the shorts from the criminally underexposed sketch troupe Variety SHAC, or Derek Waters’s dumb/brilliant Drunk History clips, or Fatal Farm’s twisted re-imagined TV credit sequences, or David Wain’s wickedly funny Wainy Days series.
“The Internet is a huge part of it,” says Mirman, who regularly puts videos on YouTube. “You can post something on MySpace, and in a random city a few hundred people who know about you will come.” A lot of the power to self-advertise has been decentralized, he says. “Although it’s clearly still helpful to be on television, this is sort of very American. You can make yourself a star.”

Change of venue
When the “Comedians of Comedy” tour hit the road in 2005 — with its attendant documentary following Oswalt, Galifianakis, Posehn, and Bamford as they crisscrossed the country — much was made of the fact that they played rock clubs rather than traditional comedy spots. But, really, it’s an idea that just makes sense.

“There are some really good comedy clubs out there, but there are also quite a few that present comedy in a cheesy way,” says Barry. “The club has a ‘crazy’ name and they encourage a ‘wacky,’ ‘let’s make some noise’ mentality. You’ll get there and see tables of bachelorette parties decked out in chocolate-penis hats, or the emcee has to find out ‘who’s celebrating anything tonight?’ and that kind of thing frightens some potentially good audience members. I meet people all the time who tell me they’re scared of seeing comedy, and I can’t say that I blame them. I also meet people after my shows who tell me I’m the first comedian they’ve ever seen live, which is odd, because you never meet someone who’s never been to the movies or seen a band.”

So, just as this new environment means audiences can become more selective when it comes to the comedians they’re fans of, so, too, are the comedians glad to play places tailor-made to their particular crowds.

That said, there are disadvantages to playing rock clubs: cavernous acoustics, or bartenders yakking during sets as they toss empty bottles in trashcans. “They’re just not used to doing a spoken-word show,” says Barry, “and I’m kind of a quiet guy.” Moreover, playing to specialized crowds can diminish the potential for wider audiences. “Because comedy clubs have a built-in draw of their own, when you’re unknown you could be playing to hundreds and hundreds of people just because people go to that club for comedy,” says Barry. “But when I do a rock club, basically the people who show up, if I’m headlining, are the people who know me. So it sort of whittles it down a little bit.”

That has its benefits, however. As the venues have evolved, so have the audiences. “They’re definitely becoming connoisseurs of the form, and they’re going out to see specific people rather than just going out to see generic comedy,” says Oswalt. “Which is good for comedians, definitely.”

“This is a very exciting time,” says Mirman. “People seem very interested in comedy. It’s also not like it’s just some random boom. The ’80s [comedy scene] crashed because there was an explosion of places, and then there weren’t really the comics to fill it. But this feels very reasonable. It doesn’t feel oversaturated.”
Twenty years ago, says Joyce, “there was a formula. There were mainstream clubs, and then you’d score a development deal or a movie deal, or a sitcom.” Now things are different. Sure, everyone hopes for success. But today the mechanisms are in place for people to find it on their own terms. “There are a lot of guys doing their own thing these days. There’s lot of diversity. It’s a pretty cool time.” No two-drink minimum required.

The AltCom Festival will take place at the Somerville Theatre, in Davis Square, on May 9 and 10. Call 617.931.2000 for tickets.