Let's be independent together!
John Wenzel writes for the Denver Post. He pays a lot of attention to standup comedy, particularly alternative comedy. In fact, Wenzel says he’s got a book coming out about that branch of comedy typified by/led by David Cross, Demetri Martin, Sarah Silverman, Patton Oswalt, et al.
He calls the movement “indie comedy.” (In fact, there’s every possibility that Wenzel actually coined that term.) Indie (short for independent) more aptly describes that genre of comedy that has developed fairly recently. It’s the kind of standup that was depicted in Oswalt’s Comedians of Comedy Tour (and subsequent movie about the tour).
It’s actually a better way to characterize the scene– at least from a PR standpoint. Rather than just conveying the Us Against Them implications of the “alternative” label, “Indie” implies a certain level of take-charge entrepreneurialism, an autonomy, an admirable DIY attitude that the former term lacked.
And, whereas alternative acts came about in an era when studios, agents, suits, managers and networks were calling the shots, Indie acts are all about vertical integration– locating the venue, marketing the shows, micromanaging the audience demo, creating the vibe, booking the acts and, of course, putting yourself and your Indie buddies on the bill. Indie comics seem also to have abandoned much of the bitterness and the self-pity that inevitably made its way into the articles written about the scene and into the quotes that those articles were framed by.
It’s a natural progression, a maturation of the business. Much of this maturation has been brought about by modern technology– the WWW, MySpace, cheap printing, etc. (And it is this very same technology that has so severely eroded the power of those aforementioned studio executives and captains of the entertainment industry.)
Alts took their cues from the Entertainment Industry at large. Indies seem unbound by such restrictions. Just as some independent musical artists have thrown off the chains of major record labels and have bucked the traditional channels of distribution, so too have Indie comics sought to avoid chain clubs and people who, in Wenzel’s words, “settle at candlelit tables to hear jokes from a random stand-up.”
Our ruminations here on Indie/Alt comedy were spurred initially by a Wenzel article in yesterday’s Denver Post on the Denver comedy collective known as Wrist Deep Productions, in which Wenzel once again makes the case for Indie comedy.
In other words, smart, aggressive stand-up that shatters expectations without spinning off into abstractions. The result is an injection of the punk-rock ethos into an art form that suffered an image crisis at the hands of the ’80s comedy boom and bust — one from which Wrist Deep is helping it recover.
We can forgive the bombast. Wenzel has a book to sell. But at least he’s enthusiastic and, for the most part, positive when he describes his favorite brand of standup. (And he is suprisingly restrained when he disses the non-Indie brand.)
It’s very instructive and informative to go back and read Wenzel’s other pieces on the subject. This article, in November of 2006, is, Wenzel admits, pretty much the book proposal, for his upcoming tome. And the opening 81 words is the elevator pitch:
Overpriced two-drink minimums. A tacky comb-over in a blazer. Sickly potato skins and drunken bachelorette parties.
These used to be the hallmarks of live comedy, an art relegated to the controlled environs of smoky, mainstream comedy clubs.
Lucky for us, a new breed of comedians has rejected the stale format. The alternative comedy movement of the 1990s has morphed into something unpredictable and cerebral. Something more akin to the visceral, anti-establishment ethos of punk and indie rock.
Call it indie comedy.
We’ll overlook the “tacky comb-over in a blazer” reference (that’s rather jarring in its inauthenticity!), but, once again, Wenzel manages to be upbeat when advocating for Indie. And the entire article is worth reading for its information and for his success in eliciting thoughtful, insightful quotes from Indie gods such as Cross, Martin and Brian Posehn.
We found yet another Wenzel piece, this time from his DP blog, on the occasion of his fourth visit to the South By Southwest festival in Austin last month. SXSW has, like so many other formerly strictly music festivals, incorporated standup into the program. A natural progression for indie music and, Wenzel notes, a natural progression for Indie comedy. But the evolution of Indie is not without its problems.
To be sure, indie comedy is not the largest or most diverse scene out there. Comedy nerds like myself that weekly devour Adult Swim and SuperDeluxe offerings tend to notice the same several dozen people (mostly white dudes) popping up at these fests. And if you live in L.A., New York, Chicago or Seattle you’re also likely to see the same handful of comedians at shows like Comedy Death Ray, or touring indie music venues in general, or releasing albums on indie music labels like Sub Pop, Drag City and Matador. In other words, overlapping with the indie rock sphere in a way that implies an inexorable, blessed blend of the two.
Which brings us to the piece in yesterday’s Post. If you read the three pieces in order, you can follow along as the genre (the movement?) grows and evolves. And, if we were to handicap it, if we were to try and guess at which point the movement is in its history (its epoch, if you will allow us to take the evolution analogy further), we would say that it is just about to succumb to its own success. Name us a genre that hasn’t. (In fact, if we’re to take Wenzel’s constant comparison of Indie comedy to punk rock to its logical extreme, we might be, not quite, but just about, at that point where Blondie released “Rapture.”)
Out there, on the road, over the past year or two, we’ve seen two tracks forming among open mikers and upandcomers: Your typical open mike comic will either emulate Dane Cook or he’ll present himself as an amalgam of a handful of Alt/Indie stars. There are exceptions to be sure. But the exceptions are rare.
Neither trend bodes well for the future. (In the former example, it takes an awful lot of personality and energy and cunning to pull off the Cook thing. But that’s an entire post for another day.) In the latter example, it is evidenced by an army of comedians (“mostly white dudes,” as Wenzel says) who dress alike and who affect similar grooming, delivery and quirks. And they reference an alarmingly similar array of words, phrases and subjects– AIDS, rape, abortion, genocide are specifically mentioned in yesterday’s DP article, with abortion being cited twice. It’s what Wenzel calls “hipster catnip.”
And they slather their presentations generously with Alt/Indy buzzwords and terms– “nutsack,” (and its variant, “ballsack”), “Satan’s spawn,” “soul-crushing,” “anal rape,” “fist fucking” and “Stephen Hawking.” Extra points are awarded if you manage to work in the name of any mid-20th century philosopher (Sartre is okay, Nietzsche is much better. Work in Jacques Derrida and they throw you a party). And if you manage to work in one or more reference into a single joke– i.e., Stephen Hawking getting fistfucked– you take home the blue ribbon.
For all its talk about innovation and breathing new life into the artform, for all of its huffery and puffery about moving the boundaries and challenging old expectations, there seems to be an awful lot of regimentation and replication– some of it self-imposed, some of it accidental. And this tendency toward imitation rather than innovation might destroy any of the good that emerges from the movement. See indie films– they’ve become self-parodying, bloated, high-budget, cliche-packed havens for the same old artists, directors, producers and distributors, virtually indistinguishable from the studio product. The same might happen to Indie comedy if folks aren’t careful.
(Check out MileHiComedy.com, a website curated by Denver comic Donna Ayers. She’s quoted in the April 21 DP article and her site pays strict attention to the comics and comedy venues of Denver and surrounding area. Every market, big or small, needs a site like this one.)
16 Responses
Reply to: Let's be independent together!
Wenzel didn’t coin the term “indie comedy”–it’s been around almost as long as the “alt-comedy” tag has been…as people try to find some words that make sense to define the scene and subculture that they feel but can’t properly describe.The easiest way to do so is to try to define what you’re not–and that leads to the “well, they’re not this poorly rendered stereotype of what some people think of club comedy” approach.Trust me, as a veteran of the mainstream/alt comedy wars myself, I know the frustration of trying to express a marketable sense of what one does…and finding a way to do so with a public (and the media that occasionally reports to them) that doesn’t really have a firm grasp of what you’re NOT doing, much less what you are…And you’re not wrong about the trend in open mic’rs to follow whatever inspired them to try stand-up–but hasn’t that ALWAYS been true? I know that when I started, every other person seemed to want to be Bill Hicks or Mitch Hedberg (which only proves that I was late to this party myself, I suppose.)Nor are you wrong about indie/alt comedy having consistent elements–which can also include “comedy about doing comedy”, utilizing found items, or writing down lists and then pulling out the list to read it on stage. This fills the pattern of every art subculture–a core “creates” something new and that inspires others to adopt that as a new uniform, a new homogeny… And Patton Oswalt said it best, and I’m paraphrasing here–when he said that the original “alt comedians” were just “comedians” who were frustrated…and turned their frustration into an effort to find an audience that liked what they did, without the compromises they felt they needed to make to play the traditional comedy clubs…BUT THAT NOW, comedians can choose to start out as alt comedians…taking on the aura of frustration without having actually experienced what it would take to get you frustrated…and being hand delivered a ready made audience without having had to work to cultivate it.Which is of course how he’s supposed to feel… I mean, Johnny Rotten thought punk rock was about personal expression–and not about copying what he did and making it a uniform.But you can’t stop the kids from joining a parade. Kids love parades.And jokes about robots. 🙂
Imagine my surprise as I, sleepless in Denver for no reason, notice a MySpace bulletin from one of the Wrist Deep guys about this Shecky Magazine post, and my articles on indie comedy. And it leads me here and… ah! Legitimization.But seriously, your post (and the comment from pg) brings up some interesting questions that I’ve been wrestling with for months in writing the book, but have never been able to responsibly address in the short, fairly topical newspaper articles I’ve written so far.Namely:1. The simultaneous ghetto and corporate-style niche market that putting certain performers in the “indie” category creates (branding their diverse styles as one in the same, or appealing only to people with DIY/anti-establishment sensibilities).2. The instant staleness that comes with identifying any sort of trend or movement, as in the New York Times writing about a national arts movement that was probably over a year ago — therefore condescending to and/or disconnecting from something that may already be dead just as an overzealous writer heralds its arrival. In other words, embalming the shit out of it.3. Is it wrong to define indie comedy as inherently opposed to the mainstream by generalizing and stereotyping mainstream comedy clubs as out of touch and possibly evil? Probably, because there’s lots of talented, smart, hard-working, self-aware people there too. I interview and see more mainstream comedians every month than I do indie or alt-comedians. But the point of certain types of journalism (i.e. bringing a general audience into a specialized topic) is to paint in broad strokes, and that was my only intention the intro to the original indie comedy article.In any event, nice post, and thanks for the link and thoughtful comments all around, and for reading this unnecessarily long reply (if you got this far). I’m going to gorge myself on all the archives on this site now. And try to sleep.
As part of the group of comics that was written about in John Wenzel’s article, I’d like to offer my opinion. The comparison, when taken literally, of the punk rock music movement to “Indie comedy” is a poor one at best. They were spurred by two very different groups of individuals with two very different agendas. One by either rampant poverty or civil unrest that manifested into a fuck-it-all mentality musically, the other by an ever changing and technologically savvy social network. I can’t speak for Wenzel, but when I read the article, I took the “punk rock” comparison as an easy point of reference for less-than-informed newspaper readers to understand the do-it-yourself mentality. That’s it. I’ve never “fist-fucked” anyone on stage. I have no safety pins through my “nut-sack”. I’ve never been “anal-raped”. AAWWwwww shit, triple-word-score. I am (and I’m not speaking for the other 3 comics in Wrist Deep Productions) just bored with getting 10 minutes twice a week. Videos are funny. Sketch Comedy is funny. Audience improvisation is funny. We can do what the hell we want, because we put it on.Punk rock died when an amazing group of individuals who pioneered a different approach to music saw stupid people taking a few of the worst core elements and making it the basis for wearing plaid, playing bad music, and saying the word “Satan’s spawn”. Single-word-score.I disagree that what is labeled as “indie comedy” will die soon. The internet is not going anywhere. Sites like Facebook and Myspace are growing exponentially. Crowd hungry music venues are still all the ever present. Americans are still fat and money hoarding so the decision to pay a dollar for a beer and a $5.00 cover over $10.00 martinis and cramped seating will always be an easy one. And as long as people keep showing up, the comics will go where they are because, as we all know, empty comedy club shows are “soul-crushing”. Single-word-score.I agree, Aids, Rape, Abortion, and Genocide material will grow passe’, but that will adapt and form to new trends. However, the vehicle for promoting that material has changed for good.Love you allBen Roy
<>And they reference an alarmingly similar array of words, phrases and subjects– AIDS, rape, abortion, genocide are specifically mentioned in yesterday’s DP article, with abortion being cited twice. It’s what Wenzel calls “hipster catnip.”And they slather their presentations generously with Alt/Indy buzzwords and terms– “nutsack,” (and its variant, “ballsack”), “Satan’s spawn,” “soul-crushing,” “anal rape,” “fist fucking” and “Stephen Hawking.” Extra points are awarded if you manage to work in the name of any mid-20th century philosopher (Sartre is okay, Nietzsche is much better. Work in Jacques Derrida and they throw you a party). And if you manage to work in one or more reference into a single joke– i.e., Stephen Hawking getting fistfucked– you take home the blue ribbon.<>Hallefuckinglujjah. Check out this test I made to see if you are an alt-comedy poser:http://www.modiggs.net/2008/03/pitch-alt-comedy-poser-rpg.html
Part of me wants to get into a nitpickingly detailed argument about how “punk rock” may or may not have died–but this is not the forum for such quibbles. <>(Oh, rest assured that one day we will meet again on the fields of battle, Ben Roy…and then, the game shall be afoot! 😉 )<>Instead, I’d like to consider some of John’s bonus questions.1) <>The ghetto/corporate tagging concern<>I think every artist chafes at the implied restraint of a label or a genre tag–but, being a subscriber in the Ries & Trout church of Positioning as I am, I recognize that the public NEEDS those labels to help them make choices with a minimum level of information.Of course, there are some careerists who leap towards the hottest trend…the nearest bandwagon that might carry them to Successville…and alt-comedy certainly has their share of Candleboxes.I’m not entirely certain, however, how much <>the audience<> (outside of NY, LA and SF) identifies themselves by their comedy tastes. That part of the tribal branding really hasn’t spread quite as fast as the performers desire to associate themselves with something that they either identify with or aspire to…2) <>The “by the time it has a name, it’s over” phenomenon.<>It’s a big country. Things might happen in one place at one time…and it might take awhile for those ideas to filter through.In music, it might take a Madonna single to make people in Wisconsin start vogue-ing…and by then, it’d been over and done with where it had originally started.Comedy is not nearly as cannibalistic as music–trends take longer to identify and develop…and some “trends” are really only reflective of a particularly popular performer (or small group.) That said, I think that the Comedians of Comedy tour has done for comedy what the Black Flag tours of the 1980’s did for the American Underground in music. It’s planted seeds and outlined a path for growth.(Suggestion to John Wenzel. Your next book might be titled “Our Comedy Troupe Could Be Your Life”)3) <>There is short hand in defining indie comedy versus club comedy<>Whatever. I’m just super impressed that you interview so many comedians, mainstream or not. Here, in Seattle, it took the addition of the “alt comedy” branding to make it news. Just being a comedian wasn’t worthy of an interview or a review in the Seattle media–and the alternative weeklies actively HATED stand-up comedy (and said so.)The alt-comedy tag presented an easily grabbed hook for a reconsideration…and now the local alt-comedy scene is the darling of the Seattle press.Of course, much of the coverage has been “You thought all stand-up sucked, but here are some people doing something different”–which is as annoying as hell. And, there still isn’t the type of coverage of comedy like the coverage of music or theater–you don’t get a profile of a comedian where the writer bothers to find out anything about the performer or their inspirations or their method.When I had my own alt-comedy showcase that had received some local coverage, a lot of the mainstream comedians who had worked very hard without any recognition to get where they were took offense–as in, “Why were these relative newcomers getting any press when they’d done so much more?”I had to try to explain to them that there’s actual “news” in people doing something “new”.And now that it seems that the main thrust of the alt-comedy scene in Seattle has passed me by…I have to remind myself of my own advice.There’s no news in a professional simply plying his trade…unless you live in Denver and John Wenzel is aware of you. Lucky Denver bastards. 🙂
I love this discussion.I have learned to mix it up–Meaning I can do a set in a comedy club and get paid (Ramen noodles are going up in price) and do another set in a college coffee house.I did see a ton of shows at the UCB in LA and the crowds there love inde comedy. But you take some of those comedians (who I think are brilliant) and put them certain clubs they will get stared at. But a lot of comedy club audiences are college kids so I am not being negative. You know something, scratch what I just said, Veteran comics in this vein are able bodied enough public speakers and performers and they can get the job done.I did see a really popular comedienne tell a story and in the middle of it she set something really funny up in her monologue and she stopped herself and said “Oh, oh, I almost told a joke joke! I am sooo sorry!”And I was sitting there thinking “You should have said it, Funny is funny. No one is going to judge you.”I think this is a great discussion.
I just think it’s great that the guys from Wrist Deep are finally making a mark on the comedy community.As John Wenzel points out, these guys are basically saving the Denver comedy scene. I think you can take that a step further and say that they are saving the entire homosexual comedy scene. Also, the fact that John Wenzel is homosexual truly shows the unity Wrist Deep is bringing to stand-up.I’m not gay or anything, but as an outsider, I can totally see why some guys are. Good job Wrist Deep! Good job to you, too, Mr. Wenzel, Mr. Sillypants!. You can call Wrist Deep edgy. You can call them innovative. But as far as I go, they’re just geniuses.Sure they’re just doing the old “edgy” topics of abortions, fetal alcohol syndrome, spooge masks, and kiddie porn. But they are bringing them not only to a new millenium, not only to the second decade of the new millenium, but to a new homosexual buttfucking gay millenium decade that will change the homo man-on-man comedy world for all ages to come. Thank you so much, Wrist Deep!
Re Andy’s comment above:We’re not sure what he’s getting at… and we’re not sure it’s libelous… is it libel to call someone (other than Tom Cruise) a homosexual? Not sure. Don’t think so. Are the boys at Wrist Deep “saving the entire homosexual comedy scene?” Not sure. Don’t think so. The very name of their outfit, as defined by the Urban Dictionary is:<>“To insert your whole hand into a woman’s vagina while engaged in fisting sex.”<>Of course, the boys at Urban Dictionary could be unaware of an entirely different meaning of “wrist deep,” which has homosexual overtones.A side note: Pete Seeger’s famous anti-war song “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” was originally “<>Wrist<> Deep in the Big Muddy,” and was initially meant not as a condemnation of the Vietnam conflict but as a paean to… well, use your imagination.Just kidding.But, we’re certain that “Andy” is a Denver comic who is merely ribbing his fellow Mile High comrades by implying that they’re all gay. (Which, we hasten to point out, seems to be a staple of Alt comedy. We recall the interminably long sequence in the Comedians of Comedy movie where the principals bounced off each other and giggled in various stages of undress, each implying/joking/suggesting that the other was gay… and also implying that they couldn’t possibly be gay. Much to the puzzlement of those watching the film. <>Are they gay?<> If so, why not just <>be<> gay? Are we supposed to laugh at the mere suggestion that they’re gay? The palpable unease in the room during this scene at the screening we attended was borne of years of marinating in political correctness and a mild panic as folks did the math– Let’s see… they’re not gay? They might be? It’s all right to be gay? It’s okay to laugh at the implication? It’s avant garde to laugh at feigned gay sex as long as the participants in the joke are not necessarily gay but assuredly gay-friendly?What it comes down to is yet another confusing double standard when it comes to Alt comedy. Witness the recent flap over Jay Leno’s Ryan Phillippe/”gayest look” gaffe.
Regarding this statement: “…implying that they’re all gay. (Which, we hasten to point out, seems to be a staple of Alt comedy…”Are you intending to imply that people don’t get called gay (a lot) in clubs?Just because I’ve been to a lot of clubs.And granted, I could be the common denominator in all those situations.(But I’m not ALWAYS the one getting called gay, or calling people gay.)Sincerely,Frequently gay Shecky commenter Myq Kaplan
Actually, I was being serious. I guess I didn’t realize the fisting thing applied to women. Thanks for the advice on that.In all honestly, though, the guys from Wrist Deep don’t get enough credit. I myself am an edgy comic. I’m not in their click or anything, but I am actually probably a lot edgier than they are. They won’t even touch the topics I touch. But anyhow, I didn’t mean to imply that they are gay. I just think it is nice to know that gay comics like them can be so proud of their craft and are doing such a good job to make sure that edgy gay comedy stays alive in Denver. The next time you drop into Denver, you seriously need to check out the Squire lounge, Wrist Deep ringleader Greg Baumhauer’s open mic. You will see more tattoos than you have ever seen and the second best rape jokes in town. I don’t perform there myself because I am more of a professional comedian, but if you want to see a hilarious night of Jew-bashing incest jokes, Greg, Adam Clayton Holland, and their lackey Jim Hickox will be there raping it up. There’s a reason comedy is on this planet and that reason is on Colfax in Denver Colorado.But yeah: go gays!
Hey folks, Jim Hickox here: one of the principles of Wrist Deep.There’s been a lot of kerfuffle about how we’re pushing a punk-rock ethos into an increasingly taciturn, milquetoast art form, or to the discrepancy between punk rock and indie comedy (Ben, we’ve talked) or how homosexual we are.I have always considered what I do to be an obstreperous and relentless advocacy of homosexual-punk-rock-comedy.Originally, I wanted the group to be called “Black Fag”, but no one was on board. My other rejected group names included “C&C Comedy Factory” and “Professor Whizzbang Fistfuck’s Queer-tacular Comedy Speculum Revue”
See? I told you. I’m not making fun. I’m just saying it like it is.Holy crap they are so punk rock! When I think punk rock, do I think Sex Pistols or the Ramones? No I think Wrist Deep or Third Eye Blind. That’s the good stuff!
Straight is the new gay, indie is the new establishment, up is down, black is white, David Cross is funny… this thread is an embarrasment of contradictions. Hello, I must be going.
In all the clubs, theaters, and “Alt” rooms that “pg” mentions, it’s always been about “being funny.” How performers get to their funny is one thing, but if it’s funny and done well enough that people will get it, the comic does well.But not in every room. I’ve seen some of the newer “Alt” performers – whom I loathe to call a Comic simply because they tell jokes on a stage, as much a chef as a McD’s burger flipper – go up and do the rape/robot/mythical creature jags, thrown in amongst the C word for shock, just to be “out there, man.” They are usually unaffected by the fact that the only ones laughing were their customer service shift-mates. And they usually only do open mics. I have yet to see them racking up paying gigs in clubs on weekends. (shrug) That’s how it is here. Being able to translate the material that works in a Comedy Club to a coffee house, be it your delivery or demeanor, shows the skill of the performer. I’ve seen Tracy Tuffs (genius) do meta-comedy unlike anybody, while the technique goes over the audience, bu they still get the jokes. Funny is funny, no matter the wale of the corduroy pants nor the days of neck scruff. Just because it’s different doesn’t mean it’s funny, and just because it’s inappropriate, doesn’t mean it’s “Alt,” “indie.”, or not a great joke about Darfur.
My name is Ben Kronberg and I tell abortion jokes. I’ve told them in comedy clubs, coffee houses, movie theaters, dive-bars, art galleries, fancy-pants bars, on the internet, restaraunts, baby showers, in line at the grocery store – the list goes on and on.I’m not here to defend edgy material, and feel a responsibilty to reel my thoughts back in to the topic of indie/non-indie stuff. and Please forgive any mispellings – i’m doing my best . I believe an independent spirit is one that recognizes the self as the center for opportunity and creation and…I do abortion jokes because i like the polarizing effect they have on an audience. I do rape jokes because i am infatuated with taboo subjects, ideas and things. Thinking about the taboo of life raises my endorphins and dialates my poopils, not unlike a rapist fantasizing about his next victim, or a Dr. who is about to perform an abortion, recognizing the god-like powers he is about to weild. man i suck at spelling. We all have to find what is funny to us and say it – or not. if you choose not to say it, but recognize it, then you are developing your own personal taste – if you decide to say it – it helps if you are in an environment that will allow you to say and explore the ideas that you came up with. I love open mics and booked shows and comedy clubs and alternative venues – they all have a different yet similar context to communicate your ideas – but they all exist – and their respective opportunities – because ideas exist – someimes there is no mic, sometimes the sound system sucks or sometimes the people that your are talking to don’t even listen – no matter how you slice it or fuck it or spread it, it is all great. i seem to have miandered a bit. yet stuck with the theme of shitty spelling – i’m just stoked to have my internet turned back on. does anyone know where i can get an extreme airport card for an apple g5 for cheap? – the model number i am looking for is A1026. truthfully.And one last thing:Opinions are like you guys – You’re all assholes.benps. here is a link to a LIVE stream i do from my apt. in Koreatown:http://www.ustream.tv/channel/ben-kronberg
Andy Kaufman here. OK guys, funny stuff and very pro Wrist Deep. But I want to make a point that I am Andy Kaufman, a Denver based comedian and did NOT post any of the comments in here attributed to me. I have contacted the Wrist Deep team to let them know. Why someone would use my name in this forum is confusing to me but that is on THEM, not me.