They’re still out there, the HellGigAmerica boys. And they’re continuing to faithfully post updates (hit “Road Updates”) on their HellBlog. There’s this, from Chuck Savage:

Frank Santorelli is one funny mutha fucker. i learned alot watching him last night. melvin george II, in hartford the night before was the same way. and after seeing 2 headliners like that, i started having a different kind of respect for east coast comedy. it’s like they have a reverence for a style of stand up that dates back to before folks in my part of the country HAD stand up comedy. tommy talked about it too, but…command of the stage and the moment.

Interesting. We’ve always been huge Santorelli fans. And it was our extreme pleasure to share many bills with Melvin in the 90s! What struck us about this post was that there might have been a stark, recognizable genre known as “East Coast Comedy.” From what we can discern, it encompasses a respect for “The Joke,” a low priority on being revealing or poignant and a premium placed on crowd control and timing (and less of a dependence on what has come to be labelled as “energy”). We got to thinking about it and it handily describes what has come to be known as “The 80s Comic.”

We recently taught a workshop and we noticed that the comics (many of whom were in their first year or two) were loath to simply tell a joke. (We’re not talking street joke here, we’re saying that they were reluctant– embarassed, maybe– to be seen as doing anything that sounded vaguely like a joke. Like a setup-and-a-punchline joke that might tip the audience off that they were… comedians. They were furiously laboring to create the impression that what they were engaging in was conversational, was authentic, was of their essence.

In the pages of this magazine, Dan French wrote a splendid piece sometime back about how to craft the ulitmate Los Angeles showcase set. (Thus, the title, “Your Showcase Set.”)

Standups horribly misunderstand showcases. We think they are about material, and being clever, and killing the audience. I have seen so many showcases where standups who are usually funny eat it horribly. They eat it because they expect the audience to do its share. Standups expect the audience to bring energy to the moment instead of expecting to have to supply all the energy themselves. They expect the audience to laugh.

We recall being stunned by the column at the time. When we lived in L.A., we observed none of what Mr. French described, but what he said made all the sense in the world. In the seven years since our departure from L.A. (the column appeared in our June,2000 issue– we fled Hollywood in ’93), the rules of Los Angeles comedy (or “West Coast Comedy”) had changed quickly and profoundly it seemed.

In 2005, we theorize that the influence of The Los Angeles Showcase (and all that goes with it) has so affected a generation of comics that folks like Santorelli and George stand out almost as a separate comedic species and, as we observed in our seminar, even up-and-comers on the East Coast of America are inclined to adopt west coast comedy sensibilities.

Let’s hope that the standup equivalent of the East Coast/West Coast rap war doesn’t erupt after the next comedy awards ceremony!