Show Them Who’s Boss
November 29, 2007 · Print This Article
Pop quiz, what’s worse than a comic going on stage for the first time? Give up? A non stop caravan of bombing newcomers comprising an open mic that just won’t end. On today’s show Brian gives tips on how to run an open mic, from getting the audience in the door, to getting the comedians off stage.
Listener topics include hack material from around the globe, laughing at your own jokes, Brian’s sudden disappearance from MSR one year ago, and an upcomer ditches politics for poop. Make up your own punchline, that one’s too easy.
Email: brianmcomedy@gmail.com and give us a call on 206-203-4692
Hey B-Mo, great show. As a brand-new open mic runner, a lot of the advice really struck a chord (particularly about getting asses in the seats).
Already got my audio submission in! Hope all the other comics on here do the same.
I’m guessing it was a No. 2 Pencil.
Ba-dum-bum!
Alright TENACIOUS D, The most metal thing since Sabbath. god i love those guys, great choice B-mo.
Another great show. I have two clubs where I do open mikes - one that’s a show-up and go up with few restrictions and one that’s booked and has some rules: mandatory pre-show meeting, a limit on how many times a month you can go up, etc. The latter always has the better and larger crowd. Advertising does very little if the show isn’t run in a professional way.
-3 weeks ago, me and two friends went to Seattle to see Louis C.K. I realize it took a long time to post this but I don’t know if had the wrods then to describe this experience. I’m only 17. Kinnison, Hicks, Pryor, Murphy, and every other seemingly legebdary performer is now gone. But I just felt as I started to see the Seattle skyline in the distance that night that something special was about to happen.
-First off, who did they get to open for him? Todd fucking Barry. This struck me as shocking but I have to say he didn’t take it as a slight and gave a fucking incredible set. I have both his Cds, and found them both disaapointing, but the 30 minute set he did was perfection. Crowd work, sarcasm, honesty, vulgairty, everything i love about him.
-As great as Todd was, he can never possibly touch Louis’ performance though, even if he had been given his entire career to prepare. Now Louis C.K. is not somebody who’s under exposed. He had a half hour hbo special in 2005, used many of that material for his sitcom “lucky louie”, had another fresh hbo hour long special filmed in fall 2006, and regularly goes on 10 minute rants that are hilarious on the opie and anthony show, so i expected to hear at least one familiar joke. Nope, that man was on stage for 75 minutes, and every second was all new material. Eveything i expected came true. He talked about how much he hated his wife, how much he hated his kids, how fat he was, how depressed he was, and how suck-y america is. But then, he turned it around, and defended his wife by talking about how amazing it is that she was with him for that long, how much he cared about his kids, and was brutally honest about his patheticness. I don’t think I ever stopped laughing in that 2 hour show. Afterwards, Todd signed his Cd for me, and louis was very smiley , and took a picture with me and my friends. As we walked back to that car my friend whgo isn’t a die hard comedy fan like any of us said to me “if dane cook’s become as bad as you say, I don’t wanna see him. That was too perfect to be tarnished.
-I guess what I’m saying is, can we have some louis c.k for comic request month?
Holy shit, I was expecting that story to end with the loss of your virginity. Thanks for sharing.
Yeah, I’m surprised Louis CK hasn’t been requested yet. We’ve heard a couple of guys twice, but no Louis. I’d like to second the request!
Ben:
I kinda like the Todd Barry CDs. They’re not LOL funny, so I can understand why people might be underwhelmed. Yet another comic to add to the list of people I’d be better off seeing live.
And I really liked Lucky Louie, even though I really didn’t need to see Louie CK’s penis in that one episode. It did get a huge laugh though, and I mean that in a good way.
He’s one of those comedians that really does share quite a bit of personal info and feelings with his audiences, and when you do that, nobody can Mencia your work.
Yes, I used Mencia as a verb.
Great show.
But was intrigued by the mention of the hack topic of acts who open with “I know what you’re thinking - that guy looks like a cross between Mussolini and Burt of Sesame Street” etc.
I know this overused as an intro.
But what if you’re a comedian and you genuinely look like a famous person? I share a resemblance with a few weird celebritites, and if I didn’t refer to it myself early on in my act at certain gigs, some drunk audiences members will quite happily point it out at the top of their voices, and risk undermining my whole set by getting a big laugh in the process because i haven’t mentioned it yet myself, like i’m the one in denial. The same goes for being a really fat/skinny/dwarfish/supertall person too - is it really so bad to do a quick joke early in your set about your own appearance to dissuade any potential heckles that may screw up your act?
i’m not sure that’s the point. If there are things about your appearance that you want to bring up, or if you’re told you look like a famous person in real life, that’s fine. But if it’s random observations no one has ever made about you, its complete hack. “I know what you’re thinking” No you don’t asshole, you just thought of a stupid opening line on your way over hear from the comedy condo. Douchebags. That’s another thing doug stanhope has said annoys him, along w/ comics that do jokes about how wild steve irwin was.
I’ve always followed the philosophy of acknowledge the elephant in the room before anything else. Meaning…if you have a giant mole on the front of your face or a huge black eye…I’d open with the mole/black eye material. If you don’t, no one will be able to listen to anything you say because they’ll be looking at that.
If there is nothing extremely remarkable about your appearance that will make the audience distracted…then don’t draw any attention away from what you’re saying to the way you look.
But I’m a hack, so what do I know. haha.
Sina.
I’m with Sina. If you look so much like a celebrity that it will be a distraction, by all means go for it, but that’s generally pretty rare.
Introsting show Brian. I do have a few comments here about the open mics though. Back when I started doing standup here in Houston we had ourselves a pretty amazing open mic system going on. Generally having 4 hosts and between 40 and 50 people going up every week and usually a semi full to full crowd on a regular basis. This allowed us to have a pretty successful show that started at 8 and went sometimes til 1 or 2.
Aside from being a big city I found the reason the shows did so well hinged on a few things.
1) The experienced comics actually showed up in reasonable numbers. Making it easy to not have to go more then 3 or four rookies before actually hearing something that could be considered “comedy”
2) Secondly the club also o offered a few comped drinks to the hosts. Which was incentive for the Pros to host (because we are all alcoholics and poor). That way you actually have someone that can keep the show going inbetween disasters and knew not to tell bits inbetween every comedian
3) We had about 5 min for everyone. Working comics had 6-8 min. That worked out well for getting people into the show. And there used to be harsher punishments as well.
4) Having crowd favorites and specticals helped to. Being funny doesnt bring back people like someone saying “Holy shit dude you gotta see this freak”
Unfortunately a lot has changed since the club moved locations. The open mics certainly have seen better days, but that brings me to my 5th and maybe most important thing for an open mic.
5) Consistancy. Having the show on every day/week/month at the same time and location. Change it and people will find something else to do on a monday
Hack or Mot a Hack- I listen to foxxxcast and it never makes me laugh-You guys choose
BMO- You need to do a pokerpodcast again!
The shows that I run down here in Salt Lake are an open mic most of the time (when we don’t have a headliner passing through or booked in advance). If anyone wants to know the way we run our shows, go back a few episodes and listen to B-Mo interview me and my awkward, rambled, drawn out answers on “Are you Mormons ready for comedy?”
Love,
Sina.
Interesting thoughts Ryan T. Back in the late 70’s early 80’s open mics (especially in NY/LA) used to run 7-8 hours and audiences would come and go as they pleased. It wasn’t uncommon for comics to do 2-3 different spots on the same show. From what I’ve seen, that doesn’t tend to work anymore because live comedy isn’t the draw it once was. And in all honest, no one loves comedy more than me, but after 3 hours and 35 comics, I’m ready to pack it in.
Well did the ” funniest college student in nj” competition and it was really fun, obviously i dint win but wasnt expecting to. plus the guy who did win deserved to win two times over. all in all a good night
For anyone who’s interested…One of our listeners, Lucy Standup was in town for a blogging convention and she interviewed me for her comedy blog. Here’s the link.
http://standup101.blogspot.com
Anyone watch Last Laugh 07?
I was impressed with Black’s set, enjoyed Attell, but was disappointed by D.L. Hughley. But then again, nothing too new.
Hey Bmo, happy you’re doing an all request month! I thought you’d try and keep up the themed months and have only Christian Comedy or something……
Last luagh is the place i find all the news that ive missed over the last year
I’ve never been impressed by D.L. The other two are icons, he’s not in the same ballpark as Black and Attell.
hey brian i just wanted to say i was with you from your days of msr and it was kinda nice to hear the dirt on why you left like you did. I was sad to see you leave there but i am so glad you did your shows are now 1000 times better for it you do have to limt everything to a 30min pod cast much less whit the dum 30 sec ads to work there.
what also was weird is you where the frist to go then Kush left then Swa left and now they all have there shows elseware and the procuct is much better for it
so thank you for leaveing im glad you did to be honsent im not there as much as i used to be.
Hey Brian and the BTB gang!
I just got back from seeing Dane Cook in Dallas and holy shit. I don’t care what anyone says about him that was still one hell of a show! When you can pack an arena like that and have that kinda support you are obviously funny. I was able to get upgraded down to almost the floor and had some really great seats. I decided not to buy the cd/dvd right away because i wanted to hear his new material first hand at the show and then I bought the new cd. What was great about this weekend was, the show was on sunday and on saturday I went to see steve mcgrew at a small comedy club in dallas so it was a full weekend of standup!! It didn’t get any better then that! Not to mention my Sooners kicked serious ass for the Big 12 Championship!
gilley dont remind me please
Sina Quote: “I’ve always followed the philosophy of acknowledge the elephant in the room before anything else. Meaning…if you have a giant mole on the front of your face or a huge black eye…I’d open with the mole/black eye material. If you don’t, no one will be able to listen to anything you say because they’ll be looking at that.”
100% Agree with this. I think if you do have a unique feature about yourself, bringing it up would be funny. Like you said, mention it in the start would get everyones focus off it. It may also be funny to let it linger a bit and bring it up later on in your set, I would laugh at a well timed joke in the middle of the set about a comics weight, apperance..ect…BECAUSE I have seen them for 5-10 mins. and develop a visual opinion, then they make a joke about it…probably would make me laugh.
Love the idea of listeners sending in the material. Play as much as you can, and we can post comments here. Don’t be shy if you are a comic and listen to the show. Listeners like me who don’t do stand-up want to hear your stuff good or bad.
Love the show,
but you look the guy that should be given a pedigree onto a chair by Triple H violently.
As your body is trying to climb back to your feet, out of know where you take a RKO onto thumbtacks by Randy Orton, as your body starts to has twitch attacks, you get a walls of Jericho and you start tapping out like a moose who’s had his hair cut done by a mentally challenged goose.
Love the show Brian, keep up the great work.
Great work with the pick of Tenacious D Bmo. Can’t beleive I didnt even think of those dudes before you put them on - I love em!!!
Thank you Billy. That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.
On to a serious topic, the show will be a couple of hours late today. 99% of the time it works out great to have a producer on the other side of the planet. The 1% comes when I forget to send a sound file, then go to bed. He should have it up this evening or early tomorrow morning at the latest. My bad!
“Long time listener, first time………..poster(??)”
I love ‘Behind the Bricks’. I am a talk radio enthusiast first and a comedy connoiseur second. I want to blow a talky, jokey load when listening.
Brian, you really have something good going on here. I had an afternoon drive shift on a small market FM station in Louisiana and I’ve been doing open-mic for over a year now (finally have a solid twenty minutes!!). I got booted from the radio station for being too “edgy” (I was going to give a gift card to a dude that was going to smell a bum’s fart). I still do comedy, but I have a hunger to get back into radio.
I always wanted to do a full talk show, but of course terrestrial radio is so fucking safe and boring now that it’s never going to work again.
After listening to ‘BtB’ (that’s what the cool people call it) I’ve decided that podcasting can be effective and can be the future. I look up to what you are doing, and wish nothing but success to you and ‘BtB’ (again….it’s cool) and can’t wait to jump hip deep into this podcast realm…..
P.S. Has ‘BtB’ done Dennis Miller yet?
Hey Bmo
Ive just remembered a comedian who is British but does a shyteload of work in Australia with live shows, tv appearances and regular radio slots.
His name is Ross Noble and his style is pretty random and crazy but he is a hell of a funny guy. Last I heard (as i was leaving Aus in May) was that he was travelling round Australia on a motorbike doing shows and a once-a-week call in/catch up on a national radio channel called Triple J
Dont know if you could spotlight him at all but if not, Id recommend checking him out nonetheless
keep up the great work
Thanks Adam. I’ve done a little radio as well, and even though this particular show is a labor of love at the moment, that’s a small price to pay for complete freedom. Besides, the money in regular radio ain’t all that spectacular either.
On a more serious note, our producer Tony had to make a hospital run so the show will be delayed a little longer. Our apologies and of course we wish Tony a speedy recovery. I won’t guess when the show will be out because I’m always wrong.
Is tony better now? Hopefully it wasn’t too serious. For those interested, and if it hasnt been mentioned in your podcast this week (haven’t listened to it yet) but Brian is mentioned by Standup Orlando Podcast, where it basically proves Brian’s point about emcees. Good job brian.
bMo,
I finally got a chance to listen to this episode where you talk of your departure from MSR. First, congrats on the success of both of your new shows and the strong following you’ve maintained. While I could contend points in your explanation of your departure–there are two sides to every story–I’d prefer to commend you for being original in your new sites and shows, and not spamming MSR or encouraging your listeners to do so as other former hosts have done. I take fair responsibility for the breakdown of our working relationship, and for the abrupt end. We had a great run and again I’ll say publicly as I have about you on some MSR shows this year, we/ I appreciate all you did for MSR and had a kick ass time doing it. Happy Holidays and best of luck to you, the fam, and the BTB community in 2008.
Sam
Hi Sam. Long time no talk and Happy Holidays to you as well. I certainly invite you to contend your point, in fact, I would love to hear your side. I have to say I was very fair. If you feel otherwise go for it.
Thanks Bmo. I’ll hit you old school and maybe we can clear the air.
I appreciate the voicemail Sam, but with all due respect, we have nothing to work out on any personal level. I certainly respect your right to defend your side if you feel I misspoke, which you can do here or as a call in on my show. Unlike other forums, we don’t censor posts or monitor people’s email accounts.