The Big, Beautiful Summer Vinyl Comedy Review Project
Comparing two Steve Martin albums from the late 1970s. Every week this summer, I review two records in my comedy collection.
As the pandemic tapered off in 2021, I attempted online dating. I met a guy named Ed on Hinge. He was nice, but pretty Ed- or egg-like. But he laughed at all of my jokes. This made him sort of attractive, or at least more adorable than Humpty Dumpty.
We were on a second date at an outdoor table at a brunchy place in the Village. It was a gorgeous spring day.
“What did you do in your neighborhood during lockdown?” I asked.
“Break up with my live-in girlfriend, who is now a lesbian,” he said.
“Oh, boy. Am I about to go the same route?”
He gufawed. We each paid our separate bills. We parted. And I felt all glowy with no desire for a third date. I was simply thrilled to be out of quarantine. I hadn’t been in Greenwich Village in more than a year.
Ed would have been forgettable, if I hadn’t then floated, Maisel-like, into Village Revival Records on Bleeker Street. This delicious dusty dive had a whole comedy section. After so much Zoom time, analoging sounded glorious.
Ah, vinyl.
I remember the end of the record-era, when friends and I would sneak-listen to “dirty” albums in the back of our parents’ stereo cabinets. I didn’t even know I wanted or needed comedy records. But I had a new turntable and $100 in cash. Why not pretend to be Mrs. Maisel and devour all I could without AI knowing my listening preferences (until now on this blog)?
“How many albums can I get for this?” I asked the cashier, dumping my bills on the counter.
“Pick out what you want and bring it here,” he said.
For the next 10 minutes, I ran back and forth between the shelves and hoarded-up counter. The droll cashier suddenly came to life, as if I had slipped a quarter into his rusty arcade brain. He instructed me: “You need Richard Pryor. And Bill Cosby. Why not?”
Bill Cosby did indeed feel sneaky, especially with him in prison. But he was a great comic. I was up for making up my own mind about his work.
This summer, I’m reviewing my 14-album collection, in pairs each week. I call it the Big, Beautiful Summer Vinyl Comedy Review Project.
Confession: I gave up my Phyllis Diller “Born to Sing” (1970) as soon as I could. Not only did it smell like someone’s basement, it sounded like one too, with her putting herself down. “I’m such a loser,” she tells us, with the band playing in the background. “I bought a new hat. They cancelled Easter.” Yick! Toxic beauty jokes already play in my head. Why would I want to listen to that?
But I got Moms Mabley, Carl Reiner, W.C. Fields, George Burns, etc. We’re in for a treat.
Let’s start with two Steve Martins:
“Let’s Get Small” (1977)
Steve Martin’s first comedy album made him famous for the catch phrase: “Excuse me.”
Location: The Boarding House, San Francisco, California
Highlights
In the first 90 seconds of Side 2, Martin delivers one premise with big returns: “If I'm in a restaurant and I'm eating and someone says, ‘Hey, mind if I smoke?’”
From this, he gets eight separate laughs from the audience: 1) “I always say, I don't know. Do you mind if I fart?”, 2) “It's one of my habits,” 3) “Yeah, they got a special section for me on airplanes now,” 4) “I quit once for a year, you know,” 5) “But I gained a lot of weight,” 6) “It's hard to quit,” 7) “After sex, I really have the urge to light one up,” 8) “See, I'm not a very tactful person.”
Martin asks people in the audience how much they paid to see the show. Tickets were a whopping $4.50. He said sometimes he provides a really good deal, a show that is $4.50 but is worth $4.75.
He makes a wonderful reference to drugs when he says: “I get really small … I know I shouldn’t get small when I’m driving, but I was driving around the other day …”
He makes absurd statements: “I was born a poor black child or “I went to the Turd Museum. They’ve got some good shit there.”
He makes one political reference: former President Richard Nixon looking so old Martin feels pity. He imagines Nixon on the beach with his “big old shorts on” while holding a metal detector.
He plays the banjo and leads a sing-along called “Grandmother’s Song.”
Peak Inside
From Steve Martin’s book Cruel Shoes (1977) … “‘How wonderful it is that we’re all smoking,’” he thought. Everyone smoked and smoked and after they smoked they all talked about smoking and how nice it was that they were all smokers and they smoked some more.”
“Comedy Is Not Pretty!” (1979)
His third album follows “Let’s Get Small” and “A Wild and Crazy Guy” and makes references to his new fame. He reads from his book Cruel Shoes, while playing banjo.
Location: The Boarding House, San Francisco, California
Highlights
In the first few minutes of Side 1, Martin says the following:
You have to forgive me. No, I'm in a bad mood. I'm honest. I'll be honest with you. Because of some of the press I've been getting, it's starting to drive me nuts. I mean, don't I have a right to privacy? I mean, I no longer have a private life? I mean, I think I have a right to that. And I'm sorry. I read a thing about myself in the National Enquirer about a week ago. I could not believe. I mean, so what if I have this thing on my balls?
Okay, we're moving now, folks. Sorry, the show was a little late. The plane was late today. I was supposed to get here at noon. And I got here at 12.04. That threw me off for the whole day.
I don't know if you know this or not. We're recording some comedy jokes here tonight. What we do is when we get this tape, we're going to take it to Warner Brothers, and we're going to erase it.
Peak Inside
Inside the album, Martin includes a booklet about his press and earlier years. There’s also a poster of him in a pink suit.
Stick around next week when I review that horrible Phyllis Diller plus Moms Mabley’s “I got something to tell you!” (1963). I think the two albums speak to each other with two very different female voices.