Whatever Happened to the Comedy Album?

I woke up this morning suddenly aware that a big piece of culture had slipped away without me noticing: comedy albums. I don't know why I woke up with that on my mind, but I did (I also woke up this morning calculating the Earth's mass in my head . . . just checked, I was only off by a factor of three, which I consider pretty darn order-of-magnitude close).

Karen, when I get that faraway look in my eyes, this is where I go. Sorry. Love 'ya.

In my teens, it wasn't unusual to get together with friends and listen to comedy albums. I remember doing it in the family room of a good friend in junior high; I remember doing it with 15 people crammed into a college dorm room. Does anyone still do that? Or does it sound as antique and exotic as a malt-shop sock hop to someone under 35 or 40? Or was I just hanging out with freaks and weirdos all along (a real possibility)?

My prime comedy listening years were pretty much the 1970s, though I heard and appreciated material from before my time. In the mid-'70s, San Francisco AM radio station KSFO had a wonderful block of nighttime programming. As I recall, the evening started at 8 p.m. with Radio Mystery Theater, which broadcast modern original dramas. At 9 p.m. came old programs from the 1930s through '50s, a rotating mix of classic dramas such as "The Shadow" and comics like Fred Allen and Jack Benny, as well as occasional obscurities. Then at 10 p.m. came comedy, hosted by D.J. John Gilliland, and oh was that terrific! All the great stuff from the '50s and '60s. There were probably a good two or three years there where I disappeared into my room after dinner every night to listen to old radio programs and cuts from comedy albums. Most parents of teenage boys worry about them because they don't know what they're up to; I imagine now how my parents must've worried about me because they did know.



On top of that were comedy albums that friends and I bought, shared, swapped. A terrific mix of old and new. I loved Bob Newhart's button-down mind, both Bill Cosby's high-concept and well-observed family stuff, Allan Sherman, Nichols and May, Spike Jones. Tom Lehrer. Monty Python put out some albums that played with the vinyl medium as much as their films and television programs played with theirs. I knew a girl in junior high whose parents were so cool they let her play George Carlin loud! Richard Pryor. And poor Bill Dana . . . Mr. Dana came out of the Danny Thomas-Spike Jones-Steve Allen school of comedy and had the misfortune to play a dim-witted character named Jose Jimenez just when it became obviously wrong to do so. When I was 13, I didn't know Jose Jimenez was racist; I just thought he was very funny. (Mr. Dana later retired the character with apologies and received an Image Award from the National Hispanic Media Coalition.)





Comedy wasn't just an obscure niche of the recording industry. "The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart" was Number One on the Billboard pop chart in 1960, ahead of Elvis Presley. The last comedy album I'm aware of having a significant cultural impact was Steve Martin's "Wild and Crazy Guy" from 1978, which hit Number Two on the album charts and went double platinum. Everybody had it. Looking over the list of Grammy winners, I don't see much in the 32 years (!) since: some Weird Al, PDQ Bach (which I love), Chris Rock, welcome little blips from veterans like Carlin, Jonathan Winters, and Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, and a new generation rising with Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart. Some good work, but nothing explosive and universal. Certainly nothing I can imagine college freshman huddling around an mp3 player listening to.

Is that it, then? Is the comedy album a relic? Cable television doubtlessly stole a lot of their steam; whereas Bill Cosby put out at least one record a year between 1963 and 1973, today someone like Lewis Black produces HBO or Comedy Central specials at the same rate. Then there's the obvious fragmenting of culture, so that you and I could go our whole lives unexposed to each other's artistic and entertainment touchstones.

Maybe I'm becoming a cranky old coot (check that: I know I'm becoming a cranky old coot, I'm just not sure whether it applies to this issue), but it seems like something valuable has been lost. Something communal, some secret clubhouse conjuring the theater of the mind. It's hard to put a finger on it. I didn't even notice it'd gone missing until this morning.

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Great new word of the day: Pleonastic. It means repetitive or redundant (perhaps like that definition itself). Work it into a conversation.

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The Harveys &c

It escaped my notice that Harvey Awards were bestowed at the Baltimore Comic-con over the weekend. Sorry I dropped the ball. The Harveys are an autumnal counterpoint to the summer's Eisner Awards. They're also the nice people who named me "Best New Talent" two years ago, to their increasing chagrin.*

In any case, looking over the list of winners (which I had to find at Tom Spurgeon's invaluable Comics Reporter because I don't see them on the official site that doesn't look like it's been updated in weeks), I noticed how many of the winners share my publisher, Abrams. Mark Evanier's Kirby: King of Comics won two Harvey Awards, Al Jaffee's Tall Tales won two, and Kyle Baker's Nat Turner won one. In addition, Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid was nominated in several categories but sadly shut out, leaving Jeff's cash-stuffed pillowcase stained with his tears I'm sure.

That's a big impact for a smallish publisher that first dipped its toe into comics just a few years ago. Congrats to Editor Charlie (who edited Kirby, Tall Tales and Wimpy Kid, don't know about Nat Turner) and everyone at Abrams on being recognized for their good work. I feel like a kicker playing on Joe Montana's 1984 San Francisco 49ers.** It's good to be with a winning team.

*Mandatory Joke Whenever I Mention This Honor: When my wife found out about it she said, "You look like the same old talent to me." True story. She's funny.

** Ray Wersching
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I discovered a great new word today: "fissiparous" (fi-SIP-er-us), referring to something that tends to split. Next goal: work it naturally into a conversation.

I always wanted to keep a little notebook in which to jot new words as I found them. I never did, and kind of regret it. A lot of good words have gotten away from me because I didn't hook them when I had the chance. Then it occurred to me: I have a blog!

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I found two things to pass on courtesy of Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, who's actually a very good astronomer if bad at returning e-mails. First is a really cool chart from National Geographic that graphically illustrates every space mission to date. Each colorful track represents one mission, with bodies receiving the most missions (e.g., the Moon with 73) getting the most spirals around them. Nifty!

Second is a 1:48 video that I thought was a fun little art project/social experiment/Volkswagen commercial. Well-conceived, modestly insightful, but mostly just something I would definitely go out of my way to enjoy if someone installed one around me.