Greater Boston Alternative Comedy Festival
By Rob Turbovsky
If the Greater Boston Alternative Comedy Festival had a thesis statement, it would have been organizer Robby Roadsteamer’s mid-set appeal to the audience of the Paradise Rock Club: “You need to support this scene or else the Dane Cooks and everyone else you hate are gonna win.” It wasn’t a knock on Cook – that dead horse was long ago beaten into nothingness, copies of the Retaliation album along with it. No, Roadsteamer’s insistence made the line sound more like a plea. The purpose of the night was not to continue or even contribute to the handwringing in the comedy community about just what “alternative” is or isn’t. It was to serve as a kind of grassroots challenge, channeling the unpretentious parts of the area’s hipster thing into something real, active and (gasp) sincerely unironic: the DIY cultivation of a local comedy scene in Boston that matters as much to audiences as it does to performers.
The “alternative” label seems to be far less important than what it’s labeling. For one of the performers, Mehran Khaghani, being alternative meant exploring his life as a gay Iranian-American with an enthusiastic fearlessness that’s infectious. For the Anderson Comedy team, which has built its own underground following by bringing its stand-up/sketch/talk show hybrid to dive bars usually reserved for bands, alternative was the harmonizing and arm-in-arm swaying during their song, “I’m Not Wearing Pants for Christmas” (sung, appropriately enough, by four people without any pants on). But, even in the comparison, the question of whether opener Bethany Van Delft or show-closer Shane Mauss are weird enough to be considered alternative wasn’t as important as the fact that each delivered a solid performance.
“Alternative comedy is just a term that helps the teenagers and housewives understand you might not just see a comic trying out a safe, five minute, ready-for-Jay-Leno set,” Roadsteamer said later, “but rather one who wants to see what they can do with their art form.”
Van Delft’s onstage demeanor is that of an engaging cynic, while Mauss, thrice featured on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, has the innocent-faced dirty comedy thing down to a science. It doesn’t hurt that he’s a smart, tight joke-writer and an engaging presence on the mic, especially in a well-received bit riffing on how phone sex can turn into phone rape. Neither of the sets would have been out of place at a reasonably diverse comedy club, but that’s not to say that the night’s range rendered the show’s title meaningless.
“No one should be saying ‘I want to be an alternative comic!’ The whole thing is more of an inadvertent result than a goal,” comedian Chris Coxen said afterwards. “My act is a little weird and could probably be considered alternative.” If “alternative” is a “know-it-when-you-see-it” sort of thing, Coxen is more than probably right. He performed on the bill as several members of his diverse troupe of insane, straight-faced characters, including lounge singer Barry Tattle (who referenced his “tattlesnake” at least once) and Danny Morsel, equal parts furious dancer and – I’m guessing – ninja warrior.
Backstage, the vibe from the comics was upbeat and excited. Certainly, the turnout was healthy, with an audience willing to be surprised. “It proved that there are a lot of people out there that crave something different,” Coxen said. “Now is the time to remind people that this wonderful and different type of comedy exists and that it is worth supporting.” Roadsteamer hopes the show – and the others he wants to stage – builds a comedy community in Boston that rivals that of New York or Los Angeles, not just a place people come to see comedy, but one where comedians want to be to work on their art. “You can be a relevant artist and live in the area you would want to create in,” he said. “Comedy still is filtered through New York or L.A., and that destroys a lot of otherwise really talented people who had to get suckered into the machine and end up pouring their work out on VH1’s “I Love The 80’s” or on E!”
Roadsteamer’s act itself is difficult to categorize or even describe. “I wanted to tackle the idea of a comedy song in a different way than I’ve seen,” he said, and his act is filled with songs that aren’t supposed to be taken seriously. “I wanted to make reality comedy songs about the people and places around me, but I would hope my songs could make you feel other things too.” When Roadsteamer is onstage, his face fills with an earnest seriousness-of-purpose. He doesn’t toss off the songs like little ditties. “I hate saying I do comedy songs,” he explained, “because most of the time, people think of fat guys in Hawaiian shirts, and I think I have a different feel than a lot of those people. Songs about boys giving heart containers to beautiful princesses, or angry dudes putting on construction boots; those aren’t comedy songs. They’re reality songs.”
Coxen made note of the generosity in Robby’s approach to the evening. Roadsteamer opted to put both the Walsh Brothers and Mauss after him. In the dressing room, I heard him tell comics not to worry about sticking to their assigned set lengths – virtually unheard of at comedy shows – and simply enjoy the night, which probably explains why the show ended with all of the performers onstage in an appropriately chaotic and jubilant rendition of “We Are The World.”
“Coming from the music side of the tracks, putting labels on comedy or music is just a big ol’ waste of time,” Roadsteamer said. “It allows yourself to be boxed into a genre with expectations now put upon your work.” During his set, Roadsteamer introduced a song called “Christmas in Allston” by saying, “It’s about a beautiful boy who chokes himself off to orgasm at night, cries alone and blogs.” Later, during a song about a lost cat poster at a supermarket, he encouraged the crowd to sing along by shouting, “One more time…you’re gonna die alone!” But, Roadsteamer has a point – splitting hairs over the show’s “alternativeness” was nearly as useless as debating its “Greater Bostonness.” The Walsh Brothers don’t live in the city anymore, nor does the evening’s host Shane Webb, who opened the night on an appropriately tongue-in-cheek note by asking the crowd if it was “ready to get all alternative and shit?” But geographical differences didn’t seem to impede Chris and Dave Walsh’s ability to deliver the kind of breakneck brilliance that makes them such standouts on the comedy scene wherever they are. To hear these guys talk about anything, from the dangers of the discount Chinatown bus to a story of a half-naked woman shouting drunken come-ons at them from a hotel balcony, is to witness something close to comedic perfection: invisible writing that’s unfailingly crisp, manic energy and the kind of timing only siblings (with, I presume, a touch of telepathy) could develop. Understandably, Steven Wright is a big fan.
In a terrific coincidence (for this article anyway), the Greater Boston Alternative Comedy Festival took place two days after the induction of Wright into the just-created Boston Comedy Hall of Fame. At that event, Wright was saluted with short comedy sets from nearly a dozen of the performers who are inextricably linked with the first major wave of Boston comedy in the late 1970s/early 1980s, including Lenny Clarke, Jimmy Tingle, Steve Sweeney and Tony V. These men were all considered exciting and edgy in those heady days. But, seeing them all perform in rapid-fire succession at a slick concert venue next to the stadium that hosts the home games of the New England Patriots, it was impossible not to think of them as what they were: the old guard, joking to uniformly appreciative crowds about the mayor, midgets, and Arabs at Dunkin’ Donuts.
How did it happen? How does a movement go from “alternative” to mainstream, and, more importantly, is that a change to be welcomed? Perhaps the relationship is best understood in terms other than oppositional. Robert Altman, the maverick director of films like Nashville, M*A*S*H and Short Cuts, frequently described the way he viewed the Hollywood establishment’s relation to his work like this: “We’re not against each other. They sell shoes, and I make gloves.” The dynamic could well apply to the comedy world, as well. “Art, like comedy, is always evolving,” Coxen said. “Some comedians naturally introduce new concepts and styles and voices that are truly innovative. Some of these new acts attract attention, become popular and now that line has shifted in a way that no longer makes that performer alternative.”
Rob Turbovsky is a writer from Boston. Visit robturbo.blogspot.com.
