In Pod We Trust: five podcasts to which I am addicted (entries 4 & 5)

4. As It Occurs to Me: Richard Herring remains one of Britain’s busiest standups and also one of its most prolific podcasters. In my profile post on Herring, I discussed his other endeavors, but in this “short list” of recommended podcasts I had to include his sketch comedy show As It Occurs to Me, since it is, by turns, the most ambitious, the silliest, and, yes, the most imaginatively vulgar program I’ve heard in the decades since one could actually hear “the seven dirty words” on listener-sponsored Pacifica radio in NYC.

The show grew out of Herring’s twisted-history BBC program That Was Then, This Is Now, but it is a vast improvement on that show, in that AIOTM (as its title indicates) has no hard-and-fast concept behind it and is subject to no censorship whatsoever. It’s an exploration of the ideas and events that have occurred to Herring (and his cast) in the week prior to the program.

One warning: it might be quite puzzling to listen to the later episodes in any given series of the show before the earlier ones, so it might be best to start with the earliest shows. Herring is a master at crafting utterly absurd in-jokes and taglines that range from the sublime (I still salute him for referring to people’s children as their “sexcrement”) to the ridiculous (one season later, AIOTM still contains gag references to a skit that fell very flat a year ago, a goofy motorcycle-clothing store sketch).

Herring is ably abetted by his small cast of two actors (Emma Kennedy, Dan Tetsell) and a musician (Christian Reilly), but the show does seem to rise and fall on the twists and turns of his own fertile and warped imagination, and his ability to toss off lines and concepts that are better than some lesser standups’ entire acts. He also does this on the much more informal and quite often directionless podcast he does with TV/film critic Andrew Collins called Collings and Herrin.

As for the “dirty” side of the show: I have a pretty low tolerance for comedy that is obscene for the sheer sake of being obscene, but I do revere “dirty” humor that is surreal (as with Frank Zappa) or fucking brilliant (as with Cook and Moore’s inspired “Derek and Clive” LPs). Herring regularly plays with the notion of being puerile in his humor, but somehow keeps AIOTM and his standup from ever descending to the Howard Stern/Opie & Anthony level of unimaginative scatological humor.

Herring’s stage persona in his standup is often that of a chubby schlemiel, but in his podcasts and in certain of his themed standup shows, he is an agent provocateur who takes things just one step too far — and then muses about why he’s never on “the telly” anymore….

UPDATE: The only trouble with trying to chronicle any part of Richard Herring’s career is that the guy moves so damned fast. In the time that it took me to write and upload this blog entry, I found that he had recorded what he claims is definitely the very last AIOTM episode. He said that twice before, so perhaps we will see a return of the show, but he already has another short-term podcast he’s developing for this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, and he continues the sometimes hysterical, sometimes not-so-much, Collings and Herrin ’cast.

Available: Here
Price: free

Frequency of podcast: a “season” of six episodes annually

5.) Atoms, Motion and the Void: The preceding five podcasts in this survey are all rather easy to discuss, but the last one is such a special case that I’ll first refer you to a piece I wrote on it back in 2008, then I’ll describe it again briefly and talk about its latest “cycle” of programs.

AMV offers superlative storytelling in a literary vein — wait, stop, don’t mentally tune out! By “literary,” I mean entertaining and exceptionally well-constructed, not dry and over-intellectualized. The podcast is the creation of writer-performer Sean Hurley, who plays the lead character, one Sherwin Sleeves. Sleeves is an unflappable old gent living in the woods of New Hampshire who inhabits a universe that is by turns extremely realistic and magical.

The show is in fact a unique fusion of disparate elements, the main one being modern lit and old-time radio. The clever plot twists and self-awareness of the former mingle with cliffhangers and subtle “reveals” of the latter in the best AMV episodes. The stories are so well-written that I frequently scratch my head and wonder why Hurley hasn’t had a short-story collection or novel published yet. Besides the fact that the publishing world is bleeding to death on a gurney in the corner of the emergency ward, I think it is because Sean has unwittingly staked out his own terrain, and his work needs to be performed more than it needs to be read.

Making AMV even more a “one-man band” effort is the fact that Sean scores the show himself. In the earliest episodes, he played songs by other artists that perfectly fit the mood of the piece — in this capacity he actually got me to enjoy Rammstein and perfectly accomplished a Funhouse-like leap of culture with an episode that featured songs by both the Velvet Underground and Eddie Cantor. In recent years the songs in the shows have all been Sean’s own, thus fully integrating Sleeves as the sole “voice” of the universe he inhabits.

After a layoff of several months, Hurley has returned with a new series of episodes that he is offering by subscription — the original 35 shows are all still available for free. So far the new tale is engrossing and properly trippy, as Sherwin moves through a landscape of woods and water that is the mirror image of the one he normally lives in. Again, AMV functions with the homespun charm of A Prairie Home Companion, but as if written by a writing staff composed of Borges, Hesse, and Vonnegut (and perhaps, for good measure, my all-time fave Richard Brautigan).

No one is going to subscribe to something they’re not familiar with, so I hereby reproduce from my last blog post the list of episodes that supply the best introduction to the show.

The fact that there are well over two dozen episodes [now there are 35 – ED] may seem daunting to newcomers, but I suggest these shows: episode 2 as an amusing intro to the character and his ramblings, episodes 4 or 6 as door-openers to the larger tapestry that Sleeves winds up telling; 5 or 7 for uniquely touching tales (and I am not into the sloppy sentiment that ordinarily surrounds the telling of stories involving kids), and episode 18 if you just want to jump the gun, and experience Hurley’s mindwarpingly good writing.

AMV was the first podcast I got hooked on, and it remains a personal object of addiction.

Available: Here
Price: The older episodes are all free online. The new cycle of shows is available in the form of a subscription, with the episodes coming in the mail as limited-edition CDs, plus membership to the “Stalwarts” site, which celebrates all things AMV and features related downloads. Subscriptions are $12.96 a month, three months for $38.88, or six months for $77.76. I chose the download-only option (with Stalwarts membership), which is $45.00 for the series of six eps as MP3s.
Frequency of podcast: the show appears at intervals and has always been well worth the wait between eps.

I’m glad to share my recommendations for the preceding quintet; please feel free to add your own nominations in the comments field below. The five shows I included in this post are all very different, but they all share two things: they relate to audio genres that were formerly a staple of commercial radio (no more!), and it’s evident that their host-producers all put in a helluva lot of hard work to create them. I close out with two instructions: download and listen!

British humor 3: Richard Herring

There are thousands of podcasts on the Internet at this point, and only a scant few are really attracting any attention. In recent months, Richard Herring has produced literally dozens of podcast episodes for as many as four different shows, earning him the sobriquet “podfather” on British comedy websites. He may not be the guy who “broke” British comedy podcasts (that would have to be Ricky Gervais). But Herring is certainly one of the hardest working comics in the U.K. and, when he’s firing on all cylinders, he’s also one of the funniest.

He began as half of the comedy team of Lee and Herring with Stewart Lee (about whom, see the blog enry below). Herring essentially played an id on two feet in the duo, acting out his adolescent urges in strange and sometimes dark ways



[That sketch becomes more interesting when you find out that later on Herring worked with and reportedly dated Sawalha for a time.]

Both Lee and Herring are excellent sketch writers, and so some of my favorite Herring moments from the L&H TV series Fist of Fun (which can be found in its entirety on Stewart Lee’s site) found him playing either a sympathetic schlemiel or an utter bastard, as in his portrayal of a spiteful driving instructor. I noted in my entry on Chris Morris below how Morris and Brooker’s Nathan Barley has the daring abrasiveness of Mike Leigh’s early telefilms; Herring’s teacher definitely seems like he could be a cousin to the angry driving instructor in Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky (a tad less volatile, perhaps):



Another Herring fave of mine from that period, his view of married men as mindless zombies:



I won’t delve too deeply into Lee and Herring’s writing credits (for that info, again, see my entry on Stewart Lee), but I will note that when the team broke up it seemed like Herring might just remain in the background and be a comedy writer rather than a performer (he scripted much of a popular sitcom called Time Gentlemen Please). Once he decided to enter the world of standup as a solo act, he began to work on two fronts. First, creating all-purpose bits like this one about the “Riddle of the Sphinx”:



He also began to write themed one-man shows he brought each year to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. These shows ranged from one in which Richard tried to recreate the twelve tasks of Hercules in the modern world, to a fact-filled, surprisingly touching male response to The Vagina Monologues (called, wait for it, Talking Cock) and the recent Hitler Moustache, in which he explored the reactions the toothbrush moustache brings about in people as he valiantly tried to reclaim it “in the name of comedy”:



The Chaplin-Hitler kiss concept in this clip is inspired:



Herring’s one-man shows, including Hitler Moustache, are available on DVD from Go Faster Stripe. Two that weren’t shot on video are available as audio downloads (in what I believe are work-in-progress versions) at fistoffun.net, Christ on a Bike and Talking Cock.

So, okay, so far we’ve got a guy who’s a proven commodity as a TV sketch writer and who puts on critically lauded shows at the Edinburgh Fringe. He also writes a blog entry for most every day of the year on his website. He put out a book earlier this year that explored his prolonged adult adolescence and turning forty, the funny and sentimental How Not to Grow Up. All that might be enough for the average standup, but Herring seems to be a particularly driven individual who, for me, produces some of his best material when he’s on the spot and starts tossing off ideas and going into surreal, sometimes dark, and very often vulgar tangents on his podcasts. This tendency to think well on his feet has been seen in the video of his that has had the most hits on YouTube (a million and counting for the shorter version, I’m linking to the longer one here), this moment when he had to cope with a drunk heckler:



Herring can be clean and “fit for broadcast” — he proves that in his DJ gigs like the long-term one he’s been doing with TV/music-critic Andrew Collins and a sit-in for a vacationing DJ on Absolute Radio.

These are both fun programs, whose best moments are boiled down into a short podcast. His most dedicated podcast has no origin on radio: “Collings and Herrin,” also done with Andrew Collins, is an uneven 'cast that ranges from meandering personal chat to insane brilliance — the latter usually happens when the two do live shows for the ’cast and Herring takes it upon himself to playfully torment his cohost or an audience member.

Herring has expressed his admiration for Cook and Moore’s inventively filthy “Derek and Clive” bits, and he often strays into the same territory, sometimes to purely silly effect and other times for really inspired moments. One particular example on the C&H show found Richard going off on the Muslim religion, not because of any personal prejudice, but because it is “just as shit as all the other religions.” (Herring is perhaps the most blasphemous of all atheist comics, and for that I salute him, ex-Catholic that I be.) When he goes on insightful and bizarre tears about things like 9/11 and “what would be really offensive” to be put in the WTC site (a propos of the “Ground Zero” mosque), he’s left behind standard comedy structures and has wandered into an area where his riffing turns into great surreal comedy. Here is that episode.

There is no offense meant by Herring’s rashest routines; in fact he seems to be a pretty “progressive” guy when speaking out of his “Herrin” persona. He needn't worry, though, because he has moved beyond the censorial confines of radio for his finest achievements in the burgeoning world of podcasting. Although he hasn’t really — he's also the host and creator of a currently-airing limited-run series "reclaiming modern-day cultural demons." (Yes, yes, that does make five podcasts in all.) Which brings me to his finest achievement in my view: his very linear, yet also very tangent-prone, sketch-comedy podcast As It Occurs To Me.

AIOTMA, “as it is called by all the cool kids,” is a scripted sketch show that rose out of the ashes of Herring’s this-day-in-history radio comedy program That Was Then, This is Now, which can be heard in its entirety here. After that show was cancelled by the BBC, Herring decided to start a live sketch-comedy podcast that would have no limits in terms of content, but which he would script only a night or two ahead of time (the guy does seem to enjoy the challenges that come with last-minute invention).



Writing comedy at the very last minute sounds like a recipe for disaster (or basically just a “Morning Zoo” radio show) but when AITOM is getting really weirdly funny, one begins to think that Herring and co. are in the ballpark of Spike Milligan. Not that AITOM is The Goon Show reborn exactly (nothing could ever be as maniacally inspired as that holy series), but when the Occurs team move quickly in and out of sketches, bizarre characters, and really nasty catchphrases (my personal favorite being the unpleasant but oddly fitting “sexcrement” as a synonym for children), it becomes evident that Herring is using the podcast in the way that the mighty Spike used the radio comedy show format — in effect, killing it in order to produce something new and far more ridiculous.

Herring is self-professed fan of Bill Hicks, and he does operate on AITOM with a great sense of how to deconstruct a comic situation, re-construct it, and then utterly decimate it once more for comic effect, which is an element that I’ve noticed had crept into the most brilliant British standup after Hicks became a cult figure over in the U.K. (he having done the self-examination bit many times in his later, better routines).

The final, essential component of AITOM is the small ensemble cast. Herring has worked with a few small, tight casts (check out the radio series Lionel Nimrod’s Inexplicable World), so he knows how to gather a cast of versatile performers. Here, he has musician Christian Reilly on hand to acoustically provide musical “stings” and topical songs to act as transitions from sketch to sketch; Reilly’s theme for the show is catchy-as-fuck, and his wonderfully prissy impression of Bryan Ferry is also very funny. Emma Kennedy provides all the female voices, from sultry seductresses to batty mother figures; her talent is manifest on the show, but I was most amused by her take on Michael Jackson as a baby-man ready to dance. Rounding out the quartet (because Herring always stays Herring on the show) is Dan Tetsell, who is as versatile as Kennedy and provides voices that are just as memorably deranged — the clear fan favorite being his nasal take on Herring’s radio/podcast partner Andrew Collins, called here “Tiny Andrew Collings.”

Herring’s torment of his C&H partner has gone into some very oddly Freudian and very funny places here, including Herring sleeping with “Tiny Andrew’s” mom, killing him off not once but several times, and doing a really nice riff on the end of The Prisoner where “Collings” and Herring are indeed one (or each other’s parents, or brothers — I can’t say I remember how Richard resolved the problem, but it was very funny and truly McGoohan-like).

You can check out As It Occurs to Me on iTunes or (the better option, I think) on the British Comedy Guide. It might be best to start from the beginning, or you may never know what a “cumpkin” is (maybe that’s for the best, though) or be able to put your finger on the British celebs who are mercilessly spoofed by Herring and company. As was the case with my discussion of the U.K.-specific references in Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle below, I think American listeners can figure out easily enough who Herring is talking about, and who their American pointless-celeb equivalents are.

AITOM has run for two seasons of ten shows (again, the perfect British method of keeping the comedy fresh, as opposed to the American approach, which runs every single comic concept into the ground, for years) and a handful of specials, including a recent “Autumn Special,” which inspired me to write this paean to the program. The visual clips found online don’t really convey what the show is like, so I’ll close out instead with Herring doing one of his most wonderfully blasphemous bits. I think Richard has the right idea — if you’re going to be blasphemous, just go ahead and be fucking blasphemous!



UPDATE (10/23): Since I posted this entry, I've heard two more great podcast episodes from Herring, the first being the initial episode in his "Richard Herring Objects" series found here (as far as I can tell these episodes will only be on the BBC site for seven days after the initial broadcast) and the second "Autumn Special" of AIOTM. Herring shows absolutely no signs of taking a break, so enjoy his productivity now!

Atheists, Assemble! A stew of brilliant English and Irish comics for Easter

It’s all about the sharing of pop-culture obsessions in the Funhouse, and so I have to offer you one of my latest preoccupations, exploring the world of British standup comics. This particular excursion began when I encountered the work of a number of American standups who seem to be “children of Bill Hicks,” meaning they’re following in the path of the late cult comic who made some very great performance work of his own personal obsessions (that word again!) and insights.

I found a few really solid examples of standups over here who are following in Hicks’ footsteps, albeit with less of the poetic and whimsical touch (I tend to think of them as the “open wound” school of comedy). Their work is indeed funny and absorbing (especially when there is a “trainwreck” performance, as there seems to have been a few times with really hard-edged standups like Doug Stanhope). Since the extremely American Hicks became a cult figure in the U.K., though (his birthday was actually pitched to Parliament as a possibility for a holiday), I was curious to hear if there were similar comics over there.

And so I went back to (where else) YouTube and consulted the uploads of “Padraic 2001eire”, who is an Irish fan of Bill’s, and had put up some great (now unfortunately gone from YT for copyright reasons) compilations of how his work was stolen by Denis Leary and seemed to be “lifted” on occasion by George Carlin (whom I of course worship from way back — check this Deceased Artiste tribute, with many links now also sadly gone from the Net).

“Padraic2000Eire” clearly has a fine-tuned sense of comedy, and is also clearly inspired by intelligent arguments for atheism (but more on that below). His montage post ”My Top 10 Favourite Comedians” introduced me to the work of five English and Irish stand-ups whom I became instantly fascinated by (one other, David O’Doherty, I like, but he’s a bit “gentle” compared to the others in the list). And thus I provide below the fruits of my months-long excursion into the work of these gents, with many thanks of course to the posters on YT and blogger JimG, who continues to post some truly mind-warpingly rare old vinyl and CDs.

For those who are completely unaware of Bill Hicks’ work, I heartily, heavily recommend watching his best performance video here. Just to run down the aspects of his comedy I’ve seen in other standups of his age group and younger, I’ll note that the American comics who open their emotional closets on stage (Marc Maron, Doug Stanhope, Janeane Garafolo) owe a big debt to Hicks, as do those who analyze the process of standup comedy while performing their act (not the standard Johnny Carson/Borscht Belt acknowledgment that a gag has failed, but a literal deconstruction of their own standup set — as when the very funny Maria Bamford, a comedian who does dozens of voices in her act, has her “mother” chime in and summarize what she's doing: “we know what your act is: low voice/high voice. We’ve got it!”).

The other dominant characteristic of Hicks’ comedy besides its highly personal content (in this regard, he was preceded by the twin gods of Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor, no question) was his fierce Left-wing politics and devout atheism. The English and Irish comics below are all in the same camp politically and in religious (or should that be “superstitious”?) terms.

Always best to start out with a song, so I’ll first spotlight the work of Bill Bailey, who plays the keyboard and various guitars onstage while he does comedy. He also has done a touring “Essential Guide to the Orchestra” which cannot be sampled on YouTube, sadly. In fact, YT contains very little of his standup, favoring his appearances on talk shows and the famous Never Mind the Bullocks gameshow. But you can check out his playing of a theremin on The Jonathan Ross Show, his bit on hard rock and the city of Milton Keynes, and his mock Brel/Scott Walker love-has-left ballad .

Here is a chunk of his stand-up, including the nice insight that certain types of jazz horn playing sounds like a “surrealist car alarm”:



From England we move to Ireland, and comic Dylan Moran, who is very straightforward and wonderfully deadpan, and discusses the more pleasant (or is that deadening?) forms of hypocrisy as his main theme. Here he summarizes religion as “people talking about their imaginary friend”:



Some more standard standup, as with this discussion of the battle of the sexes. Moran’s pleasant demeanor lets him get away with acidic insights:



And actually, there is one other element that links these comedians to Bill Hicks: their razor-sharp takes on Americans (Hicks’ standard line on whether he was proud of being an American was to note that the U.S. “was the place where my parents fucked”).



Setting aside atheism for a moment (although I have the feeling this next comedian is pretty much on that page too), Padraic’s montage helped me discover the work of Robert Newman, who was part of a well-loved team with a comic named David Baddiel (and did impressions of British rockers like this one), but who has worked on refining (bad pun — you’ll see) one long and brilliant set of material on world history, and the U.S. and U.K.’s devotion to oil, into a really tight piece of television, called from “Caliban to the Taliban,” or “The History of Oil.” Some helpful soul has put the entire show on YouTube — the video and the audio are slightly unhooked (the video lags a few seconds behind), but the show is definitely worth your attention. Part one can be found here. Here’s part four of the “History of Oil” show, summing up Newman’s political take on politics in the 2000s:



And now, we hit the comedy team that was a major discovery for me, Lee and Herring. The team did some amazingly funny work for BBC Radio and TV — their “Inexplicable World of Lionel Nimrod” show is just excellent, and they co-scripted episodes of "On the Hour," the absolutely brilliant Chris Morris radio news send-up that spawned the Alan Partridge character.

Stewart Lee has become an utter obession for me in the past few weeks, but his ex-partner Richard Herring also does top-notch standup, and he qualifies as the U.K. comedian who seems the most interested in delving into joyously blasphemous waters (I have no idea what his upbringing was like, but the man is obsessed with puncturing Christianity, and for that I salute him). Herring’s onstage persona is that of a sort of chubby shlemiel, but as a result of that playful-dolt front, he can get away with some terrifically nasty humor. Here is a sample of his standard, non-atheist standup, on the ever-popular topics of the phys. ed teacher at school and sexuality:



Herring did an entire set of material about Jesus, called “Christ on a Bike,” that can be found at the “Fist of Fun” website,” which contains lots and lots of free downloads of audio material from Herring and Stewart Lee. The opening part of the “Christ on a Bike” show can be found (as audio with a still picture) on YT here:



Herring has professed his love of the genius comedy of Cook and Moore in their “Derek and Clive” guises, and the single most Derek and Clive-ish bit of material I’ve heard him do is this slice from his “Collings and Herrin” podcast with fellow comic Andrew Collins (their blogspot blog is here). UPDATE: Since I wrote this, I've discovered Herring's solo podcast, As It Occurs to Me, which is a fast-paced sketch series that he writes and gives away for free on the Net (I love these kinds of artists!). You can download that terrific show here. And now back to the regularly scheduled slice of blasphemy from the "Collings and Herrin" 'cast:



And an amazing piece of stand-up by Herring, where the title is only the beginning of the gorgeous blasphemy. This is some of his latest material, with you-know-it’s-2009-or-10 references to Susan Boyle and Tiger Woods. And Rich asking Christ, “wank me off with your stigmata”:



Finally, there is Herring’s ex-“straight man,” Stewart Lee. Lee is one of the most deadpan comics and one of the funniest I’ve seen in years. His comedy is smart, yes, but he also works a concept thoroughly, through wonderful repetition and a sublimely straightforward sense of the absurd.

One of his nastiest routines routines about the English (he’s also done some superb U.S.-bashing) is a longer piece on the commemoration of the death of Princess Diana. He also weighed in on the Harry Potter phenomenon. As for Lee’s own reading habits, he is indeed a fan of William Blake, and also loves comic books — one of his interview “scores” was Alan Moore, whom he’s talked to more than once. Audio of a radio interview of Moore by Lee is here .

His tale of meeting a homophobic taxi driver is a fine piece of post-Hicks storytelling that also has much resonance for Americans, if one thinks of the “party of no” and their crappy debate tactics:



Lee tackled the touchy subject of joke-stealing in this terrific routine. I’ve never heard of the comics involved (although a Michael Redmond clip on YouTube is worth a look), but I’ll forever know the name of Joe Pasquale now.




The Pasquale routine, like another one Lee does on a comic named Tom O’Connor, shows his superb way of driving home a comic point. Here he works in a similar vein, eviscerating the Celebrity Big Brother show, and the TV advertisers:



One of Stewart’s most durable routines, which he’s reused and even done a fourth-wall commentary on, is a bit called “Jesus is the Answer”:



Lee wrote and hosted a serious tele-docu meditation on religion in modern society, “Don’t Get Me Started,” that can be found in its entirety here. Lee goes on about his own connection to Jesus in this routine (audio only). The “not him, I’m not” stuff is just terrific:



The fullest comic flowering of Lee’s thoughts on religion is this episode of his show Stewart Lee’s Comic Vehicle:



And because I’m posting this two days before Easter Sunday, and yes, because I was raised Catholic and now really don’t want anything to do with the religion, I offer a link to the YouTube poster named “Atheist Reference”, who seems to have quite a large video collection, including much “heathen,” non-believer comedy.