🎙️ Listen to this episode:
Full Transcript
Caloroga Shark Media. Hello, I’m Johnny Mack with your Daily Comedy News. It is Grammy Night. Let me do two things of homework here. One, if tomorrow’s episode isn’t there at three or five in the morning, I’m gonna wait tonight to put Monday’s show all the way together.
I want to see what Trevor does or doesn’t, or maybe Taylor Swift murders his career like she did to Joe Coy. Bring it, Swifties. It’s called Daily Comedy News. Posted on the message board. Make sure you include a link to Apple podcast.
While you guys are attacking me, laugh at the jokes Taylor anyway. So if the episode isn’t out right away, it’ll be out by like eight a m. Eastern on Monday. If all the Trevor stuff and the Comedy Awards have settled in, I’ll put it out. The other thing is if today is the first day you’ve discovered this podcast, this episode is a little atypical.
So if you’re like this sucks, maybe listen to yesterday’s more normal. I’m gonna soapbox a little bit about the Grammy Awards in a bit, and I’ve already talked more the beginning than I usually do. Usually I get right to it. Nominees for the Grammy Best Comedy Album are Chris Rock’s Selective Outrage, Wanda Sykes, I’m an entertainer, Trevor Noah, I wish you would, Dave Chappelle, What’s in a Name? Sarah Silverman someone you love now?
A Ward shows are always weird. I was thinking I didn’t have Trevor Noah at the top of my list last year. Well, that’s because his special came out in twenty twenty two. So for my list in twenty twenty three, I’m just looking at the nominees here. I had Chris Rock at thirteen, Trevor actually as a special after this one, that one was called Where was I have that?
At fifteen. I had Sarah at twenty, and Chappelle I think was also at the end of twenty twenty two. Let me see if I could find my twenty twenty two notes. In twenty twenty two, I had Shang Wang as number one. I had Trevor Noahs I wish you would at eight, and I don’t if I remember correctly, Chappelle came out like maybe after Christmas, so I didn’t have it on my list.
Regardless as you hear me talk, I’m not really remembering that Dave Chappelle special, so that’s not the answer. I would pick Trevor Noah, and I think that would be a nice win for Trevor, who’s hosting and just is on the top of the world right now, apparently irreplaceable as host of The Daily Show since they had to go back to John Stewart and three four guest hosts a week. Anyway, good luck to Trevor. Noah is my pick for the Grammy. He’s a two time Emmy winner.
He has never won a Grammy. He says. I’m rooting for Beyonce to break the most wins. I’m rooting for Taylor Swift to win the most albums. Please make a Taylor Swift joke.
I want to see if she ICs you. Because she iced the Fox cameras and she murdered Joe Coy’s career. I want to see what she does if you make a Taylor Swift joke. That’s how we’ll know if Trevor’s in like the Hollywood inner circle. If Taylor gives him a then we’ll know like Hollywood has accepted Trevor, Noah, Joe Coy, Sorry, Bud.
Trevor says, what’s tough about these categories is that almost every single person in them someone who I believe deserves to win that award. Yeah, they’re all great. I agree. He says. I’m not part of the voting contingency.
I’m actually glad because then nobody can come up to me and say, who’d you vote for? What you do? Luckily I don’t have that stress on my shoulders. He compared a regular set to hosting awards. He says, I think stand up comedy is a performance that’s curated not just for but by the comedian for their own audience.
It’s one where you’re in total control and most importantly, you’re the reason that people are there. An award show is different because you’re not the reason people have come most of the time, and everyone there in the audience is there predominantly because they’re hoping to take home an award. So that makes this gig different. I think it means it’s not all the same skill sets, and I think that means the outcome is a little less predictable because if you’re a comedian, you’re on stage and you’re not doing well, you can switch things up, you can do whatever you want. You can’t do that in an award show.
So it’s a different discipline. I don’t take that for granted because it’s difficult in a very different kind of way to just doing stand up. All right, I’m gonna get on my soapbox here. If you don’t want to hear the soapbox, maybe hit skip like thirty second skip hit it like ten times. This will probably take three minutes, would be my guess.
So here’s my soapbox. The headline is I disagree with the Grammys on what an album is. They can pick whatever they want as an album. It’s their rewards. But let’s go back in nineteen fifty nine, the Chipmunk Song won the Grammy.
As we get into the sixties, things like Bob Newhart’s The Button Down Mind strikes back. So let’s use that as an example. Clearly an album. I would like to experience the comedy of Bob Newhart. Well, there are two things I can do.
I can go see Bob Newhart live, or I can go to the record store and buy this twelve inch vinyl also known as an album and play the Button down mind strikes back on my record player at home. Clearly an album. Nineteen sixty three, Vaughan Mater is the first family. Clearly an album. As we head into the seventies, nineteen seventy three, George Carlin FM and AM I can either go see George Carlin or I can buy a twelve inch vinyl.
Maybe by nineteen seventy three did we have eight tracks yet? Maybe? I don’t know an album? You know, now it starts to get a little little funky. So in nineteen eighty four we have Eddie Murphy’s Comedian.
I owned that on cassette. Cassette another form of album. You know, it’s a thing you listen to you’re not watching it. But there was also Eddie Murphy Raw I believe it was called, which was the HBO special and the material kind of overlaps, but at least there was an album there. You know, I could take my cassette and listen to it poolside with the other teenagers, and believe me, we did.
But as we get into the twenty twenties, Dave Chappelle Sticks and Stones one in twenty Tiffany Hattish Black MITZVN twenty one Louis c. K Sincerely twenty two, Dave Chappelle’s The Closer in twenty three. Those to me are Netflix specials or video specials. Those aren’t the same thing to me as Bob Newhart, you know. But the Grammys disagree.
From their own website screening criteria for Best Comedy Album, this category recognizes excellence in comedy recordings, including spoken words, stand up comedy, and musical novelty recordings. So far we agree. New comedy performance albums, whether recorded in a studio or low, so far we agree, or whether recorded in an audio only format or as part of a video project or eligible. And that’s where we are now. The Grammys feels a Netflix special is eligible for a Grammy.
I’m like, why aren’t we doing audio recordings here? What happened? So? If weird Al makes a funny video but doesn’t release an audio version of it, is that eligible? I guess it is now.
The Grammys tell us recordings that are compilations and excerpts from a current year radio or TV program, or new recordings of comedy performance first aired on television within five years of the release date are also eligible. Recordings that are compilations and excerpts from non current year broadcast radio or television programs. Audiobooks, even if considered humorous, albums of sound effects and albums of environmental recordings are not eligible, and Best Comedy Album and may be entered in other categories as appropriate. So I’d say, well, agree to disagree, but they’re not my awards, So the Grammy’s gonna do what the Grammys are gonna do. The other thing is, and I’ve been programming comedy radio for twenty years now, a lot of people don’t release anything that on old Man Mountain would call an album anymore.
Most things are just video releases or they go straight to YouTube. Maybe if we’re lucky, there’s a digital release and you can buy some MP threes. But you know, the days of George Carlin putting out twelve inch final That’s over Cracked reminds us that no comedian can touch with Bob Newhart did. In the nineteen sixty one Grammys, Newhart recorded his debut comedy album and a club had never heard of the Tide Lends Motor Inn in Houston. Bob had never performed in front of a live audience before recording that album.
Wow Bob’s comedy career began when he’d call a buddy who worked at an ad agency and do prank calls as an airline pilot or the manager of a yeast factory. Another friend heard about Bob’s funny phone stuff and suggested recording them to sell at a radio stations. A few stations bought in a suit at Warner Brothers found out about this. They thought Bob’s phony phone calls would make a funny album and wanted to record them at one of the comics club gigs. The problem Bob Newhart had never performed in front of an audience.
Isn’t this incredible? The Button Down Mind of Bob Newhart hit number one on the charts, not the comedy charts would didn’t exist at the time. The music charts warners wanted another album, but Bob had used up all his material, so he scraped together enough bits to get The Button Down Mind to Strikes back its stores before the end of the year. That reached number two on the charts, right behind his debut album That’s Amazing. The Button Down Mind of Bob Newhart beat out Harry Belafonte and Frank Sinatra for Album of the Year.
Bob also won Best New Artist, making him a triple Grammy winner on the night, best Comedy Performance Album of the Year and Best New Artist. Bob says, it turns out my two albums held the number one and number two spots for two consecutive weeks. That record stayed in place until Guns N’ Roses Use Your Illusion one to two in nineteen ninety one. That is amazing, all right. The other big thing going on today is Curb Your Enthusiasm rolling still.
Alan Seppenwalla is a very respected critic, and he writes under the headline Kurby Your Enthusiasm final season is a very mixed bag potential spoilers coming up. Consider yourself warned. Sepinwall writes, it’s a running gag in season twelve that people keep mentioning that Larry David didn’t work on the last two seasons of Seinfeld, but then returned for the finale. Every time, Larry greets the observation with Stony’s silence because he knows the audience hated that finale and assumes he is being given another thinly veiled complaint about it. The previous eleven seasons on Kerb have already featured two episodes that were blatantly presented at as series finales.
In season five, Larry died then was kicked out of The Afterlife for being annoying. Season eight, Larry and Leon fleet America for Paris to escape a feud with Michael J. Fox and plenty of other season enders would have been fine finales if Larry David didn’t come back. Larry was at a screening of the first two episodes of season twelve. He got a standing out.
Larry joked, if I had been a different person, I might have been touched by that. He confirmed, this is it the final season. It’s very sad, and apparently he was being playful with the American sign language interpreter next to him. Larry tells us, don’t worry about me. I got plenty to do.
First of all, I love to travel. Y’all know that I’m a world traveler. I love packing and unpacking, tripping ou everybody. When I come across having a medical emergency in a foreign country where they don’t speak English, that’s the greatest. He says.
He’s thinking about traveling to Antarctica. I’ve been hearing a lot of things about Antarctica. Good things get that boat. O’ll go down there. They got the penguins.
I love the penguins. Now that the show’s over, I’ll have a lot more time accomplish a few things that needed to be done. I might get that stool test that I’ve been putting off. All right, a little long here Today, let’s hit seafood Corner. This may be the last seafood Corner.
I love the bit, but there really isn’t that much comedian seafood news today. On seafood Corner, we’re reminded that Chris Rock used to work at a Red Lobster. You know, not like last year or going way back here and back in two thousand and three, Chris Rock told Jay Leno, the thing about Red Lobster is that if you work there, you can’t afford to eat there. You’re making minimum wage. A shrip costs minimum wage.
It is the final day of sketch Fest, which means I’ll get to delete another bookmark. I’ve got about twenty open as usual. Let’s see noon Glop meets Glog. It’s the Glorious Ladies of Puppetry and the Glorious Ladies of the Groundling love the title. That alone makes me want to go there.
Two o’clock something called Hey Riddle Riddle that appears to be a podcast taping about riddles. Okay, Seven o’clock DJ Dimmers I talked about him yesterday. That would be a great for us to see.
Also at seven the Traventure Zone, a night of Dungeons and Dragons, and also …
Eight o’clock Open Mike Eagle and Sketch Fats Sets. I would pick DJ Dimmers and then catch a red eye back to New Jersey. And that is your comedy news for today. Follow the show for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify overcasts. You could use Fountain throw me some SATs.
If you enjoy the show, go to buy me a coffee dot com slash Daily Comedy News, throw some money in the tip jar. I will go to the National Donuts chain and get one of the a’s. It’s a large iced coffee with caramel in milk. Se tomorrow