Comedy: The Clubbing of America
The club is jammed. Onstage, the headliner – in a dark suit, a string tie and red shoes – is “killing.” He looks out onto tonight’s audience: primarily freshly scrubbed undergraduates and baby boomers, all knocking back beers or nursing mixed drinks, Eighties style. If during his routine he momentarily blanks on what town he’s in, the décor won’t be much help; standard autographed glossies cover most of one wall, and the stage is a basic raised platform with two stools, a mike and a black-curtain backdrop.
A decade ago, only a weekend gig in a major American city would have packed the house. But this is 1988, and the headliner – a thirty-four-year-old long-haired Southerner calling himself Killer Beaz – is playing a Wednesday in Columbia, South Carolina, at one of the half dozen clubs in the six-year-old Punch Line chain. And Punch Line is just one example of the countless comedy franchisers that have popped up in recent years, invading America faster than Benettons, mass-distributing humor that often seems off the rack from Sears.
There are now more than 300 full-time comedy clubs in America, nearly a hundredfold increase from the early Seventies. Go into any one of them, and you will likely hear jokes about the following: 7-Eleven stores, the differences between cats and dogs (or New York and L.A.), Dr. Ruth, Robin Leach, condoms, Star Trek, PMS, televangelists, air travel, fast-food joints (especially anything that plays off McNuggets) — and, lately, Dukakis’s resemblance to Casey Kasem.
Tonight at the Punch Line, Killer Beaz is avoiding those themes; his topics range from starting a kitchen fire (he was too literal following instructions to “cover the bottom of the pan with grease”) to his antiexercise stance (“How do those shoes feel when you run in ’em? Surprised as hell!”). Some of his material is quite good, and his delivery is unusual, but he wouldn’t be where he is today without the comedy boom.
Back in 1979, Beaz was plain old Truett S. Beasley Jr., working days in a music store and playing blues guitar in redneck bars. Three years later, one of the bar owners wanted a comedian to perform, and Beasley, making a symbolic decision for his generation, laid down the guitar and picked up a shtick.
By his count, Beaz did 311 stand-up sets before he ever saw another comedian perform in person. “I worked the worst venues you can play – between sets of rock & roll or country groups,” he says. “People weren’t there to hear me. They’d stand up in the audience and yell across the room, ‘You got any rolling papers?’ One night these two cowboys run up, pulled their pants down and pointed their old butts at me. There was nothing I could do but say, ‘Look – twins!’ ” But eventually the cable channel Showtime named him the funniest man in Mississippi – in 1984, ’85 and ’86. (He has since moved to Nashville; it’s unclear where he ranks among Tennesseans.) Killer Beaz was onto something.
These days, everybody is a comedian; even audiences want to get in on the act. The New York club Caroline’s recently held open-mike auditions for stand-ups aged twelve and under. “Comedy’s kind of taken the place of rock & roll,” says veteran comic Richard Belzer. “Kids in the Fifties wanted to strap on a guitar and be Elvis; now they want to be Jay Leno or Eddie Murphy or Steve Martin or Robin Williams.” Snapping off a witty rejoinder has become a national pastime, and many of those who used to get up and dance are now content to chuckle in their seats.
And the funny business has become big business. The better clubs in major metropolitan areas are grossing between $1 million and $1.5 million a year; even those in the suburbs are taking in $600,000 and up. That’s a lot of five-to-fifteen-dollar covers and two-drink minimums.
Back in 1953, outlets for stand-up were so rare that the political-minded comic Mort Sahl broke in playing an eighty-three-seat beatnik dive in San Francisco called the hungry i. In the intervening decades, only a select few clubs reigned: Pips, in Brooklyn; Manhattan’s Improvisation and Catch a Rising Star (a.k.a. the Improv and Catch); and L.A.’s Comedy Store. (Chicago was specializing in comedy troupes like Second City.)
There has been a Blob-like proliferation of comedy chains, including Coconuts, Bob Zany’s Comedy Outlets (not to be confused with Zanies Comedy Nite Clubs), Comic Strips, Comedy Houses, Laff Stops, Funny Bones, Laughs Unlimiteds, Charlie Goodnights, Comedy Works, Last Laughs and Punch Lines. Not to mention innumerable places scattered across the country that host one-nighters – from rock clubs to bowling alleys.
It seems that for every comedy club that opens up, a rock club closes down. Catch a Rising Star chairman and CEO Richard Fields, who used to manage rock bands, produce theater and do political consulting, says, “The folks who were going to rock concerts ten years ago don’t want to go to big arenas for a music show and be thrown up on and hassled. Comedy clubs are accessible, economical and intimate.”
And top-of-the-line clubs like Catch have been franchising that happy formula. The club opened in 1972; until two years ago, New York was its sole location. Now there are five of them, and Fields plans to have twenty-one by late 1989, as well as a record label and numerous television projects. There are also now three Comedy Stores and nine Improvs.
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