Polar Opposites of Stand-Up

We went to see Doug Stanhope two weeks ago; Kris, Lee and myself.

[Doug Stanhope and blow-up doll. Not Kris, Lee or me.]
He is one of the few stand-up comedians you can use the phrase, ‘He just doesn’t give a fuck’ about and actually mean it, as opposed to pinning it to the wannabe bad-boys that you see on the circuit today. The kind who try too hard and attempt to offend people just for the sake of it, rather than because they’ve actually got something to say. You can just tell that these guys get offstage and go home to their normal life, leaving their stage persona at the door. I think that when Stanhope is preaching to his disciples onstage, he is speaking exactly as he thinks and when he leaves, he is exactly the same person.

He gets compared to Bill Hicks a lot, but the only thing that’s really similar is that they can both come over to the UK and play in ridiculously massive venues, whereas in their US of States, they tend to mainly play little bars to drunk people who aren’t there to see them. The week previous, Stanhope had been playing to 3000 people at the Hammersmith Apollo, which was quite a difference to the 500 who came to hear his Gospel at the Lemon Tree in Aberdeen. The perfect venue for him, I believe.
I’ve been aware of Stanhope for a few years, but it’s only been through knowing Lee in the last two that I’ve become more of a fan. He’s not just Lee’s favourite stand-up, but he sees Stanhope as a God. There have been many times where the two of us have been in the pub and I’ve listened to him talk about his bleak outlook on life. He seems perfectly happy, though, but always cited this way of thinking as down to Stanhope. This always made me a bit cautious of the American, slightly annoyed that he’d made Lee so cynical. I love cynicism, I think it’s the only sensible way to live your life, but if it starts to make you depressed, you’re probably getting a bit too much of it.

So. We went to this gig and he opened by saying how he felt relieved to be back in such a decent sized venue and how it was exactly as a stand-up show should be. He covered quite a lot of ground with his rantings. Stanhope spoke at length on the frustration he feels as his body is slowly breaking down, how Charlie Sheen has stolen his act and is doing it better than he is and generally how he lives his life. In comparison to some of his older shows, this one seemed pretty tame, but tame by Stanhope-standards is like seeing any other ‘edgy’ comic at their most intense.
For the first time in his career, he took a break about fifteen minutes before the show was due to end. He said he needed “to take a shit real bad”. He returned to the stage five minutes later and told the room all about his mother’s assisted suicide.
On the whole, the show was spectacular. I began to see why Lee sees him as a deity, as everything he said, I agreed with. Something still wasn’t quite right, though. On one hand, his desire to enjoy life by just doing whatever he wants is admirable, but on the other, his bleak outlook and total detachment from the world is peculiar.

On the whole, the gig left me exhausted and also a little  sad but enlightened.

Skip to nearly two weeks later and Dave and I arrived at the Music Hall so he could finally enjoy his Christmas present.

I bought us tickets to see Tim Vine for Christmas. I’m not a huge fan, but Dave loves a pun and I didn’t think it’d be very polite to make him go alone.

The atmosphere could not have been any different to the one at the Lemon Tree earlier in the month. We arrived as a magician called John Archer had just come onstage. And there were children sat with their parents all around us. We had ice cream at the interval. Time Vine came on with some headwear on that consisted of knitting needles and balls of wool (“As you can see, I’ve got nits.”)
A very very different show indeed.

While there were no stories about crack and hookers, there was a bag of props. Instead of the swearing, there were musical breaks to try and solve the mystery of whether things were torches or not. Overall, he wasn’t bad. The songs were the best bits as they bordered on Harry Hill-esque ridiculousness. I left happy, but it didn’t exactly have the same effect on me as Stanhope had. This being said, I did enjoy both gigs.
My advice to Tim, however, would be: More tales of substance abuse and sexual debauchery and fewer puns.

Tags: aboozement, comedy-nerdism