July 28, 2025 • 56 mins
Stand Up! Records founder and Grammy-winning producer Dan Schlissel joins Dave for a wide-ranging conversation about comedy, music, and maintaining integrity. They discuss Dan’s family roots, his early fascination with American junk culture, Chick Tracts, punk record label (ISIM & ISIMIST), and the formative impact of seeing George Carlin at 17.
Dan shares how he helped launch Slipknot’s career, his collaborations with Lewis Black, Mitch Hedberg, and Sam Miller, and why he believes that anything worthwhile always begins as a joke.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:12):
Welcome back to DIRECT EDITION, a podcast about nothing and
everything. I'm your host, Dave.
Thanks for being with me today. And I want to bring you a
special interview. Another great guest that I had a
chance to chat with a pal of mine, His name is Dan Schlissel.
He's got a great resume. You'll find out all about it.
But he is the founder and also runs the comedy record label
(00:34):
called Stand Up Records. He's been in that business for
1/4 of a century. He also had a punk label before
that. He's just a great guy.
I know him from the Cartoonist Cafe group chat as well as he
has become a friend and a customer of my life comic sales
and I thought it would be a great piece of insight to talk
to him about comedy running record label, getting started in
(00:59):
doing punk records, producer recording live shows, all the
stuff that Dan, you know, he takes part in and it's his
business. I do want to just say a special
thank you for his patience. Recently I started using a
different recording program and my Internet was really not
(01:20):
cooperating with it that night. So you'll see some editing done,
some will just be Dan's Dan talking.
I kept cutting out. He didn't, but I kept cutting
out. So just want to give that
disclaimer and once again, thankDan for his extreme patience
with the fact that I just kept disappearing from the stream and
it wasn't to offend him. But I think this conversation is
(01:44):
a really enjoyable 1:00 and we are going to do 1 again soon
just because of all the problems.
It threw me off my game. But you'll probably never notice
it. I'm a professional, but you can
follow Dan on stand up records all across the platforms and
social media, but check out the website if you really want to
learn a little more in order of vinyl or just check out some of
(02:05):
the comedians he's worked with and still is working with.
We're going to get into a different discussion eventually
about collecting an art because he has employed so many great
artists to do album covers for his roster of comedians.
Other than that, just want to say thank you to everybody who's
been here and and continues to come back.
(02:27):
I just saw Superman last week and I absolutely loved it.
And as of this recording, I'm two days away from seeing the
new Fantastic Four movie, which I'm super excited for.
Lots of stuff coming up down thepipeline, some interviews that
are hopefully going to happen within the next calendar week.
And if you're at San Diego ComicCon, well, by the time you hear
this, you'll have been there andcome back.
(02:49):
I hope you enjoyed yourself and I hope you bought me all the fun
things. Don't forget to hit the like
button if you're watching this on YouTube, rate and review the
podcast, yadda yadda, yadda. But let's just get to the meat
of this meat and potatoes podcast, and that is 2 Juice One
podcast, my guest Dan Schlissel of Stand Up Records.
(03:24):
All right, good morning, everybody.
Good afternoon. Whatever it is, whatever time of
the day you're listening to it. Welcome to DIRECT Edition.
Today I have a special guest who's a pal and I like talking
to friends because and I'm not nervous even though I'm always
nervous. But today's guest is not just a
record producer, but he is the founder and the head of Stand Up
(03:44):
Records, one of the greatest, ifnot the greatest comedy
recording label out there, but also the second Grammy Award
winner that I've interviewed next to Todd McFarlane and the
only person I've ever interviewed to be a guest on
Marc Maron's podcast. WTF.
(04:05):
I'm talking to my pal Dan Schlissel from Stand Up Records
as well as the comic World. Dan, how you doing?
How's it going, Dave? I'm I'm blushing from all the
stuff you just said. It's all true.
And yet it's just hard to hear. Well, that's I think about me as
the guy reading your resume and you already have the job, so
(04:26):
you're good. Yeah, true, true.
OK, Well, thank you for that little ease of mind.
Good to be you. Thanks for having me.
Oh no man, you know, this is another edition of Two Jews, one
podcast. I I'm happy to have you.
Here, oh man, the the image is and I was with our beards.
You're with luminaries Sean Crystal and Alice Darrow from
(04:49):
You know, so so look, you're in good company.
That's great. That's a great company to be in.
I'm I'm honored. So there's a bunch to talk
about, but honestly, like your record label and your history
with not just comedy records, but your history with music in
general is, is, is fascinating to me.
And I just, I wanted to start byasking, I know when you were a
(05:14):
kid, you have a very, very interesting family history.
But I know you were a kid and you were very much taken by
Israeli comedy, which is something I know nothing about,
even though, you know, I'm a Jew.
But that doesn't mean I know anything about Israeli comedy.
What? Give us a little introduction
into that. I'm not going to perform any of
(05:35):
it because it's in another language.
Sure. Well, we'll start with that.
But my mom and dad emigrated. It's from Israel in the late
60s. Dad came over first, got like
himself, established a little bit, then brought mom and my
brother. Over.
And in between that, like my dadgetting here and my mom getting
(05:56):
here, there was a war over there.
So that was part of the reason dad wanted out was he'd already
lived a full life of war. But my mom in coming here, she
loves music, she loves comedy. My mom's a big fan of the arts
and of not gossip rags, but likecelebrity type things.
(06:19):
And all of that was kind of thumbed into my brain at an
early age, you know, and if I, if you're a kid and you have a
stay at home mom, whatever mom does is what you wind up
experiencing. So my mom would put on these
records, some of which were likesingers like Tom Jones or
Engelbert Humperdinck or whatever was popular at the
(06:40):
time. And then some stuff was like
Israeli folk songs and then comedy from Israel, which was,
it was a group of comedians in English, it's called the Pale
Hunter, but they were basically Israel's Monty Python.
But you know, we're talking early to mid 60s and all the way
(07:03):
up through. One of them I think passed away
1520 years ago. So a lot.
Of. A lot of Hebrew was sort of a
dead language and then Israel comes along and they didn't want
to live off of being Holocaust survivors with a with a language
tied to that. So the usage of modern Hebrew
really began to emerge in the years leading up to Israel.
(07:27):
And, and as a result, it was like a dead language that was
being revived only really in Bible stuff before that and then
modernized. And in that modern idiom, things
needed to be figured out as to how, how everything was said and
the grammar and, and, and even, you know, slang and sayings and,
(07:48):
and this sketch comedy group wasvery, very foundational in
establishing a lot of Israeli ironic thinking.
And, and a lot of their phraseology is still you, you
know, very much in the know of it'd be like saying Candy Graham
here you have an equivalent of that there, you know.
OK. Graham And everyone knows it's
(08:10):
the land shark. Well, they have things like that
over in Israel that were tied tothis group.
It's interesting because like, you know, I grew up in New York,
so I grew up around the most Jewish Americans that could
exist in the planet at that time.
You know, I mean that just listening to my mom and her mom
talk and, you know, you understand where this comes
from, but you know, we're separated by about a decade in
(08:34):
age. And that's a huge world of
difference when we think about influences, right?
My comedic influences growing upare, you know, we share Mel
Brooks, but mine are Weird Al and Leslie Nielsen.
And then into the MTV stuff, Beavis and Butthead, Brendan,
Stephie. But for you, I know Mel Brooks,
obviously as a Jewish person, weare extremely influenced by him
(08:55):
with our senses of humor. But is there anything that you
can point to as well that that really gives you that sense of
loving comedy? Like I'm I can imagine you're a
big Mad Magazine fan as a kid growing up.
Absolutely. Like Mad magazine was very, very
foundational to me. You know, when I was a kid, I
(09:16):
grew up out in the East Coast and I was born in Massachusetts,
didn't live there long, but I lived in New Jersey for six
years and that in the Poconos for another six years.
And then we moved out to the middle of Nebraska and that that
kind of was rough. But if I hadn't had the humor
from Mad magazine and all the stuff growing up in the East,
(09:38):
all the Sesame Street, seeing Benny Hill reruns all the time.
And, you know, just WOR&WPIX andall the movie marathons and pro
wrestling And, you know, all theAmerican junk cultures stuff
like just tops trading cards andgo to a newsstand in New York
(10:00):
City back in the day. And every subject had two
magazines, The party and then the knock off.
And sometimes they had more thanthat.
And you would just it was a world of color no matter where
you looked. Everything was illustrated.
Movie posters were, you know, done by Jack Davis and drew
screws. And that's the kind of influence
(10:21):
I had was all of that crazy colorful persona is like George
Gobel and, you know, Paul Lind on Hollywood Squares.
There's just this crazy mishmashof stuff, The Muppet Show, you
name it. That's a lot of that all went
into the hopper for me. And then Marx Brothers movies,
(10:43):
you know, Saturday Night Live. I started watching from the time
I was like. Four or five.
You know, because my parents would drop me off at my aunts
and then go out with my godfather and they say, well,
don't let him stay up late. And then the next morning I'm
reciting monologues and Skechersand.
Yeah, yeah, you're like knockingon the door line, shark.
(11:03):
Yep, 100%. All of it, the killer bees, you
name it, it just, I remember so much of it just dumping into my
head, you know? Yeah, my, me and my brother used
to watch SNL because, you know, our parents would go out on
Saturday night because my mom's a teacher.
So her weekends were extremely important to her.
And yeah, I mean, reciting Wayne's World, reciting, you
(11:25):
know, I grew up with Myers and and and and Dana Carvey and and
those guys. And it's the same thing, you
know, with the next day I'd be joking around in the car, like
pretending I was to insist the driving cat or something, you
know, and it sticks with you. And I think I, I mean, I think
me and you, from what I know about you and from what I know
about you from talking to you, is that we were both kids that
(11:48):
just were vacuums, you know, and, and what we do in our lives
now is because we were vacuums back then.
And we get to instead of suck, we're on full blow.
Well, like comedy, full blow could mean the whole other kind
of, you know, backroom payments and stuff.
(12:10):
But yeah, no, it really was taking in everything and, and,
and trying to absorb that love and, and yeah, this is me
basically trying to put out my version of stuff back into the
world, you know, not necessarilyfor any kind of reward, but just
to be part of that continuum. Yeah, yeah, to, to keep the, to
(12:30):
keep it going. I mean to, to keep the cycle of,
of, of good comedy going. Do you, do you remember any
specific stand up comedians? Did you see any when we were
young or did you get to experience any of that in person
as as a young person? As a youth, not really.
We moved to Nebraska when I was 11, you know, and we and we
(12:54):
lived 3 hours from any real, youknow, the biggest city in the
state and two hours from the second biggest city.
So like there wasn't a lot, it was all TV at that point.
And then sitting with friends and trying to make friends
laugh. So I remember like my best
friend and I, we would record fake radio station like we were
DJs and we'd we'd recorded on a boom box and just fill cassettes
(13:17):
with us just babbling and. Like.
It was just all filters of trying to make something funny
based on something funny you sawor heard yourself.
And and, you know, the HBO stuffwas really influential to early
on in the 80s as the rise of stand up on on cable went.
That's where I went. Yeah, yeah, I got to experience
(13:38):
that. We had HBO when I was somewhat
young. So, you know, I'd see Carlin,
I'd see Def Comedy Jam when it started.
I'd see a lot of that stuff. You know, it's, it's funny.
I mean, maybe we are distant cousins because like 10 years,
you know, 10 years later, whenever you were doing the
thing with the boombox, I was recording parody songs because
that's my comedy as I grew up. I listen to Weird Al and I have
(14:03):
a, you know, I have a quick tongue and I can think of
things. You've seen me do it literally.
And yeah, I have tapes of me re recording nursery rhymes and
like with metal verses and really bad obscene words.
And, you know, my SAT prep classes, that was just me
rewriting lyrics to songs. That's all it was.
I hated, I hated SAT prep class.So you're, I know you, you know,
(14:31):
you said you grew up in Nebraska.
For the most part, your music taste is where it kind of you
start with recording and producing and all that stuff and
it's, it's punk. Can you give me some of your
early musical influences and maybe like your first experience
at a punk show? Because, you know, Nebraska's
definitely got a punk scene. It's got a punk scene, but my,
(14:52):
my first, my first musical like experts in my life were my
cousins Morris and Helene, who had a pretty great record
collection. So when I lived in the East
Coast and we would go to New York, we only, the maximum we
ever lived away from Manhattan was about 3 hours.
So we were there a lot, not weekly once we got to
Pennsylvania, but when we were in New Jersey, we were there
(15:14):
weekly. Oh yeah.
Well, having them buying all these records and playing them
was like the biggest influence. And then my cousin Mara started
making me cassettes. So TDK tapes with like, London
Calling and Blondie and Squeeze and The Rolling Stones and you
name it, like all sorts of greatstuff that I'm not even
(15:35):
remembering. Everything, All that stuff was
really my very first musical influence.
And it was everything from Paul Revere and the Raiders to Kiss
to Peter, Paul and Mary to The Beatles to, you know, the Clash
and the Ramones. All that was through their
record collection. And then hip hop was, you know,
(15:57):
they lived in the Bronx still. Like we weren't, they weren't
far away from some of the stuff as it was developing.
They weren't in the South Bronx,but they were not far from not
far from a lot of main sites in the hip hop history if you start
reading. And just having it be in the
atmosphere was something I absorbed.
(16:17):
And when I moved to Nebraska, even though it was 82, like it
was already going and you could hear it.
And you know, Rapture was becoming a hit as I was moving,
I think. Yeah.
So that became another third, another element into things.
And then I went to college and started going to big shows like
Def Leppard and Van Halen. And it was through being
(16:42):
interested in that stuff that I stumbled into the fact that
there were local bands, which was a concept that didn't make,
it didn't compute. Like local bands that wrote
their own music. Like cover song is a different
story. But once I read about that in
the college newspapers, that'll tell you.
I was like 17 when I wanted to fall in.
So probably I was 18 when I figured out that there were
(17:05):
bands in the area. And then I just sort of fell
into it. And really, I always like the
weird alleyways that kind of Peter off and go into distance
and they aren't the main path. So I kind of pursued it and sort
of became an expert. And then I was booking bands at
the university as part of the program council, and then I was
(17:26):
working at a record store. So then it just sort of kind of
all came together where if I'm buying records from a
distributor, maybe they'll buy some records from me.
There you go. And that's how you get somebody
a little distribution that maybeyou have faith in that you like.
Bingo. So I mean, it, it's interesting.
(17:48):
I, I, I know there's some association with you and, and
Slipknot. So let's, let's hear about this.
I mean, I'm not the biggest Slipknot fan, but God damn Corey
Taylor's got a hell of a voice. This is before Corey.
Oh, really? Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. I, I had a dear friend named
Matt and Matt and I used to roadtrip to see bands and we would,
(18:09):
we would party like a couple of demons just because, you know,
we're two young dudes and going to see bands in other places and
taking time off work and just like, let's have a good time.
So we wound up taking a road trip to Des Moines because the
band The Humpers was playing. And then Unsane was playing the
next day. And one of the dudes in The
(18:30):
Humpers was a former Lincoln musician that I knew.
So I wanted to see him in his new band.
And then Unsane I'd already seena couple times and was super,
super into it because what I like about punk is the
aggression. I'm a metal head too, so like, I
don't like every aggressive thing, but when something's over
(18:53):
the top, it moves me in a way that I can't really, I can't
really describe as a fat guy in my 50s at this point.
You know, when you're in your 20s and you have a head full of
steam, it makes a lot more sense.
Of course. So we're in Des Moines for two
days. We missed The Humpers because we
had the time wrong. It was an all ages show.
We got there when it was over, so we hung out and drank at the
(19:15):
bar and got to know the bartenders.
And then the next day we saw Insane and I was introduced to
the bar owner and the guy said, the bartenders tell me you have
a record label. I'm like, yeah, he goes, I have
a band I'd like you to hear. I said OK.
And then he slides me ACD and it's Slipknot's Mate Feed Kill,
Repeat, which is before Corey. It was demo.
(19:38):
There's 1000 copies of it. So he goes, listen to this and
tell me if you're interested. So he listened to it on the way
home and it was not like anything I was dealing with on
my label. It just, it was, they were more
hip hoppy back then and more experimental, and they sort of
smoothed out a couple rough things when they signed to a
(19:59):
bigger label. But I really liked it.
So I called and it was basicallythe dude I was talking to who
owned the bar is Sean, the Clan Slipknot.
And we came to a deal and I distributed the rest of the CDs,
So I am. Not the person that recorded
them. I'm not the person that first
(20:19):
discovered them, but I'm one of about half a dozen, maybe 10
people that put them on a map. Right, that helped get their
name out there. By getting that CD out there,
well, I got that CD into the Best Buy system and it blew out
very, very fast. Fast enough to get them
attention. How do you think the word got
around once it got into the BestBuy system?
(20:41):
Like you're, you're watching stuff like this happen at a
ground level and you don't really hear the stories anymore
of how a band goes from like ACDgetting out there and then
becoming this thing that people want.
And then they be, you know, likethey get demand.
I mean, the last thing I can think of where there's a real
story is the South Park creationwhere Clooney gets it out to all
(21:02):
these people, and then next thing you know, we have South
Park. Well, there were a lot of
elements going on. You know, the studio that they
recorded at was getting word outthere.
Now, I don't have all of this 100% down.
So the people out there that really know the history, like
full detail might be able to nitpick some stuff out that I
don't have in my head is part ofmy picture.
(21:24):
But the studio, people were beating the drums.
They had a manager who was from Lincoln, which was part of how
the deal came through, and she was a big metal station like
promo person. He had a lot of ears too.
And they were getting a lot of placements in Des Moines.
Like Des Moines has a long metalhistory of craziness.
(21:46):
That's where Ozzy bit the head off a bat.
Rest in peace, Ozzy. That's right.
But that is also like where Les Claypool got hit in the head by
a pig's hoof provided by one of the band members of that I know
from Ritual device, you know, and there's a lot of weird
things metal wise that happen inand and one of those weird
(22:07):
things is Slipknot itself. So at the time they had a
different singer. A lot of a lot of their song
lyrics and content were it was based on this board game about
werewolves that I can't rememberthe name of, but it's easily
looked up. And the singer Anders Cosefny,
he was he was just a madman, like shaved bald, like big
(22:33):
muscular dude wearing a lot of bondage gear and then like
wrapping his head with a weird pattern of electrical tape.
So that like very thin electrical tape, but like in
strands so you can see a lot of his face.
But it was just like this weird torture bondage.
It was it was not of this earth and very, very cool and and it
(22:55):
was just a funkier band. I mean it all locked in once
they signed and and you know, did Iowa and I think was that
the. First one?
No, the first one was Slipknot self-titled.
Yeah, but Iowa was the one that blew up.
Yeah, but those guys, they were.I mean, when you're listening to
bands, it's very clear, even a punk band, it's very clear the
(23:17):
difference between what an amateur band is and a
professional. Band and when.
When that gear shifts, it's it'sshocking how good it becomes and
slip mount is doing that. Yeah.
And then they just went on to just be, you know, what they are
now. I mean, they grew and grew and
good for them. I mean, they came out of a place
(23:39):
that didn't really have much recognition, you know, like on
the broader map of music. So.
So your first record labels called ISM, right?
Yeah. I called it ISM because it's it
stood for In Spite of myself, which was the reason I got up in
the morning. And that was you kind of just
(24:00):
signing, was it a lot of bands that you just personally wanted
to see them get out there and then it kind of just went on
from there? Yeah, the furry first band I
worked with, such sweet Thunder.They were a a band that I was a
real fan of and became sort of like an on again off again Rd.
crew member. I would help them load gear in
and out of shows, and then I would help book shows for them
(24:23):
at the university. So that part of things was where
that started. And then from there on out, I
didn't really sign bands. I just sort of would find people
and then we'd come to a handshake and I would do a
distribution. Deal with them.
And through that, that's how we kept going.
(24:44):
And the one record that such sweet Thunder record did really,
really well. So it kind of fooled me into
thinking that this was somethingI could do and actually.
Make money at. Right.
And out of out of the 60 or 6070records I put out on that old
label, I think 5 records were successful.
(25:04):
Right. I mean.
And in those days, success meantwe sold out of copies.
We don't have to make more. We're out.
They're gone. They're gone.
We're you didn't get it. Tough shit.
Next record. I mean that also really we, as
we know is, you know, purveyors of the secondary market, we know
(25:25):
what that means. They end up, if they ever become
something, or they even go on tomake four more albums, that
first album becomes a valuable thing and a hard thing to get.
Yeah, very much so. And out of all the four or five
records that were successful, only one of them became
valuable. Well, you know.
It's sort of on its way, but youknow.
(25:46):
Yeah, yeah. Not not Slipknot numbers.
How how long did you have? And then you change the lane.
The change the name of the labelto ismist is that.
I did. There was a punk band in New
Jersey called ISM and one of thedudes became a lawyer and he
sent me a letter saying you haveto stop using this name the
least. Punk thing you could ever do to
somebody. I, I, I thought, this is, this
(26:08):
is perfect. I, I hope, I hope you can wipe
your butt with your ideals. And so I got that letter and I
was, I was putting out a record for Wisconsin band Killdozer,
who were on Touch and Go. I was.
Putting out the final single fortheir last tour and it this
happened like in between when wegot the records pressed and when
(26:30):
we got the covers made. So the records still say.
ISM. But then the covers say ISM is
because I decided I'm already committed to using this name for
this record, so I can be in spite of myself, in spite of
them. ISM IST in spite of myself, in
spite of them. And there's a ton of, you know,
I have layers and layers becauselike an IST is a follower.
(26:54):
So it literally has to be ISM isfirst.
It was all this crap. So like, I thought and thought
and thought and that's what. I came up with.
From there on out, we, I moved to Minnesota in 98 and then I
started commuting and listening to metal on the way to work,
Howard Stern on the way to work,metal on the way back.
(27:14):
And then on that commute, I heard that Lewis Black from The
Daily Show was going to be here in town.
So I then went to the comedy club with a stack of CDs, and I
wrote a note and I handed it to the usher.
And I thought, well, you know, at a rock.
Club, you never see the band afterwards.
If it's a big band, they're gone.
So I figured it was an Elvis left the building sort of thing.
(27:37):
And then I walk out of the club and I, you walk by a glass wall
where there's a bar and I look in the, in that glass wall as
you're walking by, you can't help it.
And there's Lewis Black standingin the middle of the bar.
I'm like, well, screw this, I'm going to go talk to him.
You know, my parents taught me when I was a kid, if you're
petting a dog, you don't pet thetail, you pet the head.
Right. So it's.
(27:59):
Great advice. Yeah, I mean, so that's what I
did. I went and talked to him.
I asked if he'd gotten the package of stuff and he said no.
So I explained who I was and, you know, I would like to work
on a record with you. And he said it was funny because
Comedy Central had just said no to.
Him. They didn't have a record label.
At that time, so. He was their guy at that time
(28:22):
though. He was, but they started their
label two years after I started.So I man Moment Machine got in
there, you know, and we recorded.
That was in March of 99. We recorded right before
Thanksgiving a 99 and the recordcame out in June of 2000.
And then that became the most successful record on Izmist
(28:45):
because I hadn't started the newlabel name yet.
OK. I I basically put out four
comedy records before I realized, oh, I should just
rebrand. Right, because anybody who wants
to say ismis or look at it will probably have a problem saying
it until they get it right versus stand up records isn't
even AI mean. Maybe for some people it's hard
(29:06):
to read it, but for most people that's that's three easy words
to to say. Bingo, I learned my lesson.
You know, every one of my failures led to some success.
That's boom. That is amazing because like it
is something that I I harp upon that I also my version of that
is like everything that I began as a joke ends up turning into
(29:28):
something real. You know, a lot of the things
that I do kind of start out as ajoke, you know, getting original
art of Darth Jar Jar turns into 15 pieces already.
And you know, Azine coming up. And then the character of Comic
Tim, which has been running for over 2 years was just like it
did something that came out of my mouth as a joke.
And all of the names that I use for things West Coast Wednesday
(29:51):
and you know, all these things, they're just, they're just jokes
and they end up being real, So Iunderstand.
It's like, you know, you learnedfrom your mistakes.
You also like put something out there that you may not be
serious about. You do it once or twice and
you're like, oh wait, I am serious about this.
Yep. Yeah, yeah.
Run a comedy record label now. I mean, I was doing punk stuff,
(30:12):
man. What the Hell's going on?
Well, I mean, what's more punk in the performing world than
comedy? Well, you know, I would say
Karen Finley and your performance art stuff might be.
Fine, there's. You know, if you wanna, you
wanna somehow stuff a whole can of beans somewhere improper,
then I think you have the very punkest job in the world.
(30:33):
So let's let's jump into the label stand up records, which
has over. Are you past 200 releases yet
or? You're you're Summer B.
Two 52150 releases. Some of the names that people
might be familiar with. Marc Maron Lewis Black Maria
Bamford, Patton Oswalt. Did did did you do?
Did I see there's there's a couple of deceased comedians
(30:57):
that you have? I, you know, I worked with Mitch
Hedberg for Comedy Central. That's one deceased comedian.
Mike Destefano from New York is on my label.
Sean Rouse was on my label, Lashonda Lester.
I can't even think of, you know,250 releases.
People, people check out sometimes.
(31:19):
Yeah, that's a lot of releases to remember.
Yeah, and it's a lot of it's, it's 25 years.
Wow. That's impressive though it.
It, it's a little bit bonkers. I didn't, I didn't expect this
to be the thing. This when I started ISM, it
wasn't like it was a paying gig.I was working really crap jobs
(31:41):
and eating a lot of ramen, a lotof ramen.
There was one time in my in my music label years where my
adjusted income was $8000. For a year.
That's crazy. Yeah.
I mean, comedy just fluked and right place, right time.
(32:02):
And it took off. And it took off in a way where I
was smart enough to dig my heelsin and, and, and, and make a
name for myself through the recording quality and through
who I worked with that, that it endures, you know, And I don't
know that with everything, all the craziness now, who knows?
(32:23):
Sure. People people don't really seem
to think that albums are are things you buy really anymore.
Yeah, I I lean a little bit of disagreement because physical
media is really strong in certain ways and they're trying
to push it away. 100% And that'sreally The thing is, you know,
(32:46):
they, the industry tries to pushit away and then the press like
goes downloads are selling out better than CDs are.
And it's like, well, people go well, downloads are selling
better than CDs are. Why would I buy ACD?
Right, right and the but but then you have, you know, the
people that are really pushing sound quality, people that are
really pushing like the fact that streaming services all
(33:08):
together at any point can just say no, it's gone we're done.
They. Did it to comedy a couple years
ago. There were a couple of labels
that tried to promote that they were going to collect rights
that don't exist, and they sold a whole bunch of comedians on
it. The comedians just say more
money, sure, I'll sign with you.And they don't think about
anything. But what this other company was
(33:30):
trying to do was it would have taken an act of Congress to do
what they want. And there was no act of
Congress. So they started suing all these
places like Pandora, and Pandorajust started removing comedy
from everything, as did other people like Pandora.
So then that when they removed all comedy from everything, that
means they removed all my stuff too.
(33:53):
So that was a crazy, crazy fightand I'm still dealing with some
of the repercussions. Of that it's.
Just part of the, you know, crazy way that media is
shifting. But the, the thing about records
and I've, you know, I've heard you say, I mean, I, I have a
decently large record collectionand it's, it's something that,
(34:13):
you know, I really push and pullbetween because, you know, I've
moved across the country and youknow, every time you move,
you're just like, I'm not fucking dragging these records
around. But it's nice to have a
physical, we grew up in a physical media life.
And I think people that are probably in, you know, like I
(34:34):
would say the 20 to 35 age gap are starting to realize that
they're missing out on it. And DV DS, Blu rays, C DS I mean
shit tapes made a comeback. Yeah, believe it or not, I've
even done not only cassettes, but I've done 8 tracks and I've
done reel to reel. Wow, he's going for it all.
(34:57):
I like, I like the crazy weird, you know, like I told you, I
like going down that alleyway turn.
I like all that crap. So that's always what appeals to
me. So with the label that you've
been doing this for 25 years and, and there's so much to to
talk about it, but you know, kind of simplistically, what
have you seen in stand up that'schanged in the last, let's just
(35:20):
say 5 to 10 years? Because it feels like stand up
is completely different than what it was, you know, 5-10
years ago. I think I think it a lot of it's
being this is going to start getting a little weird and
technical, but I think a lot of it is the Internet is affecting
things and the gamification of, you know, trying to make an
(35:41):
algorithm bend to your will and come to you.
And if the algorithm reacts to Heckler videos, which I think
are kind of worthless, then everyone starts doing Heckler
videos because they're trying toget their stuff to go viral.
And at that point, you're not really pursuing comedy as a pure
(36:01):
art anymore. You're pursuing eyeballs and
gamifying the system just to getmore thumbs up.
And that becomes a substitute for the actual emotion of, of
responding to a comedian. A comedian should be like a jazz
musician in in reality, you go, you see it live, you experience
(36:22):
it at that show and you experience the magic of them
appearing to make you all laugh and fall in line and act as one.
But every Heckler video, not only does it disrupt what the
comedian does to become make more Heckler videos, it disrupts
the show because every asshole like us, like you doing Comic
(36:44):
Tim or me, like making fake radio shows that that spirit
comes out of like I want to be part of the show.
And it's like you're not part ofthe show.
You're just some you. You're the pain.
Just 'cause you paid to get in doesn't mean you get to talk
you. You don't get the narrative to
be. About You have to go see what
that artist is presenting. You don't go to see Glengarry
(37:07):
Glen Ross, you know, with comedians in it.
And then like we, I'm part of the show, I'm a salesman.
Yeah, Yeah, you don't. I mean, and it's depending on
the comedian you're going to see, you might end up being part
of that show just by sitting there.
I mean, I got Todd Barry once and and you know, I got David
crossed once and it's, it's amazing.
It's great. Like you're, you're so
(37:29):
embarrassed and at the same timeyou're just like, Oh my God,
this is hilarious. Was it?
Was it the hipster tattoo? Thing that they came after you
with. Barry there was four of us
sitting at a table close to stage, and one of my friends was
wearing a fedora, whatever I waswearing, and we got called Apple
Store employees. It was.
Fucking hilarious. I mean, I can almost picture,
you know, Todd and and and Davidboth.
(37:51):
I know a little bit so. Yeah, they're they're they're
great at what they do. And you know, the bigger shows
are a different story. And I've seen Gervais in in
Madison Square Garden, I've seenSandler at Radio City.
And like, those are just shows. Those are like, you are there to
laugh. And but yeah, I see the Heckler
thing and I'm, I'm like, yeah, this is, I mean, it's people
(38:13):
feeling entitled and wanting to be at the narrative.
It's it's one thing you're at a concert and there's a quiet part
and you yell free Bird and someone tells you to fuck off.
Like that's great. But that's pick your spot, not
interrupting. 100% I agree with that.
If you notice, like if you go back and watch any of George
Carlin's HBO specials, people try to derail him.
(38:35):
You hear it in the audience. It never cuts to the audience.
You just hear George. He doesn't even like let it
phase him. He just somehow like a magician,
steamrollers, every single thingcoming from the audience.
Like you can just tell that there's that, that, that New
York City, like, you know, fuck you.
(38:55):
This is my time. I'm doing my time.
Nothing is going to stop. A bomb could go off and I'm
going to still tell my joke. And he was the best.
And he was. The best?
You know, you asked earlier, like, what my earliest comedy
show was. I was 17 years old.
I was in Vegas with my parents, and George Carlin was playing at
Caesar's. It was a 21 and over show.
(39:18):
And my parents said, here's 20 bucks, we're going to go out and
see our shows, you know, go go to Circus circus and play arcade
games, do whatever. And I'm like, I'm 17.
I'm going to go see if I can actually I'm, I'm four years too
young. I'm going to see if I can get
into this George Carlin show. And I went over to Caesar's and
I bought a ticket and they nevercarted me.
(39:39):
And I got in line and they nevercarted me.
And they seated me and they never carted me.
And they asked my drink order and they never carted me.
Fucking Vegas. Man, it was, it was the greatest
night of my life at that point. George Carlin in person for the
first time. So I was 17 when I got to see my
(40:00):
first real comedy show and I sawI saw George three times and the
third time I thought I was goingto get to meet him because I was
a guest of his manager. But I brought all sorts of stuff
in case and Nope, he hopped in alimo and flew back home by the
time I got backstage. Well, at least you got to see
him three times. You know, that's a special
(40:22):
thing. Speaking of, is there anybody
that you like that you're kind of dying to work with?
Somebody that you'd love to record that you're a fan of?
Because obviously you're a fan like you.
You're like me. We're doing this because we love
the thing, whatever it is, the industry, the comics or the
comedy in your in your world. The funny thing is I've already
(40:45):
worked with a lot of the big people.
So I, I don't really, I don't know that I have a want list of
like the big names at this point.
Yeah, I don't think I do becauseeither either I've already
worked with them or they've donesomething that like, I wouldn't
want to work with them at this point or, you know, they or
they've passed on. Like I'd love another crack at
working with Hedberg, but like that's never going to happen.
(41:07):
And I don't, it's not to say that I wouldn't be happy to work
with any of the big names I already have worked with.
I don't really have a new guy that's like getting to that
level where it's like, oh, I gotto work with them.
For me, it's about the discoveryof a new artist.
And you know what? It takes 10 years to become a a
new artist basically, right? Take your bumps.
(41:27):
Yeah, you got to take all your bumps and it's 10 years in
before you're ready to present. So it's like, that's the point I
like to be at. Is it that roughly 10 years, 710
years in and helping somebody like push over the top from
there because they've already got a voice and they've got
something they want to say. And on that level, my my main
(41:47):
guy right now is a guy near you in Olympia named Sam Miller.
And I love that dude and he's great and he has an interesting
story and he's just super goofy.He he basically he's 6/6.
So he's like built like a lumberjack, like Tommy Chong,
but he's like not a pothead. He's a recovering meth addict in
(42:09):
kids and a family life and like his head screwed on straight.
You know it. It's just like this real
interesting story and he's just.Really eager to.
To push and to work with me on some of the stuff that I'd like
to see done. Easy I I like more people like
that where it's easy to get behind what they're doing
because there's positivity there.
(42:31):
And I'd love to go see him one day.
And I know you recorded some shows with him recently and
hopefully we get, are those going to be on Netflix, HBO?
Well, that's always the the hardthing about the modern day is
everything's streaming everywhere and it's impossible
to open up the big doors. So the new special that we
(42:51):
filmed a little bit ago is stillbeing worked on and color
corrected and edited and you know, stuff's being eliminated
that we don't think works. Color I already said, and
soundtrack. There's a whole ton of tweaks
that have to happen. Once that happens, we're going
to start knocking on doors againat the net.
(43:13):
And you know, I'm I'm talking tomy attorney about it a little
bit now. My distributor.
I'm a little disappointed with video distribution.
Even though you would think thatpeople have been selling videos,
you know, on VHS and stuff for 40 some odd years.
It's basically still the Wild West and the the digital world
(43:33):
of it makes it even crazier. Like it's impossible to get a
real release date that I actually get stuck to.
Like I defined a release date like four months in advance and
then it's like, is it coming outon that day?
Who knows. Distributor can't tell me.
So weird, weird world of media these days is it just gets
(43:53):
weirder and weirder. It's insanity and it shouldn't
be. It shouldn't be.
These should all be like the most basic concrete answers.
And, and that's the part I don'tlike is that the foundation is
washed away on the business sideof things.
On the creative side, there's always going to be like an
audience to pull. There's always going to be
somebody to tell jokes to, of course.
(44:14):
There's always going to be something to make fun of it
yourself. Yeah, yeah.
And in the meantime, making fun of those things doesn't get you
put in some kind of weird relocation.
We'll call it that. Yeah, Sure, Fair enough, fair
enough. Lastly, I think I want to talk
about this and next time I have you on, we're going to talk
(44:35):
about comics a lot. And but I do want to talk about
one thing that you did about a year a year ago, right?
These came out about a year ago.For those of you that don't
know, this is what is. Typically, this is a parody of a
chick track. Do you want to explain what a
chick track is because you have more of the history of?
Absolutely. A chick track is basically using
(44:58):
the comic book idiom as propaganda to push evangelical
Christianity onto unsuspecting people in passing.
So this particular format was developed by a guy named Jack.
T Chick. And that's the why they're
called chick tracks. But he print, he had his own
print printing press and he printed these things by the
(45:19):
millions and that drove the price of them down to next to
nothing. And as a result, he could sell
them very cheaply to people who would then buy them and
distribute them in public restrooms and telephone booths
when we had those and, you know,all these.
Gas stations. Gas stations, truck stops, any
place sort of CD and, you know, used by everybody and just not
(45:46):
like wallpaper. You, you see it and you don't
even realize it's there sometimes.
But once you take notice of it, you really take notice of it.
Evangelical tracts are so virulently hateful that they
hate not only Muslims and Jews and atheists and Dungeons and
Dragons, but they also hate Catholics.
(46:07):
Yes. Like severely, and this is all
like it's all been used by the, by the religious right to kind
of get their way and bully and push and pastor.
And I decided to, to really study up on this stuff.
And there's a few books and a documentary.
And then I really took like whatI thought were some of the finer
(46:30):
points of them and, and made a checklist of what I wanted to
hit his points. And then I approached, there's a
local comedian and comic book author, Elliot Rahal here in
Minneapolis. And Elliot and I talked and he
loved the idea and he took all of my stupid notes and he made
an actual. Story out of it.
(46:51):
And it's a really good story. It's good, Yeah.
I enjoyed this thoroughly. And then, then he brought on
artist Jack Cox, who's also a Minneapolis artist.
And here we are. I found a printing plant here in
town. You know the evangelicals
wouldn't print something making fun of them.
Of course not. They have no sense of humor to
begin with. Right.
And like in all these religious tracks, whenever they show Jesus
(47:14):
or God, they never show a face because you're not supposed to
have a graven image. That's one of the biblical laws
that they kind of perverted. You're not supposed to have a
graven image of the deity, kind of like you're not supposed to
draw Muhammad. So, you know, no one's ever made
that parallel in public. I've now drawn ire from two
sides. I like the dotted line thing.
(47:34):
So when I told Elliot about it, I said we got to have God and
his head's got to be a dotted line.
But it doesn't have to be a human head.
I would like it if it was an elder God, you know.
So we have like a dotted line headed Cthulhu God on a.
Human, it's so good. Yeah, you know, and, and we have
all these messages that are likenot positive, but they're still
(47:56):
funny in there. Like, you know, there's like
talk of suicide. And I say don't, don't take
pills and commit suicide becausewe're sad, you know, take, take
drugs because they're fun. It's it's a great twist on
something that is, like you said, it was built from the
ground up to be hateful. And this is life's a joke, and
(48:21):
it really does stay true to its name.
And, you know, I mean, you, I'veshared, you know, like stores
I've gone to that I've seen it. And I watch you, you know,
posting on Instagram where, you know, where you're dropping them
off. And, you know, they're in,
they're in Excalibur comics as we speak in Portland.
And if you want to send me some,I can get them at least in
Stargazer because I gave all theones out that you would
(48:43):
originally sent me because. Yeah, because I knew if I throw
them in with people's orders, they're going to enjoy it.
Like I know the people that would enjoy looking at those.
I can. I can send you a bunch and you
can do whatever you want with them, honestly, because the idea
is to get them out there. The other idea about this was
not only to make fun of chick tracks, but as chick tracks
proselytize to bring people intoevangelical Christianity.
(49:07):
What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to bring people into
stand up comedy and go to an open like and try writing a
joke. So that's really kind of what
the whole point was, was to twist the whole thing on its
head. And I have another one that's
pretty much done, but I printed 5000 of these and I want to get
rid of a few more before I make another 5000 or something.
(49:27):
Yes, yeah, we, we can't be all Jack Chick.
And I mean, that dude probably had a lot of money coming in
from so many different sources, you know, whether it was
evangelicals or it was, you know, whatever religious cult.
Yeah, yeah, 100%. I don't have that.
And in fact, I I try to half asssell them on my website, but
(49:48):
like, it's not even really the point.
The point was to advertise the record label.
So a mail order that comes in gets a copy, right?
Right. They order one of those, then
they get 2 of them. By the way, for anybody that's
listening, you can find all of the things that stand up
recordsdoes@standuprecords.com. And all of our social media is
at Stand up records, I think. Yes, Yes, it is.
(50:10):
Yeah. And it's it.
And next time we do this, we're going to get into it on so many
levels because I, I am actually like, fascinated by production
and like the idea of what a producer does in, you know, in
different ways. And also, I want to talk about
comedy and I want to talk about comics, because those two things
(50:30):
are very much intertwined throughout the history of both
of them. Well, you know, I, I'm always,
you know, this from the late hours that I'll write you.
And I feel like just talking to people that I respect peers, you
know, because if you got something going on, it's
interesting to me and it keeps my fire going because I'm still
hoovering up stuff. And it's not, you know, I don't
(50:51):
want to be you. I don't want to sell comic books
online. But I'm very interested in what
you do. And I'm a customer.
I like buying stuff. Yeah, yeah.
And I, you know, I, I don't wantto do that forever.
I want to do this forever. But there's got to be a way for
me to support myself. 100% And Ithink it's awesome that you
found found this Ave. in the meantime as you're getting
(51:12):
toeholds and everything else. Yeah, yeah.
And like you, I'm a talker and Ilike listening and I like asking
questions to hear what people, the stories they have to tell.
Because, you know, it's, I thinkone of the reasons why we're
drawn to comics in general is because they're stories.
And, you know, they're stories from very creative minds,
(51:33):
sometimes not so creative, but mostly creative.
You know, anything immediate coming up that you want to
promote releases or you know, show or anything like that?
I'm working on a vinyl release for mystery comedian Dick Davey
from the 1960s that'll be out inSeptember.
(51:54):
Dick Davey was a white dude who sounded like a black dude from
the South. And there's a whole mystery
about him because he made two albums in the 60's.
The first one was recorded at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem and
and then he kind of disappeared.So comedian, historian Cliff
(52:14):
Nesteroff tasked my my fellow producer Jason Klom with the
task of figuring out who Dick Davey was.
And he he pulled it threads until he got the whole thing to
come come out as a story. And this is this record is a
couple of unreleased acetates and a live performance from ATV
(52:36):
appearance in in 1968. Like a 20 page or 16 page
booklet telling the whole story and art on the cover and on the
cover of the booklet by Tony millionaire of mockies.
And Oh yeah, and sock monkey. Yeah.
Wow, that's awesome. Yeah, I think that'll appeal to
the audience. Sweet.
(52:58):
Yeah, I like a little history lesson and something that we
don't know about. I mean, I feel like comics did
that. What was the fan of graphics one
that they did that and Jim coverto the guy.
The Big Book with the Frank Johnson was it.
Yeah, Frank Johnson, like somebody that nobody knew
anything about. Yeah, yeah, He wound up being
like this. He he just writing in isolation
(53:19):
for himself. I can't remember the other
artist who did that. The with the with the girls.
I can't, I can't think. But it's one of those
undiscovered things where like the guy dies and they're going
through his stuff and about to dumpster it and they find like
hundreds of pages of all that. It's wild and there's probably
so much of that stuff that'll you know, has been out there,
(53:40):
will be out there or or you know, and will never get
discovered. So, you know, keep, keep putting
good art out there. It can't hurt.
It can only help the cause and the causes, you know, enjoying
life a little bit more. 100% andI think that's that's the main
thing is, you know, we're we allhave a one way ticket here, but
you might as well die laughing, you know, like.
(54:02):
Oh, I definitely will. Don't, don't let it go away in
all seriousness and gloom and fear and all the crap that's
being forced down our throats from the general public like
life is fun, have some fun even with during all the crap.
And that's the the best. The best revenge is living well.
Exactly. And and also I'll add to that,
life is also a joke. Life's a joke.
(54:25):
Well, Dan, look, thank you for being here.
I definitely want to have you back on and I definitely want to
have you back on so we can just talk about the things that we
love. Stand up records across the
board. You can find Dan on social media
and you can find him maybe recording your next favorite
comedian, and maybe you know, it'll be live on wax at some
(54:48):
point. Absolutely.
And remember, everybody, West Coast Avengers.
Woo. Thanks for listening or
(55:08):
watching. If you are watching this on
YouTube or Spotify, you can watch it all over the place now.
It's it's amazing. The website for the podcast is
pretty easy. It's directeditionpodcast.com.
You can rate and review this on Spotify and Apple and Amazon or
just, you know, hit the like button on YouTube and drop a
comment down below. Once again, thank you so much to
(55:31):
Dan for doing this and also for his patience with the Internet
that we are all subjected to no matter where we live, no matter
who we are. So so thank you again to
everybody involved in this. But let's just let you go.
You come back next week. We got another interview.
You can hear my nasally voice. And so I'll see you on the next
(55:51):
episode of Direct Edition. Have a great week.
Welcome back to DIRECT EDITION, a podcast about nothing and
everything. I'm your host, Dave.
Thanks for being with me today. And I want to bring you a
special interview. Another great guest that I had a
chance to chat with a pal of mine, His name is Dan Schlissel.
He's got a great resume. You'll find out all about it.
But he is the founder and also runs the comedy record label
(00:34):
called Stand Up Records. He's been in that business for
1/4 of a century. He also had a punk label before
that. He's just a great guy.
I know him from the Cartoonist Cafe group chat as well as he
has become a friend and a customer of my life comic sales
and I thought it would be a great piece of insight to talk
to him about comedy running record label, getting started in
(00:59):
doing punk records, producer recording live shows, all the
stuff that Dan, you know, he takes part in and it's his
business. I do want to just say a special
thank you for his patience. Recently I started using a
different recording program and my Internet was really not
(01:20):
cooperating with it that night. So you'll see some editing done,
some will just be Dan's Dan talking.
I kept cutting out. He didn't, but I kept cutting
out. So just want to give that
disclaimer and once again, thankDan for his extreme patience
with the fact that I just kept disappearing from the stream and
it wasn't to offend him. But I think this conversation is
(01:44):
a really enjoyable 1:00 and we are going to do 1 again soon
just because of all the problems.
It threw me off my game. But you'll probably never notice
it. I'm a professional, but you can
follow Dan on stand up records all across the platforms and
social media, but check out the website if you really want to
learn a little more in order of vinyl or just check out some of
(02:05):
the comedians he's worked with and still is working with.
We're going to get into a different discussion eventually
about collecting an art because he has employed so many great
artists to do album covers for his roster of comedians.
Other than that, just want to say thank you to everybody who's
been here and and continues to come back.
(02:27):
I just saw Superman last week and I absolutely loved it.
And as of this recording, I'm two days away from seeing the
new Fantastic Four movie, which I'm super excited for.
Lots of stuff coming up down thepipeline, some interviews that
are hopefully going to happen within the next calendar week.
And if you're at San Diego ComicCon, well, by the time you hear
this, you'll have been there andcome back.
(02:49):
I hope you enjoyed yourself and I hope you bought me all the fun
things. Don't forget to hit the like
button if you're watching this on YouTube, rate and review the
podcast, yadda yadda, yadda. But let's just get to the meat
of this meat and potatoes podcast, and that is 2 Juice One
podcast, my guest Dan Schlissel of Stand Up Records.
(03:24):
All right, good morning, everybody.
Good afternoon. Whatever it is, whatever time of
the day you're listening to it. Welcome to DIRECT Edition.
Today I have a special guest who's a pal and I like talking
to friends because and I'm not nervous even though I'm always
nervous. But today's guest is not just a
record producer, but he is the founder and the head of Stand Up
(03:44):
Records, one of the greatest, ifnot the greatest comedy
recording label out there, but also the second Grammy Award
winner that I've interviewed next to Todd McFarlane and the
only person I've ever interviewed to be a guest on
Marc Maron's podcast. WTF.
(04:05):
I'm talking to my pal Dan Schlissel from Stand Up Records
as well as the comic World. Dan, how you doing?
How's it going, Dave? I'm I'm blushing from all the
stuff you just said. It's all true.
And yet it's just hard to hear. Well, that's I think about me as
the guy reading your resume and you already have the job, so
(04:26):
you're good. Yeah, true, true.
OK, Well, thank you for that little ease of mind.
Good to be you. Thanks for having me.
Oh no man, you know, this is another edition of Two Jews, one
podcast. I I'm happy to have you.
Here, oh man, the the image is and I was with our beards.
You're with luminaries Sean Crystal and Alice Darrow from
(04:49):
You know, so so look, you're in good company.
That's great. That's a great company to be in.
I'm I'm honored. So there's a bunch to talk
about, but honestly, like your record label and your history
with not just comedy records, but your history with music in
general is, is, is fascinating to me.
And I just, I wanted to start byasking, I know when you were a
(05:14):
kid, you have a very, very interesting family history.
But I know you were a kid and you were very much taken by
Israeli comedy, which is something I know nothing about,
even though, you know, I'm a Jew.
But that doesn't mean I know anything about Israeli comedy.
What? Give us a little introduction
into that. I'm not going to perform any of
(05:35):
it because it's in another language.
Sure. Well, we'll start with that.
But my mom and dad emigrated. It's from Israel in the late
60s. Dad came over first, got like
himself, established a little bit, then brought mom and my
brother. Over.
And in between that, like my dadgetting here and my mom getting
(05:56):
here, there was a war over there.
So that was part of the reason dad wanted out was he'd already
lived a full life of war. But my mom in coming here, she
loves music, she loves comedy. My mom's a big fan of the arts
and of not gossip rags, but likecelebrity type things.
(06:19):
And all of that was kind of thumbed into my brain at an
early age, you know, and if I, if you're a kid and you have a
stay at home mom, whatever mom does is what you wind up
experiencing. So my mom would put on these
records, some of which were likesingers like Tom Jones or
Engelbert Humperdinck or whatever was popular at the
(06:40):
time. And then some stuff was like
Israeli folk songs and then comedy from Israel, which was,
it was a group of comedians in English, it's called the Pale
Hunter, but they were basically Israel's Monty Python.
But you know, we're talking early to mid 60s and all the way
(07:03):
up through. One of them I think passed away
1520 years ago. So a lot.
Of. A lot of Hebrew was sort of a
dead language and then Israel comes along and they didn't want
to live off of being Holocaust survivors with a with a language
tied to that. So the usage of modern Hebrew
really began to emerge in the years leading up to Israel.
(07:27):
And, and as a result, it was like a dead language that was
being revived only really in Bible stuff before that and then
modernized. And in that modern idiom, things
needed to be figured out as to how, how everything was said and
the grammar and, and, and even, you know, slang and sayings and,
(07:48):
and this sketch comedy group wasvery, very foundational in
establishing a lot of Israeli ironic thinking.
And, and a lot of their phraseology is still you, you
know, very much in the know of it'd be like saying Candy Graham
here you have an equivalent of that there, you know.
OK. Graham And everyone knows it's
(08:10):
the land shark. Well, they have things like that
over in Israel that were tied tothis group.
It's interesting because like, you know, I grew up in New York,
so I grew up around the most Jewish Americans that could
exist in the planet at that time.
You know, I mean that just listening to my mom and her mom
talk and, you know, you understand where this comes
from, but you know, we're separated by about a decade in
(08:34):
age. And that's a huge world of
difference when we think about influences, right?
My comedic influences growing upare, you know, we share Mel
Brooks, but mine are Weird Al and Leslie Nielsen.
And then into the MTV stuff, Beavis and Butthead, Brendan,
Stephie. But for you, I know Mel Brooks,
obviously as a Jewish person, weare extremely influenced by him
(08:55):
with our senses of humor. But is there anything that you
can point to as well that that really gives you that sense of
loving comedy? Like I'm I can imagine you're a
big Mad Magazine fan as a kid growing up.
Absolutely. Like Mad magazine was very, very
foundational to me. You know, when I was a kid, I
(09:16):
grew up out in the East Coast and I was born in Massachusetts,
didn't live there long, but I lived in New Jersey for six
years and that in the Poconos for another six years.
And then we moved out to the middle of Nebraska and that that
kind of was rough. But if I hadn't had the humor
from Mad magazine and all the stuff growing up in the East,
(09:38):
all the Sesame Street, seeing Benny Hill reruns all the time.
And, you know, just WOR&WPIX andall the movie marathons and pro
wrestling And, you know, all theAmerican junk cultures stuff
like just tops trading cards andgo to a newsstand in New York
(10:00):
City back in the day. And every subject had two
magazines, The party and then the knock off.
And sometimes they had more thanthat.
And you would just it was a world of color no matter where
you looked. Everything was illustrated.
Movie posters were, you know, done by Jack Davis and drew
screws. And that's the kind of influence
(10:21):
I had was all of that crazy colorful persona is like George
Gobel and, you know, Paul Lind on Hollywood Squares.
There's just this crazy mishmashof stuff, The Muppet Show, you
name it. That's a lot of that all went
into the hopper for me. And then Marx Brothers movies,
(10:43):
you know, Saturday Night Live. I started watching from the time
I was like. Four or five.
You know, because my parents would drop me off at my aunts
and then go out with my godfather and they say, well,
don't let him stay up late. And then the next morning I'm
reciting monologues and Skechersand.
Yeah, yeah, you're like knockingon the door line, shark.
(11:03):
Yep, 100%. All of it, the killer bees, you
name it, it just, I remember so much of it just dumping into my
head, you know? Yeah, my, me and my brother used
to watch SNL because, you know, our parents would go out on
Saturday night because my mom's a teacher.
So her weekends were extremely important to her.
And yeah, I mean, reciting Wayne's World, reciting, you
(11:25):
know, I grew up with Myers and and and and Dana Carvey and and
those guys. And it's the same thing, you
know, with the next day I'd be joking around in the car, like
pretending I was to insist the driving cat or something, you
know, and it sticks with you. And I think I, I mean, I think
me and you, from what I know about you and from what I know
about you from talking to you, is that we were both kids that
(11:48):
just were vacuums, you know, and, and what we do in our lives
now is because we were vacuums back then.
And we get to instead of suck, we're on full blow.
Well, like comedy, full blow could mean the whole other kind
of, you know, backroom payments and stuff.
(12:10):
But yeah, no, it really was taking in everything and, and,
and trying to absorb that love and, and yeah, this is me
basically trying to put out my version of stuff back into the
world, you know, not necessarilyfor any kind of reward, but just
to be part of that continuum. Yeah, yeah, to, to keep the, to
(12:30):
keep it going. I mean to, to keep the cycle of,
of, of good comedy going. Do you, do you remember any
specific stand up comedians? Did you see any when we were
young or did you get to experience any of that in person
as as a young person? As a youth, not really.
We moved to Nebraska when I was 11, you know, and we and we
(12:54):
lived 3 hours from any real, youknow, the biggest city in the
state and two hours from the second biggest city.
So like there wasn't a lot, it was all TV at that point.
And then sitting with friends and trying to make friends
laugh. So I remember like my best
friend and I, we would record fake radio station like we were
DJs and we'd we'd recorded on a boom box and just fill cassettes
(13:17):
with us just babbling and. Like.
It was just all filters of trying to make something funny
based on something funny you sawor heard yourself.
And and, you know, the HBO stuffwas really influential to early
on in the 80s as the rise of stand up on on cable went.
That's where I went. Yeah, yeah, I got to experience
(13:38):
that. We had HBO when I was somewhat
young. So, you know, I'd see Carlin,
I'd see Def Comedy Jam when it started.
I'd see a lot of that stuff. You know, it's, it's funny.
I mean, maybe we are distant cousins because like 10 years,
you know, 10 years later, whenever you were doing the
thing with the boombox, I was recording parody songs because
that's my comedy as I grew up. I listen to Weird Al and I have
(14:03):
a, you know, I have a quick tongue and I can think of
things. You've seen me do it literally.
And yeah, I have tapes of me re recording nursery rhymes and
like with metal verses and really bad obscene words.
And, you know, my SAT prep classes, that was just me
rewriting lyrics to songs. That's all it was.
I hated, I hated SAT prep class.So you're, I know you, you know,
(14:31):
you said you grew up in Nebraska.
For the most part, your music taste is where it kind of you
start with recording and producing and all that stuff and
it's, it's punk. Can you give me some of your
early musical influences and maybe like your first experience
at a punk show? Because, you know, Nebraska's
definitely got a punk scene. It's got a punk scene, but my,
(14:52):
my first, my first musical like experts in my life were my
cousins Morris and Helene, who had a pretty great record
collection. So when I lived in the East
Coast and we would go to New York, we only, the maximum we
ever lived away from Manhattan was about 3 hours.
So we were there a lot, not weekly once we got to
Pennsylvania, but when we were in New Jersey, we were there
(15:14):
weekly. Oh yeah.
Well, having them buying all these records and playing them
was like the biggest influence. And then my cousin Mara started
making me cassettes. So TDK tapes with like, London
Calling and Blondie and Squeeze and The Rolling Stones and you
name it, like all sorts of greatstuff that I'm not even
(15:35):
remembering. Everything, All that stuff was
really my very first musical influence.
And it was everything from Paul Revere and the Raiders to Kiss
to Peter, Paul and Mary to The Beatles to, you know, the Clash
and the Ramones. All that was through their
record collection. And then hip hop was, you know,
(15:57):
they lived in the Bronx still. Like we weren't, they weren't
far away from some of the stuff as it was developing.
They weren't in the South Bronx,but they were not far from not
far from a lot of main sites in the hip hop history if you start
reading. And just having it be in the
atmosphere was something I absorbed.
(16:17):
And when I moved to Nebraska, even though it was 82, like it
was already going and you could hear it.
And you know, Rapture was becoming a hit as I was moving,
I think. Yeah.
So that became another third, another element into things.
And then I went to college and started going to big shows like
Def Leppard and Van Halen. And it was through being
(16:42):
interested in that stuff that I stumbled into the fact that
there were local bands, which was a concept that didn't make,
it didn't compute. Like local bands that wrote
their own music. Like cover song is a different
story. But once I read about that in
the college newspapers, that'll tell you.
I was like 17 when I wanted to fall in.
So probably I was 18 when I figured out that there were
(17:05):
bands in the area. And then I just sort of fell
into it. And really, I always like the
weird alleyways that kind of Peter off and go into distance
and they aren't the main path. So I kind of pursued it and sort
of became an expert. And then I was booking bands at
the university as part of the program council, and then I was
(17:26):
working at a record store. So then it just sort of kind of
all came together where if I'm buying records from a
distributor, maybe they'll buy some records from me.
There you go. And that's how you get somebody
a little distribution that maybeyou have faith in that you like.
Bingo. So I mean, it, it's interesting.
(17:48):
I, I, I know there's some association with you and, and
Slipknot. So let's, let's hear about this.
I mean, I'm not the biggest Slipknot fan, but God damn Corey
Taylor's got a hell of a voice. This is before Corey.
Oh, really? Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. I, I had a dear friend named
Matt and Matt and I used to roadtrip to see bands and we would,
(18:09):
we would party like a couple of demons just because, you know,
we're two young dudes and going to see bands in other places and
taking time off work and just like, let's have a good time.
So we wound up taking a road trip to Des Moines because the
band The Humpers was playing. And then Unsane was playing the
next day. And one of the dudes in The
(18:30):
Humpers was a former Lincoln musician that I knew.
So I wanted to see him in his new band.
And then Unsane I'd already seena couple times and was super,
super into it because what I like about punk is the
aggression. I'm a metal head too, so like, I
don't like every aggressive thing, but when something's over
(18:53):
the top, it moves me in a way that I can't really, I can't
really describe as a fat guy in my 50s at this point.
You know, when you're in your 20s and you have a head full of
steam, it makes a lot more sense.
Of course. So we're in Des Moines for two
days. We missed The Humpers because we
had the time wrong. It was an all ages show.
We got there when it was over, so we hung out and drank at the
(19:15):
bar and got to know the bartenders.
And then the next day we saw Insane and I was introduced to
the bar owner and the guy said, the bartenders tell me you have
a record label. I'm like, yeah, he goes, I have
a band I'd like you to hear. I said OK.
And then he slides me ACD and it's Slipknot's Mate Feed Kill,
Repeat, which is before Corey. It was demo.
(19:38):
There's 1000 copies of it. So he goes, listen to this and
tell me if you're interested. So he listened to it on the way
home and it was not like anything I was dealing with on
my label. It just, it was, they were more
hip hoppy back then and more experimental, and they sort of
smoothed out a couple rough things when they signed to a
(19:59):
bigger label. But I really liked it.
So I called and it was basicallythe dude I was talking to who
owned the bar is Sean, the Clan Slipknot.
And we came to a deal and I distributed the rest of the CDs,
So I am. Not the person that recorded
them. I'm not the person that first
(20:19):
discovered them, but I'm one of about half a dozen, maybe 10
people that put them on a map. Right, that helped get their
name out there. By getting that CD out there,
well, I got that CD into the Best Buy system and it blew out
very, very fast. Fast enough to get them
attention. How do you think the word got
around once it got into the BestBuy system?
(20:41):
Like you're, you're watching stuff like this happen at a
ground level and you don't really hear the stories anymore
of how a band goes from like ACDgetting out there and then
becoming this thing that people want.
And then they be, you know, likethey get demand.
I mean, the last thing I can think of where there's a real
story is the South Park creationwhere Clooney gets it out to all
(21:02):
these people, and then next thing you know, we have South
Park. Well, there were a lot of
elements going on. You know, the studio that they
recorded at was getting word outthere.
Now, I don't have all of this 100% down.
So the people out there that really know the history, like
full detail might be able to nitpick some stuff out that I
don't have in my head is part ofmy picture.
(21:24):
But the studio, people were beating the drums.
They had a manager who was from Lincoln, which was part of how
the deal came through, and she was a big metal station like
promo person. He had a lot of ears too.
And they were getting a lot of placements in Des Moines.
Like Des Moines has a long metalhistory of craziness.
(21:46):
That's where Ozzy bit the head off a bat.
Rest in peace, Ozzy. That's right.
But that is also like where Les Claypool got hit in the head by
a pig's hoof provided by one of the band members of that I know
from Ritual device, you know, and there's a lot of weird
things metal wise that happen inand and one of those weird
(22:07):
things is Slipknot itself. So at the time they had a
different singer. A lot of a lot of their song
lyrics and content were it was based on this board game about
werewolves that I can't rememberthe name of, but it's easily
looked up. And the singer Anders Cosefny,
he was he was just a madman, like shaved bald, like big
(22:33):
muscular dude wearing a lot of bondage gear and then like
wrapping his head with a weird pattern of electrical tape.
So that like very thin electrical tape, but like in
strands so you can see a lot of his face.
But it was just like this weird torture bondage.
It was it was not of this earth and very, very cool and and it
(22:55):
was just a funkier band. I mean it all locked in once
they signed and and you know, did Iowa and I think was that
the. First one?
No, the first one was Slipknot self-titled.
Yeah, but Iowa was the one that blew up.
Yeah, but those guys, they were.I mean, when you're listening to
bands, it's very clear, even a punk band, it's very clear the
(23:17):
difference between what an amateur band is and a
professional. Band and when.
When that gear shifts, it's it'sshocking how good it becomes and
slip mount is doing that. Yeah.
And then they just went on to just be, you know, what they are
now. I mean, they grew and grew and
good for them. I mean, they came out of a place
(23:39):
that didn't really have much recognition, you know, like on
the broader map of music. So.
So your first record labels called ISM, right?
Yeah. I called it ISM because it's it
stood for In Spite of myself, which was the reason I got up in
the morning. And that was you kind of just
(24:00):
signing, was it a lot of bands that you just personally wanted
to see them get out there and then it kind of just went on
from there? Yeah, the furry first band I
worked with, such sweet Thunder.They were a a band that I was a
real fan of and became sort of like an on again off again Rd.
crew member. I would help them load gear in
and out of shows, and then I would help book shows for them
(24:23):
at the university. So that part of things was where
that started. And then from there on out, I
didn't really sign bands. I just sort of would find people
and then we'd come to a handshake and I would do a
distribution. Deal with them.
And through that, that's how we kept going.
(24:44):
And the one record that such sweet Thunder record did really,
really well. So it kind of fooled me into
thinking that this was somethingI could do and actually.
Make money at. Right.
And out of out of the 60 or 6070records I put out on that old
label, I think 5 records were successful.
(25:04):
Right. I mean.
And in those days, success meantwe sold out of copies.
We don't have to make more. We're out.
They're gone. They're gone.
We're you didn't get it. Tough shit.
Next record. I mean that also really we, as
we know is, you know, purveyors of the secondary market, we know
(25:25):
what that means. They end up, if they ever become
something, or they even go on tomake four more albums, that
first album becomes a valuable thing and a hard thing to get.
Yeah, very much so. And out of all the four or five
records that were successful, only one of them became
valuable. Well, you know.
It's sort of on its way, but youknow.
(25:46):
Yeah, yeah. Not not Slipknot numbers.
How how long did you have? And then you change the lane.
The change the name of the labelto ismist is that.
I did. There was a punk band in New
Jersey called ISM and one of thedudes became a lawyer and he
sent me a letter saying you haveto stop using this name the
least. Punk thing you could ever do to
somebody. I, I, I thought, this is, this
(26:08):
is perfect. I, I hope, I hope you can wipe
your butt with your ideals. And so I got that letter and I
was, I was putting out a record for Wisconsin band Killdozer,
who were on Touch and Go. I was.
Putting out the final single fortheir last tour and it this
happened like in between when wegot the records pressed and when
(26:30):
we got the covers made. So the records still say.
ISM. But then the covers say ISM is
because I decided I'm already committed to using this name for
this record, so I can be in spite of myself, in spite of
them. ISM IST in spite of myself, in
spite of them. And there's a ton of, you know,
I have layers and layers becauselike an IST is a follower.
(26:54):
So it literally has to be ISM isfirst.
It was all this crap. So like, I thought and thought
and thought and that's what. I came up with.
From there on out, we, I moved to Minnesota in 98 and then I
started commuting and listening to metal on the way to work,
Howard Stern on the way to work,metal on the way back.
(27:14):
And then on that commute, I heard that Lewis Black from The
Daily Show was going to be here in town.
So I then went to the comedy club with a stack of CDs, and I
wrote a note and I handed it to the usher.
And I thought, well, you know, at a rock.
Club, you never see the band afterwards.
If it's a big band, they're gone.
So I figured it was an Elvis left the building sort of thing.
(27:37):
And then I walk out of the club and I, you walk by a glass wall
where there's a bar and I look in the, in that glass wall as
you're walking by, you can't help it.
And there's Lewis Black standingin the middle of the bar.
I'm like, well, screw this, I'm going to go talk to him.
You know, my parents taught me when I was a kid, if you're
petting a dog, you don't pet thetail, you pet the head.
Right. So it's.
(27:59):
Great advice. Yeah, I mean, so that's what I
did. I went and talked to him.
I asked if he'd gotten the package of stuff and he said no.
So I explained who I was and, you know, I would like to work
on a record with you. And he said it was funny because
Comedy Central had just said no to.
Him. They didn't have a record label.
At that time, so. He was their guy at that time
(28:22):
though. He was, but they started their
label two years after I started.So I man Moment Machine got in
there, you know, and we recorded.
That was in March of 99. We recorded right before
Thanksgiving a 99 and the recordcame out in June of 2000.
And then that became the most successful record on Izmist
(28:45):
because I hadn't started the newlabel name yet.
OK. I I basically put out four
comedy records before I realized, oh, I should just
rebrand. Right, because anybody who wants
to say ismis or look at it will probably have a problem saying
it until they get it right versus stand up records isn't
even AI mean. Maybe for some people it's hard
(29:06):
to read it, but for most people that's that's three easy words
to to say. Bingo, I learned my lesson.
You know, every one of my failures led to some success.
That's boom. That is amazing because like it
is something that I I harp upon that I also my version of that
is like everything that I began as a joke ends up turning into
(29:28):
something real. You know, a lot of the things
that I do kind of start out as ajoke, you know, getting original
art of Darth Jar Jar turns into 15 pieces already.
And you know, Azine coming up. And then the character of Comic
Tim, which has been running for over 2 years was just like it
did something that came out of my mouth as a joke.
And all of the names that I use for things West Coast Wednesday
(29:51):
and you know, all these things, they're just, they're just jokes
and they end up being real, So Iunderstand.
It's like, you know, you learnedfrom your mistakes.
You also like put something out there that you may not be
serious about. You do it once or twice and
you're like, oh wait, I am serious about this.
Yep. Yeah, yeah.
Run a comedy record label now. I mean, I was doing punk stuff,
(30:12):
man. What the Hell's going on?
Well, I mean, what's more punk in the performing world than
comedy? Well, you know, I would say
Karen Finley and your performance art stuff might be.
Fine, there's. You know, if you wanna, you
wanna somehow stuff a whole can of beans somewhere improper,
then I think you have the very punkest job in the world.
(30:33):
So let's let's jump into the label stand up records, which
has over. Are you past 200 releases yet
or? You're you're Summer B.
Two 52150 releases. Some of the names that people
might be familiar with. Marc Maron Lewis Black Maria
Bamford, Patton Oswalt. Did did did you do?
Did I see there's there's a couple of deceased comedians
(30:57):
that you have? I, you know, I worked with Mitch
Hedberg for Comedy Central. That's one deceased comedian.
Mike Destefano from New York is on my label.
Sean Rouse was on my label, Lashonda Lester.
I can't even think of, you know,250 releases.
People, people check out sometimes.
(31:19):
Yeah, that's a lot of releases to remember.
Yeah, and it's a lot of it's, it's 25 years.
Wow. That's impressive though it.
It, it's a little bit bonkers. I didn't, I didn't expect this
to be the thing. This when I started ISM, it
wasn't like it was a paying gig.I was working really crap jobs
(31:41):
and eating a lot of ramen, a lotof ramen.
There was one time in my in my music label years where my
adjusted income was $8000. For a year.
That's crazy. Yeah.
I mean, comedy just fluked and right place, right time.
(32:02):
And it took off. And it took off in a way where I
was smart enough to dig my heelsin and, and, and, and make a
name for myself through the recording quality and through
who I worked with that, that it endures, you know, And I don't
know that with everything, all the craziness now, who knows?
(32:23):
Sure. People people don't really seem
to think that albums are are things you buy really anymore.
Yeah, I I lean a little bit of disagreement because physical
media is really strong in certain ways and they're trying
to push it away. 100% And that'sreally The thing is, you know,
(32:46):
they, the industry tries to pushit away and then the press like
goes downloads are selling out better than CDs are.
And it's like, well, people go well, downloads are selling
better than CDs are. Why would I buy ACD?
Right, right and the but but then you have, you know, the
people that are really pushing sound quality, people that are
really pushing like the fact that streaming services all
(33:08):
together at any point can just say no, it's gone we're done.
They. Did it to comedy a couple years
ago. There were a couple of labels
that tried to promote that they were going to collect rights
that don't exist, and they sold a whole bunch of comedians on
it. The comedians just say more
money, sure, I'll sign with you.And they don't think about
anything. But what this other company was
(33:30):
trying to do was it would have taken an act of Congress to do
what they want. And there was no act of
Congress. So they started suing all these
places like Pandora, and Pandorajust started removing comedy
from everything, as did other people like Pandora.
So then that when they removed all comedy from everything, that
means they removed all my stuff too.
(33:53):
So that was a crazy, crazy fightand I'm still dealing with some
of the repercussions. Of that it's.
Just part of the, you know, crazy way that media is
shifting. But the, the thing about records
and I've, you know, I've heard you say, I mean, I, I have a
decently large record collectionand it's, it's something that,
(34:13):
you know, I really push and pullbetween because, you know, I've
moved across the country and youknow, every time you move,
you're just like, I'm not fucking dragging these records
around. But it's nice to have a
physical, we grew up in a physical media life.
And I think people that are probably in, you know, like I
(34:34):
would say the 20 to 35 age gap are starting to realize that
they're missing out on it. And DV DS, Blu rays, C DS I mean
shit tapes made a comeback. Yeah, believe it or not, I've
even done not only cassettes, but I've done 8 tracks and I've
done reel to reel. Wow, he's going for it all.
(34:57):
I like, I like the crazy weird, you know, like I told you, I
like going down that alleyway turn.
I like all that crap. So that's always what appeals to
me. So with the label that you've
been doing this for 25 years and, and there's so much to to
talk about it, but you know, kind of simplistically, what
have you seen in stand up that'schanged in the last, let's just
(35:20):
say 5 to 10 years? Because it feels like stand up
is completely different than what it was, you know, 5-10
years ago. I think I think it a lot of it's
being this is going to start getting a little weird and
technical, but I think a lot of it is the Internet is affecting
things and the gamification of, you know, trying to make an
(35:41):
algorithm bend to your will and come to you.
And if the algorithm reacts to Heckler videos, which I think
are kind of worthless, then everyone starts doing Heckler
videos because they're trying toget their stuff to go viral.
And at that point, you're not really pursuing comedy as a pure
(36:01):
art anymore. You're pursuing eyeballs and
gamifying the system just to getmore thumbs up.
And that becomes a substitute for the actual emotion of, of
responding to a comedian. A comedian should be like a jazz
musician in in reality, you go, you see it live, you experience
(36:22):
it at that show and you experience the magic of them
appearing to make you all laugh and fall in line and act as one.
But every Heckler video, not only does it disrupt what the
comedian does to become make more Heckler videos, it disrupts
the show because every asshole like us, like you doing Comic
(36:44):
Tim or me, like making fake radio shows that that spirit
comes out of like I want to be part of the show.
And it's like you're not part ofthe show.
You're just some you. You're the pain.
Just 'cause you paid to get in doesn't mean you get to talk
you. You don't get the narrative to
be. About You have to go see what
that artist is presenting. You don't go to see Glengarry
(37:07):
Glen Ross, you know, with comedians in it.
And then like we, I'm part of the show, I'm a salesman.
Yeah, Yeah, you don't. I mean, and it's depending on
the comedian you're going to see, you might end up being part
of that show just by sitting there.
I mean, I got Todd Barry once and and you know, I got David
crossed once and it's, it's amazing.
It's great. Like you're, you're so
(37:29):
embarrassed and at the same timeyou're just like, Oh my God,
this is hilarious. Was it?
Was it the hipster tattoo? Thing that they came after you
with. Barry there was four of us
sitting at a table close to stage, and one of my friends was
wearing a fedora, whatever I waswearing, and we got called Apple
Store employees. It was.
Fucking hilarious. I mean, I can almost picture,
you know, Todd and and and Davidboth.
(37:51):
I know a little bit so. Yeah, they're they're they're
great at what they do. And you know, the bigger shows
are a different story. And I've seen Gervais in in
Madison Square Garden, I've seenSandler at Radio City.
And like, those are just shows. Those are like, you are there to
laugh. And but yeah, I see the Heckler
thing and I'm, I'm like, yeah, this is, I mean, it's people
(38:13):
feeling entitled and wanting to be at the narrative.
It's it's one thing you're at a concert and there's a quiet part
and you yell free Bird and someone tells you to fuck off.
Like that's great. But that's pick your spot, not
interrupting. 100% I agree with that.
If you notice, like if you go back and watch any of George
Carlin's HBO specials, people try to derail him.
(38:35):
You hear it in the audience. It never cuts to the audience.
You just hear George. He doesn't even like let it
phase him. He just somehow like a magician,
steamrollers, every single thingcoming from the audience.
Like you can just tell that there's that, that, that New
York City, like, you know, fuck you.
(38:55):
This is my time. I'm doing my time.
Nothing is going to stop. A bomb could go off and I'm
going to still tell my joke. And he was the best.
And he was. The best?
You know, you asked earlier, like, what my earliest comedy
show was. I was 17 years old.
I was in Vegas with my parents, and George Carlin was playing at
Caesar's. It was a 21 and over show.
(39:18):
And my parents said, here's 20 bucks, we're going to go out and
see our shows, you know, go go to Circus circus and play arcade
games, do whatever. And I'm like, I'm 17.
I'm going to go see if I can actually I'm, I'm four years too
young. I'm going to see if I can get
into this George Carlin show. And I went over to Caesar's and
I bought a ticket and they nevercarted me.
(39:39):
And I got in line and they nevercarted me.
And they seated me and they never carted me.
And they asked my drink order and they never carted me.
Fucking Vegas. Man, it was, it was the greatest
night of my life at that point. George Carlin in person for the
first time. So I was 17 when I got to see my
(40:00):
first real comedy show and I sawI saw George three times and the
third time I thought I was goingto get to meet him because I was
a guest of his manager. But I brought all sorts of stuff
in case and Nope, he hopped in alimo and flew back home by the
time I got backstage. Well, at least you got to see
him three times. You know, that's a special
(40:22):
thing. Speaking of, is there anybody
that you like that you're kind of dying to work with?
Somebody that you'd love to record that you're a fan of?
Because obviously you're a fan like you.
You're like me. We're doing this because we love
the thing, whatever it is, the industry, the comics or the
comedy in your in your world. The funny thing is I've already
(40:45):
worked with a lot of the big people.
So I, I don't really, I don't know that I have a want list of
like the big names at this point.
Yeah, I don't think I do becauseeither either I've already
worked with them or they've donesomething that like, I wouldn't
want to work with them at this point or, you know, they or
they've passed on. Like I'd love another crack at
working with Hedberg, but like that's never going to happen.
(41:07):
And I don't, it's not to say that I wouldn't be happy to work
with any of the big names I already have worked with.
I don't really have a new guy that's like getting to that
level where it's like, oh, I gotto work with them.
For me, it's about the discoveryof a new artist.
And you know what? It takes 10 years to become a a
new artist basically, right? Take your bumps.
(41:27):
Yeah, you got to take all your bumps and it's 10 years in
before you're ready to present. So it's like, that's the point I
like to be at. Is it that roughly 10 years, 710
years in and helping somebody like push over the top from
there because they've already got a voice and they've got
something they want to say. And on that level, my my main
(41:47):
guy right now is a guy near you in Olympia named Sam Miller.
And I love that dude and he's great and he has an interesting
story and he's just super goofy.He he basically he's 6/6.
So he's like built like a lumberjack, like Tommy Chong,
but he's like not a pothead. He's a recovering meth addict in
(42:09):
kids and a family life and like his head screwed on straight.
You know it. It's just like this real
interesting story and he's just.Really eager to.
To push and to work with me on some of the stuff that I'd like
to see done. Easy I I like more people like
that where it's easy to get behind what they're doing
because there's positivity there.
(42:31):
And I'd love to go see him one day.
And I know you recorded some shows with him recently and
hopefully we get, are those going to be on Netflix, HBO?
Well, that's always the the hardthing about the modern day is
everything's streaming everywhere and it's impossible
to open up the big doors. So the new special that we
(42:51):
filmed a little bit ago is stillbeing worked on and color
corrected and edited and you know, stuff's being eliminated
that we don't think works. Color I already said, and
soundtrack. There's a whole ton of tweaks
that have to happen. Once that happens, we're going
to start knocking on doors againat the net.
(43:13):
And you know, I'm I'm talking tomy attorney about it a little
bit now. My distributor.
I'm a little disappointed with video distribution.
Even though you would think thatpeople have been selling videos,
you know, on VHS and stuff for 40 some odd years.
It's basically still the Wild West and the the digital world
(43:33):
of it makes it even crazier. Like it's impossible to get a
real release date that I actually get stuck to.
Like I defined a release date like four months in advance and
then it's like, is it coming outon that day?
Who knows. Distributor can't tell me.
So weird, weird world of media these days is it just gets
(43:53):
weirder and weirder. It's insanity and it shouldn't
be. It shouldn't be.
These should all be like the most basic concrete answers.
And, and that's the part I don'tlike is that the foundation is
washed away on the business sideof things.
On the creative side, there's always going to be like an
audience to pull. There's always going to be
somebody to tell jokes to, of course.
(44:14):
There's always going to be something to make fun of it
yourself. Yeah, yeah.
And in the meantime, making fun of those things doesn't get you
put in some kind of weird relocation.
We'll call it that. Yeah, Sure, Fair enough, fair
enough. Lastly, I think I want to talk
about this and next time I have you on, we're going to talk
(44:35):
about comics a lot. And but I do want to talk about
one thing that you did about a year a year ago, right?
These came out about a year ago.For those of you that don't
know, this is what is. Typically, this is a parody of a
chick track. Do you want to explain what a
chick track is because you have more of the history of?
Absolutely. A chick track is basically using
(44:58):
the comic book idiom as propaganda to push evangelical
Christianity onto unsuspecting people in passing.
So this particular format was developed by a guy named Jack.
T Chick. And that's the why they're
called chick tracks. But he print, he had his own
print printing press and he printed these things by the
(45:19):
millions and that drove the price of them down to next to
nothing. And as a result, he could sell
them very cheaply to people who would then buy them and
distribute them in public restrooms and telephone booths
when we had those and, you know,all these.
Gas stations. Gas stations, truck stops, any
place sort of CD and, you know, used by everybody and just not
(45:46):
like wallpaper. You, you see it and you don't
even realize it's there sometimes.
But once you take notice of it, you really take notice of it.
Evangelical tracts are so virulently hateful that they
hate not only Muslims and Jews and atheists and Dungeons and
Dragons, but they also hate Catholics.
(46:07):
Yes. Like severely, and this is all
like it's all been used by the, by the religious right to kind
of get their way and bully and push and pastor.
And I decided to, to really study up on this stuff.
And there's a few books and a documentary.
And then I really took like whatI thought were some of the finer
(46:30):
points of them and, and made a checklist of what I wanted to
hit his points. And then I approached, there's a
local comedian and comic book author, Elliot Rahal here in
Minneapolis. And Elliot and I talked and he
loved the idea and he took all of my stupid notes and he made
an actual. Story out of it.
(46:51):
And it's a really good story. It's good, Yeah.
I enjoyed this thoroughly. And then, then he brought on
artist Jack Cox, who's also a Minneapolis artist.
And here we are. I found a printing plant here in
town. You know the evangelicals
wouldn't print something making fun of them.
Of course not. They have no sense of humor to
begin with. Right.
And like in all these religious tracks, whenever they show Jesus
(47:14):
or God, they never show a face because you're not supposed to
have a graven image. That's one of the biblical laws
that they kind of perverted. You're not supposed to have a
graven image of the deity, kind of like you're not supposed to
draw Muhammad. So, you know, no one's ever made
that parallel in public. I've now drawn ire from two
sides. I like the dotted line thing.
(47:34):
So when I told Elliot about it, I said we got to have God and
his head's got to be a dotted line.
But it doesn't have to be a human head.
I would like it if it was an elder God, you know.
So we have like a dotted line headed Cthulhu God on a.
Human, it's so good. Yeah, you know, and, and we have
all these messages that are likenot positive, but they're still
(47:56):
funny in there. Like, you know, there's like
talk of suicide. And I say don't, don't take
pills and commit suicide becausewe're sad, you know, take, take
drugs because they're fun. It's it's a great twist on
something that is, like you said, it was built from the
ground up to be hateful. And this is life's a joke, and
(48:21):
it really does stay true to its name.
And, you know, I mean, you, I'veshared, you know, like stores
I've gone to that I've seen it. And I watch you, you know,
posting on Instagram where, you know, where you're dropping them
off. And, you know, they're in,
they're in Excalibur comics as we speak in Portland.
And if you want to send me some,I can get them at least in
Stargazer because I gave all theones out that you would
(48:43):
originally sent me because. Yeah, because I knew if I throw
them in with people's orders, they're going to enjoy it.
Like I know the people that would enjoy looking at those.
I can. I can send you a bunch and you
can do whatever you want with them, honestly, because the idea
is to get them out there. The other idea about this was
not only to make fun of chick tracks, but as chick tracks
proselytize to bring people intoevangelical Christianity.
(49:07):
What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to bring people into
stand up comedy and go to an open like and try writing a
joke. So that's really kind of what
the whole point was, was to twist the whole thing on its
head. And I have another one that's
pretty much done, but I printed 5000 of these and I want to get
rid of a few more before I make another 5000 or something.
(49:27):
Yes, yeah, we, we can't be all Jack Chick.
And I mean, that dude probably had a lot of money coming in
from so many different sources, you know, whether it was
evangelicals or it was, you know, whatever religious cult.
Yeah, yeah, 100%. I don't have that.
And in fact, I I try to half asssell them on my website, but
(49:48):
like, it's not even really the point.
The point was to advertise the record label.
So a mail order that comes in gets a copy, right?
Right. They order one of those, then
they get 2 of them. By the way, for anybody that's
listening, you can find all of the things that stand up
recordsdoes@standuprecords.com. And all of our social media is
at Stand up records, I think. Yes, Yes, it is.
(50:10):
Yeah. And it's it.
And next time we do this, we're going to get into it on so many
levels because I, I am actually like, fascinated by production
and like the idea of what a producer does in, you know, in
different ways. And also, I want to talk about
comedy and I want to talk about comics, because those two things
(50:30):
are very much intertwined throughout the history of both
of them. Well, you know, I, I'm always,
you know, this from the late hours that I'll write you.
And I feel like just talking to people that I respect peers, you
know, because if you got something going on, it's
interesting to me and it keeps my fire going because I'm still
hoovering up stuff. And it's not, you know, I don't
(50:51):
want to be you. I don't want to sell comic books
online. But I'm very interested in what
you do. And I'm a customer.
I like buying stuff. Yeah, yeah.
And I, you know, I, I don't wantto do that forever.
I want to do this forever. But there's got to be a way for
me to support myself. 100% And Ithink it's awesome that you
found found this Ave. in the meantime as you're getting
(51:12):
toeholds and everything else. Yeah, yeah.
And like you, I'm a talker and Ilike listening and I like asking
questions to hear what people, the stories they have to tell.
Because, you know, it's, I thinkone of the reasons why we're
drawn to comics in general is because they're stories.
And, you know, they're stories from very creative minds,
(51:33):
sometimes not so creative, but mostly creative.
You know, anything immediate coming up that you want to
promote releases or you know, show or anything like that?
I'm working on a vinyl release for mystery comedian Dick Davey
from the 1960s that'll be out inSeptember.
(51:54):
Dick Davey was a white dude who sounded like a black dude from
the South. And there's a whole mystery
about him because he made two albums in the 60's.
The first one was recorded at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem and
and then he kind of disappeared.So comedian, historian Cliff
(52:14):
Nesteroff tasked my my fellow producer Jason Klom with the
task of figuring out who Dick Davey was.
And he he pulled it threads until he got the whole thing to
come come out as a story. And this is this record is a
couple of unreleased acetates and a live performance from ATV
(52:36):
appearance in in 1968. Like a 20 page or 16 page
booklet telling the whole story and art on the cover and on the
cover of the booklet by Tony millionaire of mockies.
And Oh yeah, and sock monkey. Yeah.
Wow, that's awesome. Yeah, I think that'll appeal to
the audience. Sweet.
(52:58):
Yeah, I like a little history lesson and something that we
don't know about. I mean, I feel like comics did
that. What was the fan of graphics one
that they did that and Jim coverto the guy.
The Big Book with the Frank Johnson was it.
Yeah, Frank Johnson, like somebody that nobody knew
anything about. Yeah, yeah, He wound up being
like this. He he just writing in isolation
(53:19):
for himself. I can't remember the other
artist who did that. The with the with the girls.
I can't, I can't think. But it's one of those
undiscovered things where like the guy dies and they're going
through his stuff and about to dumpster it and they find like
hundreds of pages of all that. It's wild and there's probably
so much of that stuff that'll you know, has been out there,
(53:40):
will be out there or or you know, and will never get
discovered. So, you know, keep, keep putting
good art out there. It can't hurt.
It can only help the cause and the causes, you know, enjoying
life a little bit more. 100% andI think that's that's the main
thing is, you know, we're we allhave a one way ticket here, but
you might as well die laughing, you know, like.
(54:02):
Oh, I definitely will. Don't, don't let it go away in
all seriousness and gloom and fear and all the crap that's
being forced down our throats from the general public like
life is fun, have some fun even with during all the crap.
And that's the the best. The best revenge is living well.
Exactly. And and also I'll add to that,
life is also a joke. Life's a joke.
(54:25):
Well, Dan, look, thank you for being here.
I definitely want to have you back on and I definitely want to
have you back on so we can just talk about the things that we
love. Stand up records across the
board. You can find Dan on social media
and you can find him maybe recording your next favorite
comedian, and maybe you know, it'll be live on wax at some
(54:48):
point. Absolutely.
And remember, everybody, West Coast Avengers.
Woo. Thanks for listening or
(55:08):
watching. If you are watching this on
YouTube or Spotify, you can watch it all over the place now.
It's it's amazing. The website for the podcast is
pretty easy. It's directeditionpodcast.com.
You can rate and review this on Spotify and Apple and Amazon or
just, you know, hit the like button on YouTube and drop a
comment down below. Once again, thank you so much to
(55:31):
Dan for doing this and also for his patience with the Internet
that we are all subjected to no matter where we live, no matter
who we are. So so thank you again to
everybody involved in this. But let's just let you go.
You come back next week. We got another interview.
You can hear my nasally voice. And so I'll see you on the next
(55:51):
episode of Direct Edition. Have a great week.
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