Name: Bill Burr - Comedian And Author Ritch Shydner
Uploaded: 2016-12-17T14:42:35.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Bill Burr - Comedian And Author Ritch Shydner' from Bill Burr Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-12-17. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Bill Burr - Comedian And Author Ritch Shydner' from Bill Burr Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-12-17. Transcript available.

Bill Burr - Comedian And Author Ritch Shydner

all right let me make sure i got everything my disposal here
this is like a record for me two guests in a row on the thursday podcast all
right you ready
hey what's going on it's bill burr it's time for the thursday afternoon just
before friday
monday morning podcast and i'm just checking in on you what's going on how are
you how's
your week going how's your week going that's wonderful wonderful all right well
once again
two weeks in a row we uh we have a special guest in studio this is the one and
only comic legend
rich scheidner who has a new book he's here to plug um that i actually got a
couple months ago but my
wife is so goddamn pregnant i've only been able to read bits and pieces of it i
read all of i killed
in 2006 he's got a book called uh kicking through the ashes my life as a stand-up
in the 1980s comedy
boom which personally is my favorite eric because i watched all of it and that
was and that made me
want to be a comedian and all that so rich welcome welcome to the podcast um i
gotta ask so what year
did you start officially as a comedian because everybody always has their yeah
yeah well i did
two open mics then i went to college for a semester people always try to they
always try to delay when
they stuff so i really i really only doing it six months they're like 52. so
when is your official uh
january 77. wow yeah that's amazing washington dc there are no comedy clubs i
was gonna say like
where was there to gig yeah it was a a friend of mine you know i was funny and
he said you're funny you've
got to do this i don't even know if we knew it called stand-up he's gonna take
you down do we can do this
you know you can do it the comedy at this place and you were in law school i
was in law school okay
and uh and uh it was a iguana coffee house it was just this basement in a
church you know when
there's all talent nights right and i and i followed a poet i saw the tape
because my boy had
the tape yeah i had the tape i had the tape audio video audio just audio just
wow you know it was big
black box cassettes like a shoebox size cassette player right recorder and uh
and and the poet his
last line was like the mango we are ripe for the revolution oh god right he was
like a decade too
late huh exactly way ahead on mango nobody's talking mango in 77 right but you're
right way behind yeah
the vietnam was over war was over and he was still trying to do that yeah yeah
so when you guys went that
was what fascinated me back then because it's because of you guys that there
was a comedy club your whole
generation is the reason why there's a comedy club scene and i've always like
read stuff about jay leno
and it was just like yeah and he'd be like yeah i'd go down to the combat zone
which is where like the
red light district where boston used to be and you'd go on between like strippers
and anywhere anywhere
anywhere this guy howard vine who took me that first time he was like my unofficial
he says i found
another place like a talent night called the gay cabaret and we were so we had
we just thought like gay
cabaret like the flintstones this is 77 man the closet was packed yeah yeah
there was nobody out of the closet
except my overpopulation pushed out you know right so we get in there and it
was you know it's a gay
gay club and the guy was like great nice hey fellas you know it's normally
great it's open talent night
you know but uh this is this is ladies night once a month we have ladies night
and again we're so clueless
we don't get it we're like ladies night fantastic man i still don't get it what
does that mean it was
lesbians bottoms it was lesbians oh it's all lesbians you meant bottoms yeah
ladies nights uh yeah
wow and i go out in front of this lesbian crowd i mean you know i'm the reason
they're there
to get away from guys like me how did it go i'm just a swing oh my god i mean
you know what i mean
chill i mean chill freezing cold i mean a woman took me off stage finally just
i mean i got one line i
did i was i did like my buddy told me he said you said like i guess i'm your
worst nightmare or something
and got a kind of a laugh but you know you know stupid you are i thought oh
that's encouragement to do
more instead of take that as your exit yeah as a cue that we we didn't come
here for this yeah you're
done and a woman just walked up on stage took me by the arm and led me off just
let me off just like
i've had that i've had that you know when i started out i i had a gig and i i
didn't know it was a i
didn't know it was a gay club i just got a gig the guy didn't tell me the place
was called queen of
hearts and what killed me was there's only a couple of towns over from uh from
where i lived and uh like
yeah and that was like still it was the 80s it was early 90s that was still
like totally like uh um
you know not accepted there was no i guess billy crystal played was like the
only guy played a gay
character and that whole thing just like went away so when i found out i was
all like paranoid my
trucks out there it was all like homophobic i'm out here sucking dick right so
i um i went there
and i was wearing my college like sweatshirt came walking in like a 23 24 year
old and i walked by this
guy and i forget what the hell he said he just said like oh my god my fantasy
or something like
that and i was just like i was like wow that was really forward so i went down
to the end of the bar
and uh one of the women i was working with i was like i walked in she goes hey
bill how you doing i
said yes i said good i say that guy down the end of the bar he's a little happy
she goes what i got
the guy i go down the other bar he goes i go he's a little happy and she
finally got she goes bill
everybody's a little happy here this is this is a gay bar and then i looked
around i was like oh
shit i was totally freaked the fuck out yeah but then you know by the time i
got to new york i was
just like yeah you know you start broadening horizons you don't give a shit but
uh so you started out
there so what i what what made it blow up the way it did that all of a sudden
there was just you could
you know instead of having to go on after a poet or a stripper or whatever you
had to do like i was
always interested like what what like what years did all of a sudden these
scenes started all these
independent like boston had a comedy scene right the ding-ho you know those
guys there's right lenny
clark and barry crimins there was a scene up there there was a scene in washington
dc we found this
bar this guy started doing comedy at this bar so lewis black myself kevin rooney
ron zimmer and all these
guys showed up to start doing stand-up this little bar in southeast anacostia
like it was and the fact that
was stand-up exclusively must have been like wow oh yeah oh yeah it became
packed immediately it became
like wild immediately and there was a scene in san francisco with the holy city
zoo and that comedy
scene there was one in houston at a comedy workshop with hicks and kennison and
those guys were starting
now did la because i know danger fields was around since like the 60s so like
new york and la actually
they had seen like i i was doing it for like a year or so and a friend of mine
said she goes you know
there are comics like you're doing this up in new york city i was like what she
had a comedy clubs
so she took me up there and i there were you know the improv the comic strip
and catch rising star but
i didn't know about until i went up there that's so fascinating because like
there's no internet
nobody knew anything like this guy comes in one night comes into el brookman's
like you know around
and he walks up to me he goes hey uh i want to do uh uh some stand-up comedy
yeah well at the end of
the show we like put guys on there no i'm a comic out in san francisco we we're
doing like this
out in san francisco like what yeah i got a place the holy city zoo his name
was tony depaul and he was
running the holy city so he told me you're gonna come out here man we're doing
this out there too
and i was like what people are doing this you didn't think like right people
are doing it we're just
doing it and you don't know nobody was talking to us a scene in philly there
were about six or seven
cities that had scenes percolating percolating so how did those guys back in
the day like if they had
to do way back to like ed sullivan like how did you put your set together i
know those guys did vegas
and they did casinos i guess you just had to be based in new york or la to get
stage time to actually
yeah but those guys they but they didn't there were places all over there you
know the the night
clubs started happening right after world war one when like supper clubs right
right they started
doing the speakies and all when when prohibition came in so the comics moved in
out of vaudeville
started moving into these nightclubs to make real money right that's where it
started so they're always
you know back in the 50s and 60s they called them the toilets where these guys
were trained you know
they go you got to work the toilets a little little bar out in jersey to do a
little comedy a little
show you'd be part of a show you know there's a singer dancer right right it
wasn't exclusively
comedy but danger fields wasn't exclusively stand-up you know danger had the
singers and stand-ups and
also they were yeah they still got the piano they haven't changed no no no no
so what year did so
then i guess imagine as the supper club started to go away then your guy's
scene then created the
comedy club that's right so my generation they weren't going out to the dinner
clubs you know
going out and have a dinner and see a show nobody was doing anymore that was
out you don't get dressed
up as old people stuff so we were in rock concerts so then that kind of like
started fading right you
know you're going you get a little older you want to date you just can't go
dating you know so everybody's
kind of looking for the next thing and it happened like some guy opens up a
comedy club you know there's the
three paying comedy clubs out here in the late 70s in california there's mitzi
opened a place down in
pacific beach in 76 and moved over to into la jolla 77 then there was a guy
mike calley opened up
a place to laugh stopped down in newport beach and then mike lacy which you've
been down to comedy
magic club down in her most beach in 78. they were the first three paying like
paying they'd bring
comics in from l.a and pay him a couple hundred bucks wow and then garvin's in
washington dc open in 79
january 79 started paying comics from new york to come down and do it so at
this point you've been
doing it like two years i've been doing two years and i became an mc there that's
where i met all
those comics i started working with seinfeld and bill maher and overton and all
that at what time
at what point did you did you start to sense like wow man like i sort of jumped
into this thing that
has just taken off like what point did it really seem like like this like the
sky's the limit it was
almost like a real estate boom yeah yeah you know i didn't you know it didn't
it took me a while i
mean it sucked into we weren't making money you know like the comic strip in
fort lauderdale opened
like january or so 80. i remember going down there and i'm working with my
first wife carol eifer and
joe bolster and mark schiff and kelly rogers and and kelly pulls me over in a
comedy condo right
like the first comedy condo so it's got a phone it's clean and it's got a phone
it's got a phone inside
wow he's got a phone and he goes he's got the phone he goes come here come here
and he goes whatever
this guy says you can do tell him you can do it if he asks whatever he has tell
him you can do it so
i got a phone guy he goes hey i just opened up this club in ottawa canada i
need a guy i can go
do two 45-minute sets can you do two separate 45-minute shows i go oh yeah jesus
christ i hang
up the phone okay i got like a half hour after they buy everything yeah 