Name: The Monday Morning Podcast 12-15-16
Uploaded: 2017-01-17T02:15:13.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Monday Morning Podcast 12-15-16' from Bill Burr on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-01-17. Transcript available. Bill sits down with comedian and author Rich Shydner.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Monday Morning Podcast 12-15-16' from Bill Burr on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-01-17. Transcript available. Bill sits down with comedian and author Rich Shydner.

The Monday Morning Podcast 12-15-16

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 we 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 where was there to gig yeah it was a a a friend of mine you know i was
funny and he said
you're funny you 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
i had the tape yeah i had the tape i had the tape audio video audio just audio
just 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 you need to 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
go on between like
strippers 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 was 77 man the
closet was packed yeah yeah
it was packed there was nobody out of the closet except my overpopulation
pushed out you know right
so we could end there and it was you know it's a gay gay club and the guy was
right great i said hey
fellas you know it's normally great it's open talent night you know but uh this
is this is ladies night
well once a month we have ladies night and again we're so clueless we don't get
it we're like ladies
like 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 night so yeah wow and i go in front of
this lesbian crowd i mean
you know i'm the reason they're there to hide 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 wow and the woman just walked up on
stage took me by the
arm and led me off just let me off just like a muscle i've had that i've had
that you know when i started
out 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
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 mean it's 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 truck's out there it was all
like homophobic
think about his 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 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 guys hey
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 a gay bar
and then i looked around i was like oh i was totally freaked the out yeah but
then you know by the time
i got to new york i was just like yeah you know you start broadening your 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
all 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 it 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 l.a 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 doing this up in new york city i was like what
because yeah they're comedy
clubs so she took me up there and i there were you know the improv the comic
strip and catch the 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 i want to do uh uh some stand-up comedy yeah
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 zoo so he told me you gotta 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 nightclubs 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
would train you know they
go you go 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 for danger fields wasn't exclusively stand-up you know dangerous had the
singers and stand-ups and
all so they were yeah they still got the piano they haven't changed no no no so
what year did so then
i guess imagine as the supper club started to go away then your guys 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 know as old
people as old people's
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 was
mitzi opened a place
down in in pacific beach in 76 and moved over to into la jolla 77 then there
was a guy mike callie
opened up a place to laugh stopped down in newport peach and then mike lacy
which you've been down to
comedy magic down in her most beach in 78 they were the first three paying like
paying they'd bring
comics in from la and pay him a couple hundred bucks wow and then garvin's in
washington dc opened 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 emcee there
and 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 of 80. i remember going down there and i'm working with my
first wife carol efer 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 he's got a little it's clean and he'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 you ask whatever he asked
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 like oh yeah jesus
christ i hang up the
phone and go k