About This Stuff

The first comedy recordings I remember were Steve Martin's albums from the 1970s. Even though the material was R-rated, everyone in my family loved Steve Martin, and we'd play his tapes in the car during road trips. In retrospect, all of the blue material sailed right over my head, and I just enjoyed the wild absurdities and silliness.

Other inspirations were the records produced by Monty Python, which were (and are) terrific uses of the medium, and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams. Oh, and I suppose a bit of Firesign Theater during the college years.

I also owe something of a debt to Orson Welles, the Mercury Theater, and their Halloween 1938 recording of "The War of the Worlds." And, most recently, Jack Benny. I bought a pack of tapes a year or two ago of Benny's radio show, and it was terrific stuff. There was this weird conceit to the show, which was about Jack Benny the radio star, who had a show every week, but the actual radio show was about the daily life of Jack Benny during the week leading up to doing the radio show, and so you never actually heard the show itself. I'm not sure I've explained that well enough, but that's how far-out it was. So you'd get singers dropping by Jack Benny's house to say, "Hey Mr. Benny, here's the song I'm thinking of doing on your show next week..." and then they'd sing it, to see whether he would approve it for the show. Except this was the show, only it wasn't the show, not in the world of the show. Weird! Brilliant!

We need more radio plays in this day and age. Some friends of mine recently started talking seriously about doing one, and I hope we follow through, because I've always wanted to do radio comedy.

---jrw 09-25-03