Joe Rogan Experience Review podcast - View JRE review of 1257 with Steve Sweeney

Episode Date: March 6, 2019

Steve is a very old friend of Joe’s and was one of the headliners in Boston when Joe started out in his stand up career. These conversations for me are some of the best podcast as they give you a very unique insight into the world of stand up comedy. There is also a really good connection these two have knowing each other for so long. Make sure to check  it out.   Enjoy my review folks! Please email me with any suggestions and questions for future Reviews: [e-mail]

Hello and welcome to another episode of the JRE Review. This week I'm reviewing episode 1257 with Steve Sweeney. Steve Sweeney is a very old friend of Joe's. He's one of the guys that when Joe was starting out in Boston in the late 80s in comedy, stand-up comedy, Steve was one of those guys that already put a lot of time in and was already crushing it. It was already doing great work. And, you know, dare I say, mentor to Joe, maybe.

I mean, definitely an inspiration. You hear it in this conversation and it's something that Steve doesn't really pay a lot of attention to. He doesn't necessarily believe that he was this huge inspiration, but I think he's flattered by it and it definitely comes along in this conversation, so I really enjoyed it. But anyway, let's start the review. Welcome to the Joe Rogan Experience Room View! Where each week I review every single episode of the Joe Rogan Experience. What more do you want?

So yeah, Boston in the late 80s for comedy, stand up comedy. That was a time. I mean, it isn't like it is today. With stand up comedy, there's a huge scene in mean, it isn't like it is today. It was stand-up comedy. There's a huge scene in LA, a huge scene in New York, and you know, it was a different beast from what I understand in Boston. And you know, you really developed like a unique type of act out there, and it's where Joe spent a lot of time. So when he's talking to Steve about the early days and about who was out there and what kind of damage people were doing, it's really impressive.

Just to know that anybody survived that time and must have been so brutal. You hear about Boston's audience as just being a different place too. They were completely unforgiving. You know, Joe always talks about it. It's a cold environment. They don't have the patience to put up with people that aren't going to be funny and they're going to let you know about it. And that's going to build a thick skin.

It's definitely going to thin out the hood and get rid of guys that are just not really not going to be tough enough. One thing that Steve said is advice for young comics, don't ever work a place that's named after the guy, right? I don't, he doesn't really explain too much why it is, I think just because there's like such an ego hit there, you know, like if it's like Joe's laugh house or something like don't, don't work that. It's going to be a nightmare.

The guy is going to be an idiot. But he also talks about how working clubs just kind of sucks. And he's saying it even today. Joe didn't really agree with that, but I think what Steve is really getting at is just at the end of the day when you're working these smaller clubs, if people didn't specifically go for you, like if you're on tour as a stand-up, you're just going around the country with your opener, someone else, the people that come out to see you are coming specifically to see you. They know your comedy a little bit, they know your style, they're far more likely to laugh,

you know, they're going to give you a bit of energy, they're going to go. They don't know you, then you've got to kind of just win them over with the solid set. And even at best, your style just may not fit whoever that crowd is. So it's a little tricky. There's certain comedians do better at that. Somebody like Gaffigan is always going to do well because he's not an insulting comic. He doesn't use bad language. He's got a better chance of winning over more people and then certain types of people Like maybe one liner like joke writers that are just do one liner's or an Anthony Jezzelnack that does really kind of dark humor

There's always gonna be a huge group of people out there that don't appreciate it, right? Even though the comedy is superb and very clever and very unique, you know, you're just not going to win some people over. And he gives that example when he's talking about working cruise ships, too. There's a lot of shitty jobs out there for stand-ups You know, you could end up in a Chinese restaurant doing some gigs where most of the audience doesn't even speak English. And you can end up on a cruise line where you've got to be as clean as possible. He talks about getting fired from a cruise line job for some Mitt Romney joke that he had about being a Mormon where actually his dab was calling him a moron. I thought that was quite funny. That's a good joke. It's a

little cheesy, but to get fired from that seems a bit harsh. My question would have been if you get fired on a cruise ship, what do you do? I mean, they don't exactly push you overboard. You just get to hang out for free then. I don't know. I don't know. I think being on a cruise ship wouldn't be the worst experience. Maybe doing stand up or any entertainment on the cruise ship be a pain in the ass, but at least you only have to do look an hour, then you can just hang out all day. It gets depends where the damn thing's going. They get into the usual boxing talk, right?

Who's the greatest? Joe just kind of like wraps around to this every now and again. I like it. It's always a good conversation. You know, a lot of it's samey, but it's also not. And I'm a big MMA fan. I haven't been for a long time. My knowledge of boxing in the past is not huge. So I always get something out of it. And it's cool for me because I like to go back and watch all the fights, like if anybody suggests that something was a great fight or this happened or that happened, they talk about a lot of

cheaters in boxing and how kind of cheaters have kind of worked their way into whether it's putting stuff on their gloves to like make the other fight to go blind for a little bit or even toughening up the gloves so that they're more solid, like moving the padding out of the way. And Joe has great examples of this because his boxing knowledge is so high. I mean, it's fascinating to think of the cheap shit that people get up to in order to win, but fuck it, there's a lot of pressure on those things, people want to win, you know. Getting back into the comedy talk, Joe talks quite a bit about how he thought he'd never get any good at comedy. And of course what he was doing back in the late 80s when he was very young was comparing himself to some of these greats, people like Steve, and just the idea

that he could ever perform at that level seems so far out, and there's so many nights of struggling that it was just never going to be possible. And I think even both of them reiterated the idea that the goal was to never get rich, or really even to never see it, not necessarily see it as a job, as much as just being able to pay your bills. If you could just pay your bills and do comedy, that was really the goal. And I mean, to be honest, that's the goal today. I mean, I don't think people, you'd be even more nuts than a regular comedian if you got into it thinking, oh, I'm going to get rich from this. Can happen but it doesn't happen very often and it takes a long, long time. Another thing they talk about is doing

comedy kind of fucked up. So back in the day, canneson, a lot of coke, even Steve tells the story about doing a bunch of blow. I mean people, you can't really get fucked up. I guess you could get really stoned if you could hold it together, but you can't get drunk. And doing a bunch of coke would be a nightmare because all your timing would be off, you'd be jittery, you'd be a mess, the crowd would know you, something's weird, and it's a fine line. Again, that's why it's so nasty. If you could just get drunk to ease your nerves and then still do comedy well, trust me, almost every comedian would be an alcoholic because it's hard enough to get up there and get comfortable and the nerves and everything that you've got to deal with. If getting drunk was a

way to make it work, everyone would do it. But sadly, it's not even the answer. Like you can't even use that as a way to get through this. I once did an open mic at this Irish pub, and it was so brutal because they have this guy open for us. So even at open mics, sometimes they either pay somebody to come in and do like 10 minutes just to kind of open it up. Somebody that's usually a little better than an open mic, they do maybe 10 minutes or 15, whereas the open mic is maybe get five minutes, and the idea is that they're a little better. They kind of get the crowd warmed up. Everyone's having a little bit of fun. Adds just some legitimacy to the show because open mics are so bad as it is. Well, this fucking guy came in. He immediately opened up with the fact that he was drunk.

He was like, I'm drunk. I've been drinking and everyone's just looking at each other. Like, are you fucking kidding me? I mean, he sounded drunk. He starts talking about how he's a crack baby. Well, you know, that's unfortunate for him, but I mean, with the right jokes, that could be a funny bit.

It wasn't funny at all. It was just the fact that he was a crack baby and he didn't know who his parents are. And I'm just like, okay, that's really depressing and not funny at all. Then he said, hey, you could be where I am one day if you work hard enough. And I'm like, what? Opening an open mic? I'm like chill out, bro. And then if he couldn't depress everybody enough, he turned to the entire crowd, which was mostly made up of other comedians. That's how open mics work.

And he said, none of you are gonna make it. None of you. And he goes, I'm just saying statistically. And I was like, there'd better be a funny fucking joke at the end of this. Otherwise, someone's gonna hit this dude with a chair. And it wasn't, it wasn't funny. He just depressed everyone and the whole night was a complete disaster because the

entire crowd was just done. People are leaving in the middle of his set. It was so brutal. And this is just one of a few experiences of open mics that I know of. So when I hear from these guys, you know, how it works and what they go through and you know, obviously someone works and what they go through and, you know, obviously someone like Joe and Steve have a ton of experience. It's really fascinating to hear the similarities. Steve now talks about Harry Soba and he's been Soba for a long time, probably because it's doing nothing for his stand-up and making things worse, being messed up and whatever drugs

that he did. And what's really cool is tonight, so it's Tuesday the 5th right now, Joe invited him to the improv, the Hollywood improv. So if you are in the LA area and you want to see Rogan perform, you never have seen him perform, go tonight and go watch him. You know, this podcast comes out at about three. So if you listen to it quick quick enough you got a bit of time But he's inviting Steve. I'm Steve's gonna do a set. So that's pretty cool. I didn't know about this guy before man

I might head up tonight and watch this You know it's it's just it's gonna be cool to watch him and see what he's made of and and Yeah, go from there anyway. Thanks a lot for listening guys. I really appreciate it. Have a nice day, poops. you