Back in the 80s, during the standup boom, I lived in an area with multiple comedy clubs. So we saw just about everybody who came through. Besides the giants of standup like George Carlin, we also saw:
Howie Mandel
Richard Jeni (who was brilliant, but came to a sad end)
Amazing Jonathon
John Ferrentino (another magician, who enlisted me in doing a trick)
Jeff Dunham
Dennis Wolfberg (who was perhaps the best of them all)
Bob Nelson
… and many others
I’ve seen a lot. I would probably forget a bunch. I’ll try to put together a list.
Speechless?
So many people have said this that I wonder if he really did his best work on the Cosby Show. I remember him being very funny on that show. I’ve not seen his stand-up, and you know, for obvious reasons, never will.
Many of us would say his best work was in small clubs during the 1960s and the records made of it. I thought he was just a boring children’s show (Fat Albert) host before I stumbled upon his albums. As a 20-something during the run of The Cosby Show, I couldn’t have cared less about his post-nightclub work.
Robert Klein at the University of Utah. He was great, but it was painful – I think there were three people in the audience. I don’;t know why the turnout was so low.
Bill Cosby, also at the University of Utah, and before the revelations about him. He filled the big events hall
Steven Wright – at a small Boston comedy club. It was a surprise appearance, and I had a front row seat.
Peter Cook and Dudley Moore – on Broadway in their show Good Evening, which (I later learned) recycled a lot of their bits from Beyond the Fringe.
Wayland Flowers (and Madame) – at the lounge of a hotel/casino in Lake Tahoe
Marcel Marceau onstage at the Eastman Theater in Rochester, NY.
Lewis Black onstage in Boston.
John Oliver at a New Year’s Eve performance, also in Boston
Joan Rivers – but not as a comedy act. She was promoting her directorial debut, Rabbit Test in Rochester NY.
I’ve probably seen other famous comedians before they were famous, or who were better known for other things (I saw Meatloaf doing comedy skits as well as singing in The National Lampoon Show at MIT, in which he replaced some guy named John Belushi. This was before his albums came out.)
Does Art Buchwald count? Saw him at MIT, too.
Re: Cosby
I remember a mid-80s standup special he did with routines about cake for breakfast, his kid shaving his head, and others. Several of the jokes became gags on the Cosby show a few years later.
At the time I recall thinking it was funny enough, but really all in his delivery. At the time worth watching, but not on the level of the other HBO comedy specials from the likes of George Carlin and Eddie Murphy.
I decided not to include Garrison Keillor. Like Buchwald, he can be funny, but he is foremost a storyteller. Same for John Waters, come to think of it.
Greg Proops at a comedy club in Calgary. Very good in person.
Wayne Brady in Las Vegas. His show was part standup, and part improv involving members of the audience.
Tim Allen, also in Las Vegas. Fantastic delivery; it was almost like he was speaking to each audience member individually.
Ray Romano with David Spade as his opening act. Spade was good, but not as good as Romano, who was fantastic.
Howie Mandel long before anybody knew who he was. He was just another act on the bill. I spoke with him at the intermission; he was a nice guy.
And one more who comes to mind: our very own @RickJay , whose act I caught in Toronto, some years ago. Quite good!
Oh man! I had completely blanked on that year I spent going “Tiger Lily” every month in Los Angeles.
Bamford regularly performed (a lot of her stand-up that makes up her Lady Dynamite netflix series was workshopped there).
Brian Posehn, Steve Agee and Natasha Leggero were regulars there as well.
I was lucky enough to catch him live, too, in a small venue in Boise, Idaho. Complete with the arrow through the head and banjo. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard before or since. He is so gifted at comedy, but at many other things as well!
I don’t go to many comedy acts. The only other one I can recall is Louie Anderson, also at a small venue, in San Luis Obispo, California. Would have been in the late 80s, maybe? He was funny, but he also made me sad.
Rita Rudner in college - very funny.
Eddie Izzard - love, love, love.
Bill Bailey - really like the way he mixes music and comedy.
Bob Newhart - a nostalgia show, mainly his old material but great delivery and still plenty funny.
I also saw Steve Martin in concert with his banjo. Not a comedy show but he was still mighty funny in between songs. A very good musician as well.
The first comedian I saw was Bill Cosby. I was probably about 11 or 12, and my parents took my brother and me to a show at a Tahoe area casino. I remember him as funny, but enjoyed the opening act even more: Hines, Hines, and Dad. Greg and Maurice Hines combined with their father for a song, dance, and comedy act that was really fun.
Much later in life, I went to the La Jolla location of the Comedy Store fairly often, probably ca. 1981-82. The only comedian whose name I remember was Bruce “Babyman” Baum, and mostly because of one throwaway line he had. Baum asked, “Hey guys…don’t you hate it when a woman blows you so hard your asshole whistles?” My brother and I were sitting right in front of the stage, and my brother yelled, “NO!” Baum looked down at us with an expression that told us he never expected anybody to respond.
Other than Baum, the other comics were fun, but none so memorable that I recall them 40+ years later.
Perhaps it was an off night. I saw him in the early 80s and it was a good time. At about the mid-point of a 45 minute monologue he took out a cigar and as he was getting it going said offhandedly, “Finally found a summer camp that would take my kids…” then as the audience’s laughter was dying down someone, possibly a plant, yelled, “Where!?” redoubling the laughter.
By now the cigar was well lit so he rolled in his fingers as he examined it. “It’s closed, now…”
I have seen only four or five stand-up comedians:
George Carlin (in the early 90s.) As a fan since the 1960s, I was very disappointed. Too much trying out new stuff which he hadn’t tweaked enough.
Jay Leno (in the late 1980s or early 90s - pre Tonight Show.) He was hilarious.
Robert Klein (in the mid-1970s when he was at his hottest and very very funny.)
and…
Johnny Carson (in Las Vegas in the late 1970s.) He was great. And I wasn’t a huge fan at the time. Did an hour, took a break while a female singer performed, then came back and did a “Carnack” kind of thing for another 15 or 20 minutes. I gained a new respect for him as a standup comedian.
The only other notable comedian I remember seeing was Steve Landesberg. He played a local college. He was on a TV show ("Barney Miller’) at the time and had a dry sardonic wit. Unfortunately, he only had about 45 minutes of material, finally just said “That’s all I got” and left the stage. People were not happy. He was pretty successful as a standup though, and perhaps he was just having an off night.
One I wish I could have seen: Garry Shandling.
Here’s what I can remember off the top of my head, including a few comedy music shows and some “spoken word” shows that weren’t billed as comedy but were definitely comedic in nature;
I’ve seen Jake “the Snake” also. He’s not a very good comedian, but that was okay; he had lots of great stories from his time as a pro wrestler. Very nice and approachable too; he was happy to take time with all who wanted photos and autographs.
I thought it was a pretty funny show, although most of it revolved around some absolutely disgusting ribs that he’d been part of during his wrestling career (e.g. the time he tricked Rick Rude into swallowing his semen).
When I was 7 or 8 my dad took me to a WWF house show at the San Diego Sports Arena and as he was walking me back from the bathroom we passed a barricade in the hallway behind which Jake was leaning against the wall smoking. I said “Hi, Jake!” and he said hi back to me. When I saw his spoken word show I got to tell him how much that made my night as a little kid and he absolutely loved hearing it.
The first comedy show I saw was as a kid with my parents. It was Bill Cosby shortly before the tv show came out. I thought it was the funniest thing I had ever seen.
The others in the order I remember not the order I saw them:
Steven Wright
Rodney Dangerfield
Jim Jefferies
Bert Kreischer
Joel Mchale
Ben Bailey
Shane Gillis
Colin Quinn
Big Jay Oakerson
Dan Soder
Bob Kelly
Rich Vos
Stavros Halkias
Ron Bennington
Jim Breuer
Jay Mohr
Dave Attell
Jim Norton
Rich Vos
Mark Normand
Rocky Dale Davis
Sam Jay
Since those guys are both ‘Whose Line is it Anyway’ alums, this reminds me that we actually saw an improv show twice with Colin Mochrie, one of the founding members of ‘Whose Line’, and Brad Sherwood, who was kind of a ‘b’ list guest on ‘Whose Line’.
They did a lot of the same improv acts from ‘Whose Line’, and the first time we saw them it was hilarious. So when they came back to town, we talked them up to another couple we’re friends with and got them to go with us. And that second show, for whatever reason, just fell flat. Our friends were befuddled that we talked up how funny the show was. We were like, ya had to see the first show.
I saw Sam Kinison in 1987 with a very conservative, very Christian young lady as my date. She was laughing her ass off. He’s caught a lot of flak for his act and his material following his death, which I’ve never really understood considering what a lot of popular music and comedy has been like in that intervening period, but he was hands-down the funniest comedian I’ve ever seen. You really needed to see him live to understand how physical his act was.