The Crosstown Traffic

Comedy and music make fantastic bedfellows. In case over 30 years of Saturday Night Live breaking up the laughs with blockbuster performances isn’t enough proof, I’d like to present Tuesday night’s Doug Stanhope show at the Village Tavern as exhibit A.

I’d steeled myself for another Robbie Fulks/Chow Nasty/Sunburned Hand of the Man/”insert-band-name-here” wafer-thin crowd and was shocked to see a fairly full room (150-175 people) when I arrived at the VT in time to witness the wacky, “cock”-filled exuberance of The Mattoid, who take a refreshingly un-serious approach to making a joyful noise (see exhibit B below).

If that picture doesn’t sell it, this winning Mattoid lyric might: “Crap your craps and fuck your fucks, it’s party time.” (Please, go to the Myspace page and listen to the song. It will all make sense.) The solid epicenter of The Mattoid is Ville Kiviniemi, who’s rockin’ a badass samurai triple (quadruple?) ponytail these days, and he’s played with a mile-long list of Nashville’s indielluminati (Lambchop’s William Tyler, multitalented producer Loney John Hutchins, etc.). He (along with drummer/singer Vanessa Scholle) was quite adept at engendering the aforementioned “party time” prior to Doug Stanhope’s stream-of-consciousness, slacker stand-up.

If you live here, you know about the fabled 5:1 girl-to-guy ratio in Chucktown. If you don’t live here, don’t worry: it’s not totally true. The real ratio is probably 55% to 45%. But that’s only relevant because the Doug Stanhope show was a freakin’ sausage party! I haven’t seen so many dudes and so few girls in a room together in Charleston since…well, ever. Maybe the fact that Stanhope used to be on The Man Show (in its last-gasp, Corolla- and Kimmel-free 2003 season) was part of it, or that he’s got a wee bit of a misogynist streak. But give me a comedian without an “-ist” streak and I’ll give you a nap.

Stanhope recently shaved the top middle part of his head, because, he explained, he’s planning to grow it out into a hillbilly mullet on the sides until it’s long enough to comb over (“I’m going to create the hairstyle that men spend thousands of dollars to avoid”), and his shabbiness only lent cred to his ribald stories and decidedly nonlinear narrative joke-telling. The Mt. Pleasant show was their first of the tour and Stanhope didn’t try to hide that he was still working out the kinks, telling the enthusiastic crowd that we were getting all the jokes before they were actually funny.

As people deposited shots on the stage for Stanhope, the fourth wall came down further and further until he had to take a smoke break outside and The Mattoid came back on. When Stanhope returned to the stage after The Mattoid’s hilarious, punky Eurotrash version of Lionel Richie’s “Hello”, he had a handful of yellow legal-pad paper in one hand and a beer in the other and picked through his notes for bits (“Did I do the dominatrix healthcare bit already?” He hadn’t.). He closed with a ripping good dirty sex joke and the crowd gave him a nice long standing O — which he deserved, unrehearsed bits or not. Hell, if he’s that hilarious without polish, why not let the scuffs show?

The music-comedy-music-comedy thing worked brilliantly — whether it was the pairing of The Mattoid and Doug Stanhope or just the natural order of things, I’m not sure. But I hope that Tuesday night’s success translates into the VT booking more comedians (preferably with awesome bands to sweeten the deal).

~sm

(Non-Charlestonians: Find out if Stanhope and The Mattoid are coming to cock — uh, rock your city here.)