Author's Note:
This is a compilation of live recordings made at the Star Bar and other Atlanta comedy venues over the past few years. It collects some favorite bits and memorable sets in a range of moods and tempos. Even a failed musician-turned-comedian still likes to change keys. The recordings were made using a Zoom H2 digital audio recorder placed precariously above the Star Bar's constant cigarette fog on a tiny shelf near the disco ball. Laughter, like heat, tends to rise, so placing the recorder close to the ceiling allowed for a fuller crowd response.
And what a crowd response! Here, for all to hear, are the clinks and clanks of discarded beer bottles, the theatrical laughs of other Atlanta comics and the jaded mouth breathing and early-stage emphysema of Atlanta's disaffected youth. They're like hipster field recordings.
Comedy at the Star Bar began as a benefit for a local theatre company's trip to the New York Fringe Festival. Star Bar co-owner Jim Stacy was in the show and karaoke host Rotknee wanted desperately to do something other than host karaoke. Together, they did a relentlessly vulgar patter act and introduced some of the cast members who did short sets. I had just moved to the neighborhood and was asked to perform by mutual friends after years of doing stand-up at much quieter open mics.
Why would a painfully shy, bespectacled yokel agree to perform at a punk rock neo-honky-tonk? Convenience. I live a mile away. Plus, it was for art. And perhaps like original sin, something born of virtue can never fully cleanse itself of that taint. Rotknee and Jim soon started a weekly Monday night show they saw as the Vietnam of Atlanta comedy. Dark jokes and explicit imagery where allowed and even celebrated if they were funny. But boring, self-absorbed and sick-but-unfunny comics had to face the free-fire zone of Jim's live mic behind the bar. Yet amidst all the decadence, a comedy room where playful experiment, deadpan understatement and intellectual curiosity could get laughs somehow emerged. Scorch the earth and art will arise.
But for now, here's some of the sh**.
Brian Bannon
Atlanta, Georgia
August 2011
Liner Notes by Leonard Sharing:
Long after he was banished for life from his tiny tribe, the man known to them as Bologro Zin Fanoosh would remember the words his grandmother the oracle had used to send him on his journey. Bologro, whose name means “the pale one without a pelt”, had been revered by his people, who took his pallor as a sign of favor from above. His island tribe desired another sign, however, and taking a book in hand that had washed ashore, Bologro divined the date and time of a solar eclipse, their first in thirty years.
“Look to the heavens, and my Father will reveal to you his wrath!” Bologro cried, pointing skyward. And indeed the heavens darkened, thanks not to the moon but a small zeppelin that passed beneath the sun.
Bologro had forgotten to carry the “two”.
Shipping out on a bamboo raft in disgrace, Bologro survived for three weeks on a bag full of guavas and such moisture as he could glean from the seagulls who flew above him. And it was not until landing on the shores of Wisconsin that Bologro recognized that the water of the lake was safe for drinking. Shortly after, he acquired a reputation as a seer and truth-teller that followed him from lake to forest, from forest to outpost, from outpost to village, from village to city, and from city back to forest again: Many there are who fail to welcome a teller of truths.
And what you hold in your hand, dear listener, is the sole relic and testament of our friend, who in the city took the name of “Brian Bannon”. Upon adopting the native tongue of his new land, you see, he spoke the truth more firmly yet than he had among his tribe, whether the truth about rituals long buried in the Southern traditions or the truth about a bus schedule in his adopted city. And in bestowing upon “Brian” the key to the city, the Mayor clouted him over the head with it, summarily sentencing him to a train ride into oblivion. And as he mounted the steps to his final ride, before vanishing forever, he hearkened to the words of his dear grandmother the oracle, on the steps to the pier, those many moons ago:
“That last plank, Jimbo. It ain’t nailed down tight.”
Leonard Sharing is a freelance botanist, Civil Liberties plaintiff and critic-at-large for Beverage Digest.
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