Stewart Lee at The King’s Theatre, Glasgow or — My First Ever Exposure to the Comic.

Having had this cold for the last few days I’ve forgot to mention that last week I finally became a fan of Stewart Lee!

It’s not that I never liked Stewart Lee to begin with but more the case that I’ve never been fully exposed to his stand up material in the first place (I vaguely recall catching some snippets of ‘Richard not Judy’ back in my student days but that’s been about it). So to sit down and watch two hours of a comedian I’ve heard is highly regarded at the King’s Theatre last week was the perfect introduction. And I loved it!

I knew Lee had me on his side when he told the audience they were in for “two hours of woke, left-wing comedy” and as someone who happily identifies with both of those, and who feels this sort of comedy is more important now than ever, I thought “Great!”.

Although I did find it ironic that I was sitting here literally the day after I had been banging on about the fact that ‘barely sentient bouncy castle in human form’ Joe Rogan had been moaning that wokeness was killing comedy and that there hadn’t been anything funny since ‘The Hangover’ (2009) because here was I, along with several hundred others, laughing away like crazy. “If only Joe Rogan was here!”, I thought to myself during the interval, “He’d probably love this even though, so far, Stewart Lee hadn’t jacked-off a monkey or punched anyone in the face simply for the LOLS.”

I also liked the targets Lee went after. I loved the fact he mocked Dave Chappelle for ‘punching down’ (he does and even if you don’t think he does we can still makes jokes about the fact he does) and that Jimmy Carr is completely lacking in compassion (also true, and if you don’t think compassion in a vitally important component of human interaction then you can go fuc… anyway, you get the idea).

But best of all I loved discovering that Stewart Lee is a big fan of one of my favourite musicians and that’s British saxophonist Evan Parker, someone I’ve been a massive fan of for years (full disclosure — Lee didn’t mention this during the gig and I only found this out through further research).

Indeed, there’s a striking similarity between the work of Evan Parker and Stewart Lee. For example — Parker’s saxophone solos operate according the principles of ‘melodic fission’ and ‘auditory streaming’. This is when a single melodic line can be heard as multiple lines (Parker refers to this himself as ‘psuedo-polyphony’). Lee achieves very much the same effect with his stand up where a single joke appears to contain multiple ‘clusters’ of gags, something further augmented by his use (again, much like Parker) of aggressive repetition. He might be telling one joke but it feels, and sounds, like many. This is a sign of a highly experienced performer with a sophisticated control of their craft. Either that or I’m talking bollocks… which I’m not.

Not that Lee’s set was perfect. After all, and by his own admission, taking an entire hour to tell one joke is maybe stretching it all a tad too far and he does seem to have the annoying habit of deconstructing and commenting on his own material as he goes along, almost as though he is constantly inserting bracketed comments on his own material for his own amusement (and let’s face it — what kind of annoying asshole does that?!).

But, all in all, it was one of the best, and most impressive, nights of stand up I’ve seen in years. Although I’m not too sure if it would have been Rogan’s cup of anti-scientific tea after all as woke, left-wing comedy that functions according to the principles of ‘melodic fission’ is slightly different from watching a monkey masturbate or a convicted rapist being paid money to punch someone in the face for the LOLS. Or maybe I’m just missing the subtle nuances of this all “comedy” that has now been “destroyed”.

(Photo of the room before gig started courtesy of A.C. Eales)