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Kip's Review in the Chicago Tribune
“Addotta seems to be a genuine HIPSTER — a man whose vision of life has always been askew...” Larry Cart Entertainment Writer |
Kip Addotta,
“One Funny Man!”
By Larry Cart
Entertainment Writer, Chicago Tribune
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Today almost every young stand-up comic wants to be thought of as both funny and hip if only because he or she knows that he is speaking to people who have come to believe that if something is both funny and hip, the act of laughing at it will make them hip, too.
But Kip Addotta doesn't play that game. Instead, like Lenny Bruce, Rodney Dangerfield, Steve Martin and several generations of musicians and siding salesmen, Addotta seems to be a genuine hipster a man whose vision of life was always askew, not a guy who has cooked up a set of attitudes that he or she thinks might be cute.
Actually Addotta is a couple of generations younger than any other hipster comics that come to mind. But he has all the traits the most crucial, for my taste, being the sense that everything he says arises from some reservoir of experiences which he is willing to share with the audience but which he also is determined to husband and protect.
That is, while Addotta knows that he is up there to sell jokes just as those salesmen knows that their job is to sell siding, and the dance band tenor saxophonist knows that before the night is out he's going to have to play 'Misty' he sells his jokes in such a way that he, and we know that he's selling them.
Now there's a hip way to do that, which is popularized by Steven Wright and is practiced each weeknight by David Letterman an ironically coy and cool distancing of ones self from the very idea of joke telling, not to mention the whole climate of show business.
But the hipster style, that Addotta embodies, is quite different. Hot rather than cool, it wholeheartedly embraces the greasy contradictions of the entertainers role―insisting that there is no way to forget that show business is still a business, no matter how much one might want to dance away from that uncomfortable fact.
So in the area of honesty Addotta has a running head start, and his graceful, rather deliberately paced and slightly sing song delivery adds to the air of conviction that helps him sell his stuff.
He is very funny and different. This is a funny man!
Make 'em laugh
Addotta: Being Funny Is Enough
By Amanda Cohen
Before there was thousands of comics standing in front of brick walls wearing T-shirts and spots jackets, talking about the difference between dogs and cats, trying desperately to fit in, there were just a few guys who went up and said funny stuff.Kip Addotta is one of those pioneers of modern stand-up comedy, and his style has been mimicked for twenty five years. He along side with Steve Martin, Richard Pryor and Redd Foxx, and recorded his first album. 'I Hope I'm Not, Out Of Line," in 1981. On it he talks about being a Gemini and the "little things in life" that make him mad, like garbage weigh more than groceries and people not making right turns at red lights after stopping.
"I can't tell you how many comedians have come up to me and said, 'I have that album," says Addotta.
The style of his act on that album id reflected in a generation of comedians, or at least the ones that were buying comedy albums and weren't trying to be Robin Williams. Addotta combines observational humor with classic story jokes that build to a punch line. There is no artificial attitude in his act.
His hand crafted, almost poetic material and studied delivery are honed for maximum effect using his full vocal range, to the extent that many lines quoted out of context don't work. He also writes "Jokes To Go" that anyone can tell, jokes whose fame has passed Addotta's
The most important thing about his show, Addotta says he learned from working with great showman that he met and studied on the way up. "People are not paying for lectures and morals, although some comics have taken that route and audiences have learned to expect abuse.
"When I approach people and they lean back in their chair to maintain some space from me I say 'Relax! Everything is going to be OK! We're here to have fun. I'm not here to pick on you or question your validity. That's not what I get paid for. Relax!
Addotta has appeared on "The Tonight Show" 32 times and spent four years as one of the challengers on "Make Me Laugh," the comedy game show. and now 12 years after his last performance in Pittsburgh he's returning for shows next week at the Funny Bone, Station Square.
All Addotta wants is to be funny. Laughter is so valuable and cleansing," he says. It's enough for me to be a funny guy. I don't have to be the guy in the priest's outfit, he's the Italian comic, there's the Korean comic, the Mexican comic stop it already."
As more comics jumped on to this crazy originality bandwagon, Addotta says he had to work to stay ahead of the trends.
"This has forced me to go on to spaces and places they don't want really to be, that are too uncomfortable for them to stand so they won't follow me there. It's a survival thing."
One of those uncomfortable places is puns, whose mastery Addotta demonstrates on his 1985 single "Wet Dream," the longest stream of fish puns known to man, and still a morning radio standard 10 years later. The follow-up in 1986, 'Life In The Slaw Lane" is as successful and features an equally lush garden of puns or calculated malapropos
Another uncomfortable place in which Addotta is at home is honesty. "As a comedian, I don't have to be correct. All I have to be is ridiculous and funny. Most comedians' fear of honesty translates into a fear of original and results in stock material and hack subject, and a general sameness among stand-ups, even those who purport to have an opinion.
Addotta believes most new comics are afraid to take risks. "Do I write a joke and go out there with my little testicles all risen up into my body and try a joke and see if it works, or do I try something that I've already heard the laughter on? The second choice is too often the one chosen."
The second choice is what created limiting trends in comedy.
Specialized and politically correct humor is boring, Addotta says. It's as entertaining as being dirty, for the shock value or being topical to get an easy laugh of recognition.
I still take chances, I still write material, because there's something funny about everything," Addotta says.
