Open mic experiences

[KevinLee]

Gene, you're a total d-bag.

[Gene George]

Gene, you're a total d-bag.

See! Everyone is AWESOME to me!

[KevinLee]

haha

[pauliophonic]

Actually, a group of my friends and I kind of had an open mic in my friend's living room. None of them are serious about doing comedy.

http://www.vimeo.com/812853

Does that count?

[Siggers]

I am, Pumped for tomorrow, the host said he will give me five minutes instead of ten. I am still very happy, i am glad i will be testing out my New stuff. I am expecting maybe the first joke get a few giggles probably none. But it will expand as the jokes go more and more. Well that is what i am hoping for.

It will be neat to test out my theory on something.

[TJ Amick]

The last open mic I went to only had one other comic: A local pan handeler who thought that is give me a quarter jokes would translate well to the stage.

On top of his jokes not making a lick of sense ("A boy was talking to a leprichan, then he was talking to his friends and told him he was talking to a leprichan. 'how old are you?' '18.' '18 and you still believe in leprichans?!?!') his act was full of "but seriously, folks" and "i'm just kidding"'s.

He alientated the entire room and killed any hope I had of doing a decent set. I guess I could have tried to win the crowd over, but it was more of a music open mic, so i decided that if I was gonna bomb, I should bomb like a pro.

Most of my set was improvised "what's the deal with's" and lines from the crackheads set.

fun time.

Here's video of my set from a few months ago.

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[Phil]

Awesome thread guys! Thanks for sharing all your experiences and all the honesty!

[NRGlaser]

I think the most important thing is to get on stage, blah blah blah and all that. BPW, I live in probably a worse place for comedy than upstate NY and that is Lawrence, KS. Fortunately there are a lot of students so sometimes you can find interested people. My friend and I went to a Spoken Word/Poetry open mic night this summer and that was my first open mic (though I had performed a couple times before a long time ago).

<embed src="http://www.veoh.com/veohplayer.swf?permalinkId=v14895826dFSEqebq&id=an onymous&player=videodetailsembedded&affiliateId=&v ideoAutoPlay=0" allowFullScreen="true" width="540" height="438" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"></embed><br/><a href="http://www.veoh.com/">Online Videos by Veoh.com</a>

Now the club has given my friend a comedy showcase where I will be performing next month. That's how you get it going.
Now, what am I saying to you?

I used to live in Lawrence and did comedy at this exact same poetry/spoken word show at the Jazz Haus one Wednesday night. It was rough, but fun. It was the only place to do comedy in Lawrence at the time. It's good to hear that you're starting a room there. Do you do the open mics in Kansas City at all? That's where I used to go. Stanford and Sons... and I think now there's another club. KC has a good scene. A lot of good comics. Check it out if you haven't already.

[hobozero]

I have yet to take my act to Kansas City yet. I knew some people who used to do the open mic at the Brick, but I don't know if the Brick still does that because my friends moved on. Stanford and Sons does have open mic, but I seem to remember hearing that it's one of those places you have to pay to get onstage. Anyway the standup stuff has to be a pretty minor hobby right now because of other obligations, but I am excited to perform whenever I can.

[Gene George]

Actually, a group of my friends and I kind of had an open mic in my friend's living room. None of them are serious about doing comedy.

http://www.vimeo.com/812853

Does that count?

It has a brick wall, so, yes.

[crazysheet]

("A boy was talking to a leprichan, then he was talking to his friends and told him he was talking to a leprichan. 'how old are you?' '18.' '18 and you still believe in leprichans?!?!')

The joke is that the panhandler and, presumably his audience, is amazed at the Boy's crazy belief in leprichans. The mere surprise that there is such a boy out there who is actually believing in leprichans at this very moment is the punchline.

Well, it made sense to me, anyway.

[Joe McAdam]

is stanford & sons at the legends now? there are a couple more clubs like famous johnny's and the improv. i really never got into the kansas city club scene, i always felt like kind of an outsider. i was sort of anti social. but also they expect you to either bring people or pay to get onstage sometimes. it's not really in the club's best interest to have an open mic, i guess.

but the brick is still running on wednesday nights, they don't always have amazing crowds there, you'll get a table of nurses or a softball team, but sometimes they have a packed house, and there will always be other comics there.

NRGlaser, you're Nikki right? It's great to see someone from Kansas City have success out west, keep up the good work.

[JPSpaulding]

The last open mic I went to only had one other comic: A local pan handeler who thought that is give me a quarter jokes would translate well to the stage.

On top of his jokes not making a lick of sense ("A boy was talking to a leprichan, then he was talking to his friends and told him he was talking to a leprichan. 'how old are you?' '18.' '18 and you still believe in leprichans?!?!') his act was full of "but seriously, folks" and "i'm just kidding"'s.

He alientated the entire room and killed any hope I had of doing a decent set. I guess I could have tried to win the crowd over, but it was more of a music open mic, so i decided that if I was gonna bomb, I should bomb like a pro.

Most of my set was improvised "what's the deal with's" and lines from the crackheads set.

fun time.



Here's video of my set from a few months ago.

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I think your funny TJ, thank you for staying in Pennsylvania...

[Brian J.]

At the last few open mics I've been to, I've been holding back my better material because I feel like it's good already and doesn't need to be tested on an audience.

I was just wondering if you guys do that. The reason I've been holding back is because I've noticed theft and I don't want good jokes to be taken.

For example, I've seen three guys do a joke about getting road head and the punchline is that the girl is the one driving while giving head.

[ChrisCubasATX]

At the last few open mics I've been to, I've been holding back my better material because I feel like it's good already and doesn't need to be tested on an audience.

I was just wondering if you guys do that. The reason I've been holding back is because I've noticed theft and I don't want good jokes to be taken.

For example, I've seen three guys do a joke about getting road head and the punchline is that the girl is the one driving while giving head.

Personally, I never know that a joke is good until I've tested it on an audience.

[st.raw]

that doesn't sound like theft, just lazy writing.

[Hated Milk Machine]

At the last few open mics I've been to, I've been holding back my better material because I feel like it's good already and doesn't need to be tested on an audience.

I was just wondering if you guys do that. The reason I've been holding back is because I've noticed theft and I don't want good jokes to be taken.

This is a really, really, really bad plan. You're going to have to tell those jokes eventually if you want them to get better.

[mezmorized]

This kind of pertains to the testing material. I think I remember Carlin saying if you are wondering if you should axe a joke or keep doing it, try it out three times. If it doesn't hit any of the three times it probably won't work any other time. I don't think he was trying to discourage anyone from working on a joke, but it's a good rule of thumb to try something out 3 times and if it doesn't work any of those times to take it back and work on it some more.

Also don't hold back BrianJ. You're putting to much emphasis on the jokes your not telling, thinking these are already gold. A joke is not funny until it's said and it gets a laugh. Before that you can't say for sure. It's all circumstantial, so there's no such thing as perfect material that 100% will always get a laugh. Trust me, I had that line of thinking a week ago and I decided to do it on stage and I ended up eating silence for 5 minutes.

Don't worry about joke stealing. If they steal jokes, then confront them. If you're like me and you're a pussy, just do a new joke or don't perform where they perform. The best remedy I would think to making a joke un-steal-able is to work on it and perfect it to the point where only you would be able to tell it the right way to get a laugh.

Sidenote: I remember Patton saying something about having a hot pocket joke, but didn't perform it because Gaffigan did a joke about hot pockets that he thought was better, so he just stepped aside with that topic.

[GymShoes]

I've done too many open mics to count at this point, but the best experience I've had is running/hosting an open mic. I host one in Cleveland every week at a coffee shop and it's helped me develop in a big way because every week I try some new stuff, but I don't feel any pressure to be funny. Once you don't feel you have to impress anyone, you can have a lot more fun with it, which makes you more comfortable, which makes you more funny. If you're doing that every week, you get conditioned to being indifferent.

So that's my advice. Learn how to stop caring.

And as far as open mic experiences go, I'll share with you my worst one. I was doing an "urban" open mic in here in Cleveland (urban means black!) and I was on unemployment at the time. I had only been doing comedy for like eight months so I still had a lot of shitty habits, and I made the mistake of asking the audience a question to set up one of my jokes. I was about to talk about unemployment and I said to the audience "so I'm unemployed, anyone else here unemployed"

Then someone in the audience, in the most stereotypical, intimidating, black guy voice said "We all unemployed Muthafucka!"

I made a lame attempt break the tension and finish the joke. Not surprisingly, that didn't work. I said "that's my time", got off stage, and left.

[CaptainBreakfast]

Learn how to stop caring.

Yes. Yes yes yes yes yes yes. Egg-zactly.