Is the comedy the new rock’n’roll – or vice versa?

“Comedy is the new rock’n’roll!” This line, which attributed differently on a list of listing, a member of the comedy Store player and Janet Street porter, became a common currency in the nineties when the comedy with the comedy with Newman and Baddiel’s girls-wemble-gig in 1993 put an arena with Newman and Badthei.

It feels like a picturesque conversation in view of the arrival of Oasis’ Mega-Tour in Edinburgh this month, which panic was spent in the gazumping of their Fringe audience. But has the comedy returned to play his sexyer, better beloved Big Brother? Or are such differences in a cultural landscape from the 1990s not to be recognized?

There is certainly no lack of comedy/rock’n’roll Crossovers on the side, including the show from Friday evening, Tom Rosenthal’s show, whatever people say, that’s me. As the title suggests, the Rosenthal show compares and contrasts with the Arctic monkeys – especially how both felt trapped by public perceptions and expectations of their work. The comedian Marc Burrows meanwhile lists the Britpop Hour and celebrates the cultural moment, the oasis (and indeed Newman and Baddiel).

Burrows, a musician and musician as well as a comic, doubts that the claim “New Rock’n’roll” will keep water. “I don’t think there is a mighty boosh at the moment,” says Burrows. “You were the last comedians with a fandom in a music style. Apart from niche species, they do not find any people who wear the comedians-Merch these days. Except for TaskMaster, nothing has developed that the cult fandom of the Boosh had.”

Not that the cool era of comedy was limited to the 90s. “If it was the new rock’n’roll in 1994,” says Burrows, “What was it with the boys in 1984? Or in 1970 with Monty Python? Burrows has a point: What distinguishes the Newman and Baddiel era, less to do with dissidents, dissolving values than with great money, boast and mass attractiveness, since the alternative comics of the 80s were more punk than the successors 90s.

I contact Ollie Catchpole at Live Nation, “The World’s Wecing Live Entertainment Company”, which in the nineties – unimaginable – is considered as much as music. Catchpole programmed the theater and found that “Comedy for most regional event locations is the backbone of the income. The economy was only much more reliable [than music]. Therefore, more promoters like us moved into the comedy room. “Nowadays he says:” It is overwhelming how much demand can exist. The Ricky Gervaises, the Micky Flanagans – it’s a big, big business. And now it grows to Europe. “Between Great Britain, America and Australia and now the Arena tour for comedians can be effective.

So you have a live performance industry for the comedy to make cost-effective opportunities to make a lot of money. However, this does not lead to yesterday’s boosh style. (What at least lets us be grateful that Jimmy Carr T-shirts are only a few …) What’s going on? To be a catch pole, it’s about how the audience now consumes its culture. “The audience crosses. The tastes vary these days. There is no financial risk for no one to learn something new anymore. You don’t have to buy CD or spend £ 15 for an appearance. The young consumer has such a wide range of profiles on touching your fingers so that your interests are no longer developing.”

This is a phenomenon that promoted promoters and proactively encourage fans of Band A to explore Comedian B.’s work. “We use the word fluid a lot,” says Catchpole. “If we feel that fans say like a specific band, a DC fontaines, we know that they also like that they could like it too [comedian] Vittorio Angelone. It is now much healthier when it comes to growing comedy and getting names outside. “

The comedians I agree to: it is now easy to cultivate your own fan base – but it is more difficult to find a mass audience. Burrows says: “Punk came out of the Fanzine culture, this DIY contact point that comedy has not done in the past. But now -due to Tikkok, Instagram Reels, social media.” Catchpole says: “You will now get a more personal interaction with a comedian. And we receive digital influencers and Instagrammer who can go directly onto the stage.” But the culture of comedy and music online is unbalanced, says Burrows. “On YouTube, Spotify and Apple Music, the algorithm gives them the same bands, and Fandoms can build on these platforms. While streaming platforms gave to visual things. A sketch show does not find an audience on Netflix And Amazon And YouTube. There are no large mass communication points for comedians that you need to start a rock’n’roll level appeal. “

Culture and the media have fragmented, and the omnipresence of “milky, milky” and the mighty boosh – and indeed oasis – is more difficult to reach. (The success of the current Oasis resolutions, argues Burrow, is partly on a longing to be united by a monoculture.) But this phenomenon has changed the music as well as the comedy. If I now ask the comedians the question “New Rock’n’roll”, is a common answer: Is rock’n’roll still “rock’n’roll”? Do we still live in a world in which social tribes of music that they like identified and can span the world in the bathroom-ass bands and even suggest alternative values for the status quo?

In 2019 I wrote an article for this newspaper on the anniversary of the death of ur-rock’n’roll comedian Bill Hicks and asked younger comics what they thought of his work. Their aversion to his boasting, shooting from the hip comedy, was striking. So it is a surprise to hear from the musical comedy act Jazz Emu, also known as Archie Henderson, that the Stehup Hicks Stehup brand, which was once represented, is alive and good. “It still has a big train, this Naughty-Boy-Standup energy, in which you push things that you shouldn’t really say, especially on podcasts. Maybe it is now hidden behind more layers of irony. There are many” admission to me if you want games to be played. But there is an appetite. ” Burrows distances itself from the phenomenon and quotes the anti-wich acts that act under the comedy Unleashed Banner, as an example of what some could consider as rock’n’roll comedy. (It is worth noting that at the other end of the political spectrum of the most expensive opposition to President Trump in the comedy of South Park and Stephen Colbert.)

Like all of my respondents, Henderson believes that the comedy and music world are so changed that the “new rock’n’roll” ancestor is now becoming meaningless. If you want rock’n’roll-alike comedy, you can find them, he says and quotes as an example the “deliberately disturbing” collective Stamptown, led by the American import Zach Zuck. “The underground energy of being packed in a room late in the evening is also whether you see a band in a sweaty music restaurant or a comedy show at 1 a.m. when someone throws things anywhere in the room.” On the other hand, “I will see a rock legend that is fully committed to the theater of the cool and the audience works – I don’t think the comedy can do that”. A sense of humor necessarily bursts the bladder. “Comedy is always undermined by itself.”

But that’s okay – because far from the comedy that strives to be rock’n’roll, it is often the other way around these days. “Musicians who may have been cool and distant before,” says Henderson, “have to debate and sketch online now. It is a very effective way to get their music outside: Comedy is a good opportunity to play the algorithm. Sketch and sketch a little bit and outline. “

Finally, says Catchpole: “All of these things exist quite happily on today’s market. The comedy is stronger and healthier than ever. The fact that it is on the Edinburgh edge” (widely expressed panic, which is despite the panic), “still tickets next to Oasis shows that comedy not only compete with rock’n’nroll.

Burrows also harbors and staged his show via Britpop, while his most bullet supporters immediately appear down the street in a stadium. There is only one thing that Nigrt the current relationship from Comedy to Rock’n’roll, and that is that “Liam Gallagher is funnier than almost every comic,” he says. “There is a bit in my set where I read his tweets. And one of the existential crises that I have about what I do is that it will laugh bigger than anything else on my show.”