Albert Brooks' first album, Comedy Minus One, is a mixture of live stand-up and prerecorded bits. It is available through Rhino Westwood, an offshoot of Rhino Records, on compact disc and tape.
Album Contents
1. Introduction
2. Memoirs Of An Opening Act - Part 1
3. What Do You Think Of The Record?
4. Memoirs Of An Opening Act - Part 2
5. Another Kooky Krazy Kall
6. Another Introduction And A Stereo Demonstration
7. Rewriting The National Anthem
8. Another Kooky Krazy Kall
9. Comedy Minus One
Liner Notes (from cd)
Albert Brooks made two albums as part of his natural progression to TV and film stardom. They were not stupendous commercial hits, but they entertained a lot of people very nicely. The one you're holding, the earlier of the pair, has the best comedy routine ever done about our National Anthem. It also has some very funny true-life tales about Albert's trials and tribulations as an opening act for Neil Diamond and for Richie Havens. The most unique thing about Comedy Minus One, though, is how it tweaked the boundaries of the comedy album as an art form. Most of it is in the normal comedy-album format--a comedian doing his thing live-to-tape in front of a nightclub audience. Every so often, though, Brooks slyly takes us outside the medium and back again, like a cartoonist who introduces a drawing of himself drawing the cartoon...like May Fleischer's wonderful old Out of the Inkwell movies. -Dr. Demento
If you can read these and listen to the album at the same time, you are indeed schizophrenic!
The standup comedy album is now an endangered species; videocassetes have rendered the artform all but obsolete.From the late 1950s to the late 1970s, however, the comedy album was a Big Thing in show biz. Say you're a rising young comic, circa 1965-70. You play some nightclubs, you play some better nightclubs, you do Ed Sullivan and the Tonight Show, you get lucky and do some movies, maybe a sitcom and you make some albums. Maybe a bunch of them. It was part of being a comedian. Woody Allen made standup comedy albums. So did Redd Foxx, Bob Newhart, Bill Cosby, Lily Tomlin, and Richard Pryor, to name just a few of the TV and cinema stars whose careers were accelerated by their LPs.
But that's not all. Years before computer technology made true interactive entertainment possible, Albert made kind of an interactive comedy record, the title track on this album. It's a comedy sketch featuring Albert, the immortal George Jessel, and.... you! Youget to play a wisecracking auto mechanic, in the accent of your choice, with Albert as your straight man and George helping to build the routine to a clever climax. The whole script is included, along with a few helpful hints on comic timing, etc. There's even an audience to laugh at your clever comebacks. You can even look in the mirror once in a while and admire your God-given talent and good looks. What a star you are!
Truth in Liner Notes Dept: Comedy Minus One was not a totally original concept. The title clearly derives from "Music Minus One" records, an educational staple since the days of 78s, providing instrumental accompaniments for student soloists to practice with. There was also a series of LPs in the early 1960s called Co-Star Records, which included scripts and the voices of such stars as Fernando Lamas, Vincent Price, and Paulette Goddard doing mostly serious dramatic scenes, with pauses for you, the costar, to do your lines. But Comedy Minus One, the first recording of this type done before an audience, remains the hippest and funniest specimen of the species.
Albert Brooks was born July 22, 1947, in Los Angeles. Comedy ran in the family. His father was Harry Einstein, whose character "Parkyakarkas" (say it aloud) became famous in the 1930s as a comedy foil for Eddie Cantor and Al Jolson on network radio. In the 1940s, Parky had his own series on NBC. Albert's brother Bob Einstein is also a comedian, a former regular on TV with The Smothers Brothers and Dick Van Dyke, and an Emmy-winning comedy writer and producer. Albert never used the family surname professionally (think about it), but he's done well in the family profession.
He worked his way up through the nightclub circuits to one appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, a great many on the Tonight Show, a regular slot on Dean Martin Presents, all those opening gigs for Neil Diamond, and, in 1973, the album you just purchased. Two years later Albert did another nice LP, A Star Is Bought, which was nominated for a Grammy. "A Daddy's Christmas," a touchingly funny and very rare non-LP novelty single, wrapped up Albert's recording career around that time.
His film career, however, was just beginning. In 1975, Brooks signed a unique deal to make a short film every week for NBC's Saturday Night. This audacious scheme was terminated after seven films, but Brooks soon graduated to the big screen with a part in Taxi Driver(1976). In 1979 he wrote, directed, and starred in the feature film Real Life. He did the same in Modern Romance (1981), Lost In America(1985), and Defending Your Life(1991). He's also appeared in Broadcast News, Private Benjamin, and Twilight Zone: The Movie, among others.
Albert Brooks' cinematic star continues to rise, even as history relegates his recording career to a mere footnote. Nonetheless, this remarkable album will change your perception of our Nation Anthem forever, to say nothing of comedians who open shows for singer-songwriters. Who knows, it might even launch your own acting career!
This album was originally issued as ABC #800, 11/73
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