I made a terrific find this week thanks, to my boys, and that led to a beautiful four minutes this afternoon. Andrew and Jeff have been telling me about the comedian Marc Maron who ran around with Sam Kinison back in the day and now has a podcast, called WTF. Every time I see Andrew he asks “have you listened to Marc Maron yet”. Well this week I finally did.
His podcasts are about an hour and a half long and feature about an hour interview with another comedian or maybe a musician (maybe other types of folks – haven’t discovered yet). He runs the podcast out of his garage. He isn’t a big name but found a way to make a living following his passion. His language is raw lots of f-word and s-word but if you put that aside you’ll hear some great, great interviews.
I’ve heard him interview Julia Sweeney, Kathy Griffin, Brian Regan, and Louie CK. He and Louie had been close friends in the past but fell away from another; over the course of the 2-part/2-hour interview they reconnected. Maron is very much in the now and is a good interviewer. With the long format he can really delve into details and you’ll hear some great great stories. I got a great sense of how my favorite comedian Brian Regan builds his comedy. I’ve loved Brian Regan for about five years now; he’s been a huge name for maybe a few years more than that but he has been at the comedy gig for 30 years!
You’ll also hear Marc work out his personal demons on air. His feelings and thoughts are right out there and he isn’t afraid to share his insecurities.
Today I listened to his interview with Billy Gibbons, guitarist for ZZ Top. Oh WOW! He was telling stories about hanging out with Jimmie Hendrix on tour and other crazy things. Then at the end of the interview he breaks out an acoustic guitar and plays a killer rendition of Billy the Kid with a bottleneck. You won’t hear that ANYwhere else! It blew me away. I was driving and had to pull over into a parking lot and replay the the last 4 minutes again.
Some of his podcasts are available on iTunes. I downloaded the WTF app for my iPhone. Or you can see it all on wtfpod.com. He has his latest 50 episodes available for free; he has published 565 podcasts as of this writing. I went all in and subscribed to the premium content: $8.99 for a year (yeah I got totally hooked). You can get one month for only $1.49 so you can take a quick listen to some older interviews of people you are interested in. You can also buy some selected episodes on iTunes
I’ve listened to these and recommend them (top 2 are available free as of January 7, 2015)
- 553 – Julia Sweeney
- 532 – Kathy Griffin
- 506 – Billy Gibbons
- 290 – Brian Regan
- 111 & 112 – Louis CK
My play list (with recommendations from Andrew)
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67 – Robin Williams
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75&76 – Carlos Mencia & others
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151 – Carl LaBove (Andrew says he hasn’t listened to this yet but this guy was super close to Sam Kinison)
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200 – Marc Maron (as told to Mike Birbiglia)
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349 – Michael Keaton
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358 – Mel Brooks
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359 – Carl Reiner
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402 – David Sedaris
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418 – Michael McKean
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427 – Monty Hall
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450 – Will Ferrel
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518 – Mike Myers
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523 – Bob Newheart
You won’t hear an artist just pushing his/her latest project and you won’t get just pre-packaged talk. Louis CK broke down crying talking about how having kids changed his life and made him a better comedian.
So give it a try and let me know what you think.
