In advance of Bridgetown we spoke with Founder Andy Wood. Here a few of the shows tonight and this weekend that he's most excited about:
Andy Kindler's Particular Show - w/ Neil Hamburger, Jonathan Katz and more.
(Friday, 8PM @ Norse Hall)
Neil Hamburger, when I was college back in 1997, my friend was like, 'you gotta hear this tape, this is insane.' And that's not pre-internet, but it's pre- the kind of internet we're used to. And it came, it wasn't even like an actual person. I assumed it was a tape that was made that then disappeared off the face of the earth or something. So it's just so cool to have him in person.
I remember seeing him open for Pinback in 2004 at the Bossanova. And it was so fucking great. When he's playing for his own people it's funny, but when he's playing for people that don't want him to be there it's the funniest. People wanted to see Pinback. They HATED him. And it was the best. He kept giving fake outs, like, 'alright, well now I'm very pleased to introduce to you... PINBACK'S EQUIPMENT!' People were booing him. It was amazing.
BAKED
(Thursday, 11PM @ Doug Fir & Friday, 7PM @ Doug Fir)
Selfishly, Baked is my current favorite show in Los Angeles. I'm super pumped it's coming up. It's a show with Brendan Small and Steve Agee and a live band. Comedians do their act and play songs.
Andy Kindler was a guitar player before he started comedy. He's a lead guitar player, he's astounding. Jonah Ray has been playing drums since he was a kid. He did a Metallica song at Baked that just blew my mind. And in the band behind Brendan and Steve are the guys who are in Deathclock with Brendan, and who play with Zappa Plays Zappa. They're all multi-instrument virtuosos. So I'm pretty pumped. And, full disclosure: I'm playing a song on it too, so I'm working pretty hard on that.
K-OLHE BUS EXTRAVAGANZA
(Saturday, 2PM, meets at Boogie's Burgers at 1:30PM)
Kurt is always looking to do those experiential shows. Like at L.A.'s Riot Festival he ended a show by having this Dixieland marching band march the entire crowd through downtown L.A. to the after-party. It was just delightful.
He has a multi-format podcast called the K-ohle. Sometimes it's about pets, sometimes he pretends to be an expert on boats, and sometimes he does something called "Get Lost," where he'll blindfold the guest and take them somewhere. So he's trying to do that for the entire audience. It's the first time he's attempted it, so we'll see how it goes.
I don't know if he can legally blindfold the guests without getting pulled over. But everyone's going to be going a location where there'll be surprises and will hopefully interesting.
7 MINUTES IN PURGATORY
(Saturday, 7PM @ Doug Fir)
7 Minutes in Purgatory is one of the must-see shows. Ian Abramson, a comic from Chicago who you're going to be seeing a lot more over the years, created this show where comics are sequestered backstage with noise-canceling headphones and a video camera on them and they're doing their act that's being broadcast to the audience so they get zero feedback from the audience. They have no idea if they're bombing. They're just doing comedy into the void. It's awesome though. It's so funny.
