A Quote by Joe Lycett
When I started stand-up, it was really just to have a go at alpha males essentially, there was no plan and there never has been really.
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I have this theory that alpha males are actually not alpha males. They're actually very scared - particularly scared of competition from a lot of men.
Alpha men are very turned on by the alpha woman, really high chemistry, really fun to work with, probably really fun to have affairs with, but there's not sustainable harmony in that lack of complement. There can only be one person in the driver's seat.
Stand-up is a real art form in itself and one that I really think to be good at you have to devote your entire life to. It's the really, really good ones that end up getting to do the things that I like to do: movies, TV shows, and stuff like that. It's a really hard gig and it just never called to me.
That's how it all started, when I met my wife. My music career, even though I started when I was 16, it never really started till I was like 30, when I started singing and writing my own songs, and that's when it really took off. But prior to that, I was just doing a bunch of covers.
It's funny, I don't really feel that nostalgic. I only recently started putting up some photos from some of the sessions I've done over the years and some of the Garbage sessions because my daughter, who's 10-years-old, when she was about 6 or 7 she was more curious about what I do. I have all these platinum records and stuff, they've all just been in boxes in storage for years but I started just digging through those things because I sort of want her to be aware of my past. I never really put the old recordings on and listen to them and go, "Oh that sounds great."
When I first started doing my stand-up act, I played the banjo, did comedy, magic tricks, juggled, read poetry. I stuck it all in. I didn't know you were supposed to just stand up and tell jokes. Essentially, that's what my act became: those five elements - except I dropped the poetry.
I started out in stand-up when I was 18, which is really masochistic, and I did it really till I started going in movies. I did it for about three years out in LA.
Wall Street is a huge issue. And it's controlling our lives today with this so-called election - we really have no choice. We're really just onlookers. The national surveillance state has not been debated by any candidates, Democratic or Republican. Our wars, our repeated wars - our new war in Syria has not been brought up because everyone agrees essentially that we have to continue doing what we're doing. And maybe even now go back to Libya.
It's really going to happen. I really won't ever go back to school. Not ever. I'll never be famous or leave anything worthwhile behind. I'll never go to college or have a job. I won't see my brother grow up. I won't travel, never earn money, never drive, never fall in love or leave home or get my own house. It's really, really true. A thought stabs up, growing from my toes and ripping through me, until it stifles everything else and becomes the only thing I'm thinking. It fills me up like a silent scream.
I never really watched much stand-up growing up. I just was not really that into it. But I can say I honestly fell in love with it the second I touched the microphone. It was like this weird thing where it's like, 'Oh, yeah, this is what I'm supposed to do.'
One of the things I've really realized over the past number of years is that you can't plan - you really don't know what's going to happen. All the plans I made for myself all turned out really differently in the end, so I just go with it.
It's never occurred to me - and I don't know what right mixture of upbringing this was - that my opinion wasn't as important as the alpha males or that I shouldn't try or that I wasn't the funniest one in the room.
I'm aware of the rift in the locker room. That's just alpha males and supreme athletes trying to share the spotlight.
The first time I did stand-up I was 17, and I was really a stand-up once I was 19 in New York, and now I'm 41, and I still feel like I haven't found myself onstage. Earlier in my career, I was really tight, really together, and knew who I was and I was confident.
I've always been a fan of the band setting. I've always been a believer in bands, and I've always been in bands. That's where my comfort zone is. So to stand outside of that, that was never my intention or goal. I never had the dream of, 'I'm gonna go into all these bands as a spring board for my solo work.' But life takes you on different journeys sometimes. I ended up playing a bunch of songs and some of them I really liked.
I wasn't a great improviser when I started there; I'm not really up on current events. I would always just mug, just try to get my laughs from making faces. So I decided to do a character who should never have become a comic - somebody you would see at the Comedy Store and go, "This person is never going to make it."
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