A Quote by Questlove
I do secret stand-up shows around New York. I announce and tweet this to nobody - I get onstage and I do a quick five minutes.
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I can't believe how much time has passed. 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.
I first did stand-up when I was 17, and then I passed out fliers for a comedy club (in New York City) and I got onstage whenever I could. And musical theater went out the window as soon as I started doing stand-up.
I wasn't so stupid that I didn't realize the implications of what they were saying. In my live work I was going for the quick thrill, rather than spending time concentrating on my voice. I figured I'd get on, make as many quick movement as possible, dance my ass off for five minutes, move into the insult portion of the evening, and then, at the end, create some kind of chaos until the 55 minutes were up.
I'm onstage for an hour.I do an hour of stand-up. Actually, I do 10 minutes standing up and 50 minutes sitting in a chair. Oh, occasionally, I stand up again to do a dance or put over a song. But mostly I sit down. A great invention, sitting down.
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'm living in L.A., which is hard to get around. I live way out in the suburbs, it's hard for me to get to town. You get five minutes here, then you gotta drive a half hour to the next one. New York was so much easier for standup because you could hit five clubs in a night. Just jump in a cab, pop. Boom, boom, boom. And you could walk to some of 'em, and work out stuff on the way. You can really get some more traction out there. You could work new material easier out there, I thought.
Other than friends and family, my favorite things are New York and stand-up. I love doing comedy in New York - I can do way more stand-up here than in Los Angeles.
I will say that, I, being a Jew, experience unease before I go onstage; and after I go onstage, and in general. But luckily the forty-five minutes to an hour that I'm onstage I usually forget everything else and I just press play.
If I have to do a red carpet, and there is a whole team, then it is an hour with the hair and make-up. But if I am just going out with friends, it is 15 minutes max in front of the mirror. A quick five minutes on my face, and I always wear my hair up.
I did 15 shows a week when I lived in New York. I did five shows on a Friday and seven shows on a Saturday. It was everything I did and it was my sole source of income.
I have makeup that I can do in 15 minutes, 10 minutes, or five minutes, depending on what I'm doing that day. On a day when I'm shooting, it's 15 minutes. Five minutes is when I'm running around that day, and it's no big deal.
... The Anarchists' [national] anthem is an international anthem that consists of 365 raspberries blown in very quick succession to the tune of Camptown Races. Nobody has to stand up for it, nobody has to listen to it, and, even better, nobody has to play it.
One belongs to New York instantly. One belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.
At the time, I was reading this Miles Davis book, and he was talking about coming to New York right after he was in high school. It kind of made me feel like, "Yeah." I didn't want to go to college; I wanted to do stand-up. And I figured, "What's the point of doing stand-up around DC? I'm always going to be under-appreciated there because I started there." I felt like I was strong enough and unique enough that I should give it a big leash to shine. New York was the best thing that ever happened to me as a comedian.
I get terrible butterflies. Before I go onstage, I'll have to freak out for five minutes. I scream. It seems to help!
Time can be dissected easily: an hour can be cut up in many ways. Fifteen minutes on this memo, a five-minute walk to another meeting, 30 minutes at that meeting and then 10 minutes debriefing. Oh, and maybe a quick phone call on the walk to that meeting. The busy are expert at dissection: that's how they make it all fit.
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