Thursday, February 23, 2006
His father's bar proved to be a good training ground for the comic.
By GUY D'ASTOLFO
VINDICATOR ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
Lord Carrett, the comedian who looks like a Stray Cat, puts on a well-groomed show.
"I'm a revival act," he said in a phone interview from the Los Angeles airport. "A lot of comedians get up there kind of scruffy, but I'm more into the old-school, polished, show-biz bang-bang stuff."
He describes his humor as in the Groucho Marx or Henny Youngman vein.
So what's up with the rockabilly dress and demeanor? "It's who I am," said Carrett. "The Stray Cats [rock group] got popular in the early '80s, but I was already that. It's bigger than the Stray Cats -- it's a style that goes back to Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran."
Youngstowners might be familiar with Carrett from his semiregular Tuesday guest spots on "The Bob & amp; Tom Show," which airs every morning on WNCD-93 FM. They can catch him in person Friday and Saturday when he makes his first Youngstown appearance at the Funny Farm in Liberty.
The throwback style means Carrett doesn't often descend into vulgarity for laughs. "I push it to the limit," he said. "But I keep the impact without all the [bad] language."
His act, admittedly, is hard to describe. "It's interactive," he said. "I have a relationship with the audience -- I ride 'em hard as a group, not just one heckler at a time. That makes it a fair fight."
Exposure
Carrett has been getting a lot of exposure of late. He has released a CD entitled "Unsweetened," which has been getting airplay on XM satellite radio, and he's just come off a tour of Europe, where he was well-received.
But it's the "Bob & amp; Tom" effect that has given him the biggest boost.
"I'm a recognized name in 150 markets now," he said.
It's the talk-show style of "Bob & amp; Tom" that brings out the best in Carrett, who acknowledges being influenced by talk-show comedy king Johnny Carson.
"[Carson's] style rubbed off on me," he said. "If Carson told a joke that bombed, he'd size up the situation and turn it into a secondary joke that would get huge laughs." It's a problem-solving strategy that allows Carrett, like Carson, to succeed in any circumstance.
Started young
Carrett, who practically grew up in his father's bar, became a student of humor when very young.
"The bar was a good training ground," he said. "You couldn't insult people, but you could push it as far as you could get away with."
The setting became a classroom for the young student of comedy. In fact, it's where he learned the anatomy of a joke.
"A lot of people would try to tell jokes and mangle them," Carrett said. "I'd replay them in my head and think, 'The punch line didn't work because he left out this part.'"
His appreciation for universal humor also got its start in his childhood. He recalls having a revelation while watching "The Hollywood Squares" television show.
"They asked Jan Murray what the penalty for bigamy was and he said: 'Two mother-in-laws.' At 9 years old, I knew that was a nearly perfect joke -- that you could translate it into Japanese and people would laugh. The next day, I started trying to write jokes that were as universally funny."