Comedian Joe Rogan reflects on his first stand-up performance and return to Boston, where he honed his comedy chops.
“August 27th, 1988, I got onstage at an open mic night with a goofy blazer on with rolled up sleeves and did my best impression of what I thought a stand-up comedian was,” Rogan writes on his blog. “It was awful, and it was nerve-racking, but after stumbling through 5 minutes of bad material and awkward delivery I was convinced that I found my calling in life. As I look back on that first time onstage, it’s very likely that was the most important day of my life. I even thought about p*ssying out a few times that day, but thankfully I went through with it, and now 20 years later I’m celebrating in Hollywood.”
“Boston is where I started doing stand up, and coming back here to perform after I celebrated my 20th year of performing was a real trip down memory lane,” he writes. “The weekend was also an interesting contrast of then and now, because after doing the historic Wilbur theater in Boston on Friday night, I did comedy at a Chinese restaurant in Chicopee.
Chicopee is way out in Western Massachussetts, and when I was starting out I did a ton of gigs out there. Back then, you could make a decent living as a comic in the Boston area, but you had to do a lot of driving, and much of what I did was way out in Western Mass. As a matter of fact, I did my first paid gig out that way when I opened for Lenny Clarke at a nightclub called Jay’s in Pittsfield.
I had barely been doing open mic nights for a year when I met Lenny, and he not only let me open for him, he also gave me some great advice and encouragement. Lenny had just come off of an HBO performance on a Rodney Dangerfield special and was a legend in the Boston stand up community, so the night was huge for me…I’ll also never forget all the other times I drove out there, doing comedy nights in local bars and restaurants. It was where I cut my teeth as a comic, so it was a real treat to go back with Joey Diaz and Ari Shaffir and do some old school road comedy.”
