Late Discovery

"The best things come to those who wait" is one of those cliches that usually just irks me. However, when it comes to artists, I think it's completely applicable. As I grow older, I find myself being turned on to new people all the time. These are eight of the most important artists I found out about in my twenties.

#8 & #7. Elton John and Billy Joel: Piano-Playing Genius Musicians

I'm sure I was exposed to Elton John and Billy Joel as a kid, or at the very least during adolescence, but it wasn't until I got old enough to really hear what they were singing about, coupled with their unbelievably brilliant piano playing that I truly appreciated them.

Elton especially has crawled right inside my psyche and I just find the tandem of Bernie Taupin's lyrics and his composition to be one of the most important pairings in the history of recorded music. Your Song is a narrative pop-ballad masterpiece that I think the world would be a worse place for not having heard, I truly believe that. (Of course it also holds an incredible place in my heart as it pertains to my marriage and my wife specifically)

Joel is able to craft these winding, detailed narratives into his songs and yet keep them from sounding too wordy. Scenes from an Italian Restaurant is the perfect example of his writing style. You pair that song with The Piano Man and you get a solid ten or twelve minutes of musical gold.

Before my twenties I don't think I thought it was possible for me to love a musician unless he played a guitar or at least an electric bass. I think finally "getting" Billy Joel and Elton John has opened up my own musical ability about a million-fold.

#6 & #5. Brilliantly Wielding The Written Word

In no way am I implying that Hunter and Hornby are alike in any way, shape or form; other than being authors. Which is why I linked them for this blog. The realization I came to in my twenties is that I get just as much pleasure and artistic satisfaction from putting words into prose as I do performing them on a stage, and this realization led me to try to find some literary influences that really resonated with me.

Finding Hornby, I will admit, never would have come about unless I'd seen the film High Fidelity. Being a ginormous fan-boy of John Cusack's I'd seen the film, and immediately I fell in love with the story. This led me to find the book that the movie was based upon, on a girlfriend-at-the-time's recommendation. I'm eternally grateful for that suggestion. Because the movie had been so faithfully (with the exception of moving its location to Chicago from London) transcribed from the pages of Hornby's novel I found myself immediately invested in it, and I was just blown away by the extra details and the way in which he allowed the main character, Rob Lydon to tell the narrative.

From there I devoured all of Hornby's other works, including his collection of album reviews, Songbook. This is one of my favorite Hornby works because the way he describes music makes the reader want to listen to the music right along with him; and gave me an incredible insight into how Hornby was able to craft Rob's character in High Fidelity.

My passion for all things Hunter Thompson again jumped-off from a film. Johnny Depp's portrayal of Hunter in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas again inspired me to find the source material. I am so grateful for having gone on that particular journey. What I found in Thompson's writing forever changed the way I myself wrote about what I observed.

Hunter absolutely had an agenda in whatever he wrote, but he didn't hide that agenda away. He put it on the table from the get-go, and wrote so passionately from that point of view that even if you disagreed with his views on a subject you could not argue against his emotional investment in his subjects. His vivid imagery and innate knack for bringing the reader into this Gonzo life-style he invented for himself endeared him not only to me, but to many more who life on that razor-thin edge between sanity, arrogance and true brilliance.

I'm not Hunter Thompson, nor would I ever claim to be of his caliber, but he's the kind of artist that forces me to be a better writer. Profane, urbane, sardonic, sarcastic, caustic, anti-heroic, cynical and yet simultaneously myopic and almost optimistic to a fault. All of these words can be used to describe the paradoxical nature of Hunter and his work.

If you haven't read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, you have not read Hunter Thompson, in my opinion. That book should be required reading for Journalism, Political-Science, Creative Writing, English, and Liberal Arts students across the board. It was the perfect platform for his style of writing. Was it a 100% unbiased and factual account of the '72 election cycle? No, definitely not. But it was some of the best political satire ever written, and it perfectly encapsulated the times; documenting the shortcomings of the Democratic party that allowed Nixon to be re-elected.

I cannot imagine what kind of writer I'd be if it weren't for Hunter and Nick's influence on me. Hornby taught me how to write characters that were real, and un-apologetically autobiographical. Hunter Thompson taught me how to write un-apologetically as myself and to not be afraid to expose myself completely regardless of my faults.

#4. Soul Coughing/Mike Doughty

This one is all thanks to David Pinson, my best friend, comedy-writing partner and all-around Mensch. I met David in 1998, at the age of 18. He was already an enormous Soul Coughing fan. At that time though, I was still very naive when it came to good musicality, and great lyricism.

Dave would play me Soul Coughing's work and it intrigue me, but it never quite broke through until Dave moved to L.A. I remember the night I fell in love with Soul Coughing, and in-turn Mike Doughty so very clearly. We were driving back to the apartment in the valley that Dave and our other great friend Ian McAlpine shared. We had been out drinking, and Dave put in Irresistible Bliss.

When the drums and bass kicked off with Super Bon Bon and collided in my booze-addled ears I immediately perked up. The energy of that track is the definition of infectious.

As we listened to the album, Dave played DJ, like he usually does in those situations and Soundtrack to Mary came on. I was entranced, and hooked from that moment on. I made Dave dig out this old VHS tape he had where someone had taken the music from El Oso and synced it up with old cartoons the next time I was with them.

Suddenly it all made sense. Everything Dave and been telling me about them rang out clearly and precisely, spelling out something I was obsessed in finding more of.

It was at that point that Dave started dropping Mike Doughty, Soul Coughing's front-man and lyricist's solo work on me. Smofe and Smang is a live-recorded Doughty collection that is a great place to see the genesis of what he's done since Soul Coughing broke up. His gift for the couplet and lyrical rhythm creation sets him into a class with artists like Beck to me.

Imagery is compelling within all of Doughty's work. And in recent years he's really opened up emotionally; well as much as he cares to of course. I cannot recommend Haughty Melodic enough to any fan of beautifully crafted pop music. Mr. Costello is another artist that really wasn't put into my universe until Dave introduced me to him. The continuing theme for Elvis Costello's influence in my life is his prowess with the written lyric, especially on My Aim is True and This Year's Model. Like Doughty and Beck, he is capable of telling stories, cramming words into poetry and singing them beautifully.

Costello to me is a musical genius. He sings beautifully, passionately and with true soul. He writes amazing melodies, and plays guitar expertly. He's one of those artists that I know I'll never reach as far as ability goes, but yet still he makes me want to pick up my guitar and play.

Radio, Radio, The Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes, Less than Zero, Pump it Up, and Watching The Detectives are five of the best songs written by anyone ever, in my opinion. The are eclectic in both lyrical content and musical arrangement and instrumentation.

I consider Costello a progenitor of both punk and new-wave as well. His snarling and confrontational stance in the early days bled through from his own material down into the masses, and his influence can be felt all over the place to this day.

#2. Subversive Comedic Brilliance

As a teenager, I remember seeing The State on MTV and being floored, thinking I had found my generations Saturday Night Live. Sadly for me that series was short-lived but it introduced me to three of the most personally inspirational comedic writers and performers that I would later push forever into my consciousness in my twenties: Michael Showalter, Michael Ian Black and David Wain.

Together they are a three-man comedy group known as Stella. These three, when performing together have a rhythm and timing that is dizzying at times. They are completely unafraid of being bizarre, and subversive. To someone like me, that spells a recipe for brilliance.

Often playing the "Odd-Man-Out" with each other, their "fights" are always centered around three stunted men and their egos. The characters that they have created blur the line so wonderfully that I'm sure there are some who watch them either on their all-too-short lived TV series or in concert and cannot tell just where the characters start and the actors stop.

On their own, the three serve as major influences on my comedic writing as well. All three have razor-sharp wit, which makes it so much more genius when they "play dumb" in their act, or as individuals. But they'd have to be extremely intelligent in order to so surgically dissect ignorance, ego-gone-awry and general human failure.

To boot, these three are amongst my favorite Twitterers. Follow them and you will not be disappointed, I guarantee it.

#1. A Wild and Crazy Guy

Nobody has been more influential on myself as a comedian than Steve Martin has been. I'm not old enough to have seen him on The Tonight Show With Johnny Carsonor with The Not Ready For Prime-time Players on SNL. The earliest memories I have him though are from those years; seeing old SNL re-runs on Nick at Nite.

I'm sure I'm not the only one to assume from those re-runs that Martin was actually a cast member and not the savvy host that was so great at what he did that he blended in with some of the greatest comedic minds of all time well enough to be mistaken for a regular cast member. Even as an eight or nine year old I knew Steve Martin was special. His shock-white hair made him stand out, and his characters and performance style put him in a category that few have managed to enter, in my opinion, "Unforgettable." Martin resonates in your soul hours after you see him perform.

My twenties found me colliding head-on with Martin's stand up works on his albums A Wild and Crazy Guy, Comedy Isn't Pretty and Let's Get Small. In fact Let's Get Small was a traditional way that Dave and I would end our nights of drinking and general debauchery. Nothing is funnier at 2am, I promise you that.

I can not claim that my own comedic style is exactly like Martin's. In fact, I work much more "blue" than Steve would. Though there was some absolute scatological, sexual and subversive humor in Steve's material...more so than you would think. But what Steve Martin inspired me to do is take that silly, stupid and inane thought I was thinking and just run with it. Be silly, be weird. Be obsequious, purple and clairvoyant.

This is not to sell his stuff short though. It was silly for a reason. He was turning the idea of "comedy" on its ear. The punchline was in the lack of a punchline sometimes. He was doing avaunt garde comedy, alt-comedy to put it into common parlance. There was just as much humor and laughter in the pauses, the silences, than there was when he was putting an arrow through his head and jumping up and down, pretending to be shocked by the microphone.

His autobiography, Born Standing Up, is a tale that every young, old and in between comic should read at least fifteen times. Steve Martin was the first stand-up comedian that gained Rock Star status, selling out arenas that were up until that point only the kind of venues that huge rock and roll acts could possibly fill. It gives the reader a very intimate portrait of what it took to make Steve Martin who he was and is.

That book was my final inspiration for getting me back out onto the stage, performing my own material. It's an encouraging read, which is a novelty in and of itself. Most comedians' biographies would be more likely to induce one to never set foot into a club again. Every umber-rich and successful comedian owes their lifeblood to Steve. He blazed a trail so wide that it gave so many others who'd never have been given the chance to succeed a path to travel with confidence.

Steve recently joined Twitter, and the on-line community is abuzz. He's already given us some of the best Tweets in the history of the site. Oh, and he's probably one of the greatest living banjo players on Earth...you know in case there wasn't enough to admire him for.