Sections

Maron caught between rock 'n' roll and an old place

"It's time to become perverse. It's time for white people to start talking about fucking again."

So says comedian Marc Maron. The former host of the now-cancelled Short Attention Span Theater, Maron, also featured in his own HBO special last fall, is coming to Ann Arbor to serve up some scrumdidliumptious comedy nuggets.

And will the white people Maron talks about want to hear the comedian discussing the aforementioned subject?

"If the crowd is all loosened up and they wanna talk about fucking, I'll talk about it (chuckle) ... I can use fucking in an encouraging way or in a hostile way. So, if they don't like me, I can talk about fucking angrily, but if they do like me, we can all embrace the fucking.

"It works either way but I don't rely on it as much as I used to," he continued. "I have enough material that I don't need to talk about it. It depends how I feel, where the set is leading me. I try to experiment as much as possible. Take the people on a little journey."

Maron's own little stroll through this world has taken him through plenty of cities in the past. That's what happens when you're a traveling entertainer. His itinerary has even brought him to Ann Arbor.

"Last time I was there I had a real good time," he said. "School wasn't even in last time I was there. It was towards the end of the summer, but I still thought it was a good city.

"Lot of good stores, lot of good restaurants. I remember hanging around with a bunch of kids who had nothing to do. Smoking cigarettes out in front of that deli place that's open real late. They were making the rounds, but I sort of stayed in one place. I didn't want to go to the pinball place."

Maron knows the slacker high school punks. He knows the city. He's virtually one of our classmates.

Perhaps more important to his business here, Maron also likes the Mainstreet performance space. "That room is real good. It's a good place to see comedy. It's like a great old comedy room in the sense that it's in a basement and the ceilings are so ..." You can find a transcendental joy in the man's inability to express what the ceilings do for him. Imagine what he can do underneath them.

Maron finds himself caught between generations -- he's not a baby boomer, but he's not a Generation X-tra, either. His comedy is slightly dark, and that's good. What all this is leading to is that he has found himself attached to something dubbed "alternative comedy."

"The alternative comedy idea is something some people started in Los Angeles, some friends of mine, Janeane Garofalo and Dana Gould. Basically, it's just trying to find audiences that are more like us. The regular comedy audience is, by and large, a lot of working people. None of the kids are coming out, none of the hipstrers are coming out, cuz it's just not that. `There's nothing hip about comedy.' Very few people go to comedy clubs between the ages of 25 and 35. Not what you'd call sophisticated or current. It's not their trip," Maron said.

"So we started to create different venues to get these people out, people more like ourselves," the comedian continued.

"We did stretch the comedy a little bit, not having to pander to people who didn't know where the hell we were coming from."

The comedian does have an inkling of why alternative comedy became needed, however. "I don't know why people started leaving comedy clubs, but I have a pretty good idea. Comedy started to suck."

That statement might strike a nerve in a few comedians working during the past several years. But a hard truth is always better than a soft lie.

This general attitude can be found in Maron's act. "I don't know if I'm bitter so much as I am cynical," the comedian said. "People seem to confuse the two, especially in show business. I was talking to my friend the other night, about if you are a critic of contemporary media culture, people will call you bitter if you are in that business."

But it would be an unfair accusation against Marc Maron. He may even have a show in development soon. "The idea I have is `The Late, Late Morning Show.' It's for people who get up around noon. It's a show about doing nothing and shirking your responsibilities."