ALBUM: Let’s Get Small (1977)
MVC Rating: 4.0/$
I got this record around my junior or senior year in high school in Athens, Ga., and Steve Martin was taking off.
From writing for sketches on TV on shows such as the Smothers Brothers, he moved quickly to being an on-air comedian. His Saturday Night Live appearances boosted audiences by the hundreds of thousands. His ‘Excuse Me’ and “We’re just two wild and crazy guys’ became national catch-phrases. Then he went to movies. Some good ones Father of the Bride, All of Me; Some not so good, Dead Men Don’t Wore Plaid, Pennies from Heaven.
The Jerk in 1979 is along with Airplane, Dumb and Dumber and Ace Ventura Pet Detective, among the best lowbrow comedies of an era, punctuated with pratfalls and bathos.
Martin, Robin Williams and especially Jim Carrey drew heavily on the physical comedy of Jerry Lewis. But took that style to new and different levels.
But Martin was no lowbrow draw. Inspired by his philosophy classes, Martin considered becoming a professor instead of an actor–comedian, Martin’s Wikipedia page says..
“It changed what I believe and what I think about everything. I majored in philosophy. Something about non-sequiturs appealed to me. In philosophy, I started studying logic and they were talking about cause and effect, and you start to realize, ‘Hey, there is no cause and effect! There is no logic! There is no anything!’ Then it gets real easy to write this stuff because all you have to do is twist everything hard—you twist the punch line, you twist the non-sequitur so hard away from the things that set it up.”
That comedy was on full display on the ‘Let’s Get Small’ album.
On ‘One way to leave your lover’ he starts a lament about his girlfriend whome he lost one tragic night. I feel responsible Martin tells the audience. We were at a party and she had too much to drink. She snatched the keys from my hands. I told her no don’t go but she wouldn’t listen.
Then Martin pauses and says: “So I shot her.”
The audience doesn’t know whether to laugh or what.
He waits and then adds: “With a shotgun.”
Martin is chuckling a sinister chuckle.
Non sequitur delivered.
The comedy is good and the record is inexpensive. Should have no trouble finding for under $5.
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