Crate Digging is our recurring feature where artists share favorite albums within a theme that all music fans should hear. In this edition, comedian, musician, and actor Adam Pally reveals 10 picks covering a wide range of music and comedy.
Adam Pally’s got a secret to tell me. “Look, comedians are evil,” he laughs. “Did you not know that? Comedians hate comedians.”
We’re nearly done going through the list of essential moments in music and comedy he’s come up with for a Consequence Crate-Digging, and I’ve asked him, in my naïveté, to explain an offhand comment he just made about comedians hating Andy Kaufman.
“Most comedians think every other comedian is terrible,” he says. “They think your material is not as smart as theirs. They think that you are not saying something about what needs to be said. The amount of comparison and competition between comedians is just like music. It’s just wild. We hate each other. None of us like each other. A lot of stand-ups do podcasts with another stand-up — and they hate each other. That’s just the way that comedy is.”
Still, there’s a lot of love in Pally’s voice as he talks about Kaufman and all the other artists listed below, folks he names as inspiration for his first HBO special, An Intimate Evening with Adam Pally. Said intimate evening consists of Pally — a familiar face from TV and film, with credits including Iron Man 3, Happy Endings, The Mindy Project, and the Sonic cinematic universe — performing cover songs for a live audience, intermingled with his own comedic asides.
The twist, though, is that Pally didn’t get the rights in advance to all of the songs he performed, adding some behind-the-scenes chaos and very funny moments. (In recorded conversations with a producer, Pally has some particularly choice things to say about Oasis.) It’s an hour that ultimately pays tribute to Pally’s family history — his parents were lounge singers — as well as his unique comedic sensibility, largely influenced by the below mix of documentaries, TV shows, traditional specials, and one impossible-to-find VHS tape.
Sitting in a studio at Gold-Diggers in Los Angeles, he comes up with the list below “in no particular order,” all the titles selected in tribute to his love of blending music and humor. These are not, he says, “necessarily all one or all the other,” in terms of music versus comedy. “Some may be both. But all, I think, you can find a little bit of in my special.”
An Intimate Evening with Adam Pally is streaming now on HBO Max.
Adam Sandler: 100% Fresh (2018)
Adam Sandler: 100% Fresh (Netflix)
I just love that special so much — the song at the end about [Chris] Farley… That was the first comedy special that I could show my children and watch together. [Pally has three kids with wife Daniella Liben.] And it was one of the first times that they understood what I did, through seeing that.
Stream Adam Sandler: 100% Fresh (2018) now on Netflix.
The Last Waltz (1978)
The Last Waltz (United Artists)
A long watch. [Laughs] There’s always good comedy in musical documentaries, but like, Bob Dylan — specifically his section… I mean, he’s wild. His face is painted white. He’s drugged out. It’s not a great set; there’s a lot of comedy there. And the way that [director Martin] Scorsese uses the camera — you hear someone, but you focus on another character… There’s the central question of like, we know the show’s going to go on, but we’re watching the show get made. It’s almost Muppet Show-esque.
Stream The Last Waltz (1978) now on Tubi or on VOD via Apple TV and Amazon.
The Muppet Show (1976-1981)
The Muppet Show is a huge inspiration on this special specifically, and on a lot of my comedy, because the whole point of The Muppet Show is meta. The whole point of The Muppet Show is, are we going to be able to get this show on television, even though you’re watching the show on television? And I loved that. I loved the idea that we’re peeking behind the curtain. I thought [The Muppets (2011)] was so good too, the way that they brought that kind of vibe to it. The term Muppet Show, to me, signifies meta, where you’re showing how the sausage is made — while you’re making the sausage.
Watch The Muppet Show (1976-1981) now on Disney+ or on VOD via Apple TV.
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