He may have disappointed fans by canceling his fourth performance at Madison Square Garden, but Louis C.K. made up for it by releasing a new stand-up special, “Live at The Comedy Store.”
C.K. hinted that a new special was imminent in his show cancellation email on Monday and promptly released an hour of new material on Tuesday afternoon, now available for download on his website for $5. He sent a link to download the special to his mailing list followed by a separate email with the subject line, “Very Long Email From Louis CK,” in which he details his journey through stand-up that lead to his sixth live special.
Not only does the email provide an excellent preface for watching the special, it’s also an honest description of how much work goes into crafting a successful comedy career, playing good and bad clubs and going on the road, skipping college and working shitty jobs (C.K. only regrets one of those things). He longs for legendary clubs from back in the day — “The independent and truly great rooms where you can still smell the cigarette smoke exhaled by Bill Hicks,” he writes — before ending with a love letter to The Comedy Store, “The most intimidating club of my life,” as he calls it. In addition to being a great room for stand-up, C.K. says it’s the only club in the country that never passed on him when he auditioned.
In a postscript, C.K. explains that while he realizes he probably didn’t have to cancel his would be-“Historic” MSG show, he doesn’t think Mayor Bill de Blasio got it wrong:
“I guess I didn’t have to cancel the show at MSG tonight. I don’t blame the mayor. That storm was a monster. We got lucky. When you consider the action taken by the government of entire north east, they got it right. To expect accuracy from each individual mayor is just too much. For us in New York and us in my house and us at MSG it was overblown. But if you expand that ‘us’ to everyone in the path is the storm, they were spot on. My family in Boston is part of us for me. So that’s how I look at it.”
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Okay I didn’t mean to write such a long thing about comedy clubs. The point is I prepared the material for this special on club stages. I went to the Cellar here in New York, and their new club, The Village Underground, about ten times a week with the occasional trip uptown to Gotham Comedy Club and “The Stand” on third avenue. I went out to LA to put that spin on it, working Largo, the Improv and finally the Comedy Store, hammering this stuff together in front of late night comedy club audiences. So it only seemed right to shoot it that way.
That’s all. I hope you enjoy the special. Please see the movie “Boyhood”. It’s a great piece of filmmmaking and even literature. And take your kids to see “Into The Woods” It teaches the greatest lesson you could teach a kid: If you are paying attention, life is very confusing.
Thanks.
Louis CK
