WTF is the Marc Maron Podcast?

Yes, it is. WTF is a podcast show in which American comedy veteran Marc Maron conducts interviews with lots of different comedians and relevant people on the scene, as well as some other characters of honorable mention.

If you are a big comedy nerd and interesting in all of the inner workings of it, then this is the podcast for you, it's a bit like getting a trade magazine pumped directly into your ears. The interviews cover lots of different aspects of the lives of the comics, including, as most interviews would, the in-depth story of how they got started on the scene.

It's incredibly interesting to a lot of people, to learn how the famous acts that we know today managed to climb to that level. A good element that the show brings to these stories is that no parts are ever sensationalised because of Marc's informal style, so all of the stories consist mainly of guys who hung around enough, doing work where they can until they got a break or got seen by someone of importance. And it's this hanging around where they meet the entire community of stand ups to which Marc Maron has been a long running member. The show made it clearer to me what a community amateur/pro comedians form, seeing each other as they would in different venues and green rooms all over the city or country.

Marc here managing to look spookily like Van Pelt

Each podcast is packed with enough jokes, laughter and interesting insight to keep you hooked for the run time of just over an hour, and not a moment of it seems to be wasted with filler as it seems to be an hour or so of pertinent information. The aspect of the show that best displays Marc's nuanced skill as an interviewer is the way that it seamlessly blends amusing anecdotes or jokes with tragic stories about the hardships that many of these comedians have suffered - whether it's bereavement or substance abuse or serious relationship trouble. Now, most interviews will try to cover these different areas to make a diverse piece, maybe even thinking, "hey, if i can get them to cry i might win an Emmy" but the usual artificial atmosphere is not present on WTF and these shows sound much more like a deep conversation between old friends. Most other interviews switch so mechanically to 'now I'm going to ask you about a sad thing' question that you can almost hear an audible clunk. But they seem to flow in as smoothly as they flow out on WTF, helped largely in part by Marc's self reflective style. He would be the first to admit that he has and has had a few problems in his life, and isn't afraid of turning the subject to himself, making a joke and alleviating the heavy atmosphere when we've learned about the hardship and he doesn't break stride doing it.

It can take a little bit of time to get used to Marc's voice itself, and without sounding too English about this, it's loud with a typically American brashness. But this is something of an off-putting illusion when you learn more about his various neurosis and the empathetic way he conducts interviews. It was particularly noticeable to me, when he interviewed Stewart Lee, one of our more soft spoken personalities; the contrast between the two was startling. But although loud and laden with the occasional unnecessary fuck, it's this friendly "Hey man, what's up" style that originally breaks the ice and places the guests in a warm environment.

His big secret, as it always is, is just extensive hard work. The number of guests that he has interviewed is prolific to an incredible degree. I'm not going to try to even offer a choice sample of the list here, because in terms of comedians, it's nearing a 'name them and he's interviewed them' type level. If you go to www.wtfpod.com you can get the latest 50 episodes for free, but I understand that for the full catalogue there is an app that you can buy if you're lucky enough to own a smart phone.

So, ultimately, in terms of research, what to learn and take away from this for our own podcasts or interviews? Well, I think I'd certainly place them in different areas serving different purposes. I've never personally enjoyed getting into a heavy discussion with anyone, friends included, and I don't think that I possess the skill as an interviewer to be able to pull it off successfully. I see the WTF podcasts as a broad bio character piece, where as what we try to do (at least at the moment) is invite guests into our world for a bit of a laugh. I think the warm atmosphere is something that has come to us quite naturally (particularly Ryan though I resent saying it). And I think, at this stage, both because of our inexperience and also our youth, it would be challenging and perhaps inappropriate to try to level with some guests about the hardships they've suffered on a one to one peer basis. So I'm perfectly happy to keep playing the kid, asking a wisened veteran about their experience and theories on comedy and the scene. So in terms of things that our shows share, there's laughs and comedy nerdship, which is a nice blend that I'm more than happy with.

Radio, Comedy and the works of Stephen King

The worlds of radio, comedy and writing have a lot of crossovers as creative industries. With writing being a much older craft, a lot more has been said about it, but i find that a lot of these truisms can be applied across all creative medium. The internet is awash with memorable quotes, truisms and soundbites from a whole host of famous writers about the craft and most of them are various different messages about writing for truth, for joy and most importantly writing often. But one of the most interesting things that I've come across is something that somebody (I believe wrongly) attributed to Stephen King, which is to read 5 times as much as you write. Arguably not something that you necessarily need to apply to every trade, I wouldn't demand that a blacksmith watches 5 times as many forgers as he does himself.

Blacksmithery is the next entertainment industry

But this is something that is interesting to apply to comedy as well and easy enough to accomplish as a stand up because you'll watch 6 other comedians at any amateur night you go to and it's so popular on TV at the moment. But as a radio broadcaster, podcasts similar to what we are doing here at the lock in are things that you have to actively seek out and tie down. It's easy enough to subscribe to plenty of different shows, particularly when they are all available to download for free, but when you have hours upon hours of unheard shows sitting in your podcast library it can be quite daunting to make a start.

The 5:1 ratio is not a standard I can say that I live up to, come close to, or even may be physically capable of achieving. If you consider the fact that from recording to the finished product each lock in podcast represents at least 15 hours of my life (4/5 hours recording and at least twice that post production), each one should demand that I've listened to 75 hours of extra-curricular podcast research. Even just the recording of the show itself would by this rule be the product of 25 hours of podcastery, which is over a solid day of listening. But the very fact that it seems impossible, is perhaps an advantage of the rule. I'm almost certainly never going to be able to achieve it, but at least this way, I always feel like I should be listening/watching/reading more than I am.

I have it on good authority from an artist friend of mine that all of the best artists in the world are thieves at heart. Stealing ideas, techniques and style from their contemporaries and their predecessors unashamedly. But this is widely accepted as true and nobody should complain about it because it's just the way that new ideas and trends are born - from the shoulders of what came before it. So hopefully through my newly enriched passion for other radio podcasts i can find some great ideas to steal and improve. Not to mention that we're always looking for ways to sound more professional and slick when it comes to post-production.

At this point it seems appropriate to mention that I've never actually read a Stephen King novel, on the flawed logic of "It's popular, I probably don't like it". But I've heard a lot recently about what a workaholic he is and it's given me a new found respect for him (one that will eventually manifest itself in the picking up of one of his books). However, in preparation for this post, I made sure to also read at least 5 other Stephen King quotes and though wrongly attributed earlier, he does seem to agree with my argument:

"If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that." - Stephen King

Also he can be quoted as saying "We came here to fuck shit up" so it turns out he's kind of a bad-ass

The growing list of influences

Hello readers,

If you're sitting around on boxing day wishing that you had some more lock in podcasts to enjoy, you could take the time to look at some other podcasts made by people who make money and everything. With that in mind, we thought we'd start to write a few posts about our influences and some of the people that we admire in radio land.

One of the latest radio shows that i've started to enjoy is a show called 'the best show' on WFMU. Being a show called 'the best show' you could understandably assume that i enjoy it for the faux-arrogance of repeatedly claiming that your show is the greatest thing to don listeners ears.

It's a public call-in show from America presented by Tom Sharpling. It seems like a peculiar choice, but it appears to have been picked up and thoroughly endorse by an elite group of the American comedy scene such as Patton Oswalt, Zach Galifinakis and Robert Popper all of whom have appeared as guests. A lot of the best moments for me come from Tom's incessant petty bickering with the people that call in, but he also has plenty of recurring characters and special guests as we mentioned. It's interesting to hear how different American radio can be from what we produce over here just in terms of style and tone.

There are over a hundred podcasts of the show available here: http://wfmu.org/playlists/BS  if you click on the intunes button you can get them all in your podcasts folder.

You'll hear more from us very soon with some of our favourite players in alternative radio comedy

The lock in