Turns out you don’t need to be a Sex Pistol, a Misfit or a Ramone to be punk rock. Plenty of comedians fit the description of total anarchy presented as entertainment. Here are six of the most punk-rock comics to ever destroy a microphone…
Craig Ferguson
Late-night host Ferguson was an actual punk-rocker, drumming for Scottish band Bastards from Hell back in the day. He brought that same sensibility to his early stand-up, performing angry routines under the name Bing Hitler.
“If you start doing comedy in Glaswegian punk rock bars, you develop a certain aggressive style,” Ferguson explains in the book Satiristas. “I’ve been introduced with, ‘Here’s a c*** that thinks he’s funny.’ Not a great way to start. You have to be fairly tough just to stay alive.”
Sam Kinison
You know you’re pretty punk as a comedian when actual punk rockers like The Kinison name their band after you.
@marcdmaron
“Sam was the first rock ’n’ roll comedian,” says comic Jimmy Shubert. “He was the first guy to cross over and have all those guys like Tommy Lee in his music video for ‘Wild Thing.’”
Judy Tenuta
“Tenuta’s unmistakable voice that seems akin to Ursula from The Little Mermaid and punctuating jokes with an accordion was punk rock in the 1980s and would probably even still be a welcome break from the norm,” wrote the Comedy Bureau after Tenuta’s death in 2022.
She’s the kind of proper lady who’d open a comedy set with, “Hi, pigs!”
Norm Macdonald
“What I did like about the way we approached (Weekend) Update was that it was akin to the punk movement, what the punk movement was for music. Just stripped down,” said Macdonald’s SNL partner-in-crime, writer Jim Downey. “We did what we wanted. There was nothing there that was considered to be a form of cheating. We weren’t cuddly. We weren’t adorable. We weren’t warm. We weren’t going to do easy political jokes that played for ‘clapter’ and let the audience know we were all on the same side. We were going to be mean, and to an extent, anarchists.”
Kyle Kinane
“My ticket prices are low because I understand times are tough,” Kyle Kinane previously told Cracked. What could be more punk rock than that? “It’s not just punk rock — I think it’s just a human ethos of ‘How much money does a person need?’ I already feel like I’m a king talking down to people because I bought a house. I’m still in a circle with people that are doing comedy and trying to scrape by doing comedy.”
Sarah Sherman
Sherman is still as likely to perform in a punk-rock venue as in a comedy club, although she might be going by the name Sarah Squirm when she does. “I get to clock into work as one thing, and then at night go crazy as Sarah Squirm. It’s funny to be Sarah Sherman in the sheets, Sarah Squirm in the streets,” she told Racket. “I like to play with different crazy noise musicians in different cities, and so it’s people who wouldn’t have gone to a harsh-noise show, they suddenly have a front-row seat for it. I think that’s cool.”
