Reggie Watts is back: "being meta it don't help me"

June 10, 2010 7:30 PM

Reggie Watts @ Google (NSFW for cursing)

Reggie Watts, comedic/musical performer: "Hilarious, brilliant, unpredictable – comedian/musician Reggie Watts is a staple of the international performance scene. Reggie’s improvised musical sets are created on-the-spot using only his formidable voice and a looping machine. No two songs are ever the same. An avowed "disinformationist," Reggie loves to disorientate his audiences in the most entertaining way. You may not know what Reggie is going to do, but that’s okay – he doesn’t either." via

On why shit be going wrong
Interview on The Sound of Young America
2006: Performance on PopTech

Music
Reggie Watts on POPTUB
Fuck Shit Stack - live, video
Lakeshore Theatre show

previ ously

posted by yaymukund (38 comments total)

Note: The "why shit be going wrong" leads to a comedy central video, which contains an ad. There's actually a bunch more comedy there, but it's all behind ads.
posted by yaymukund at 7:31 PM on June 10, 2010

Yay. I remember him from early pre-Maktub Seattle times when he was part of the party cover band Hit Explosion. I love seeing all the great and weird stuff he's doing lately.
posted by jessamyn at 7:38 PM on June 10, 2010

I saw him open for Conan at Radio City last Wednesday and he was fantastic. I have Why Shit So Crazy? but cannot find the "big ass purse" song anywhere. Can anyone else find a video or recording of this?

Also, Maktub rules.
posted by null terminated at 7:38 PM on June 10, 2010

I saw him open for Conan in Philadelphia the other night and was similarly impressed. A significant comedic and musical talent, to be sure.
posted by lumensimus at 7:44 PM on June 10, 2010

The expression on the lady sitting beside the stage in the live video is awesome.
posted by Throw away your common sense and get an afro! at 7:45 PM on June 10, 2010

I saw him with Conan too. Honestly, I thought he was the best part of the show.
posted by elder18 at 7:58 PM on June 10, 2010

What elder18 said.
posted by wierdo at 8:04 PM on June 10, 2010

Yes. Saw him open for Conan in Boston. Very excellent, his hip hop parody song was meh though.
posted by haveanicesummer at 8:07 PM on June 10, 2010

Except the shit-fuck-stack part, that was gold.
posted by haveanicesummer at 8:07 PM on June 10, 2010

More than his musical and comedic talent, I appreciate Reggie Watts for his voice. His wonderful, wonderful voice.
posted by meese at 8:10 PM on June 10, 2010

I've got some practice tapes of his somewhere that he left in the basement of the old place.....
posted by Maude_the_destroyer at 8:10 PM on June 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

It's so great to see such a hard working guy make it. I've seen him countless times in many roles over the years and he's always brought it. Way ta go Reggie!
posted by OHenryPacey at 8:23 PM on June 10, 2010

As usual I'm 3.5 years ahead of Google.
posted by dobbs at 8:33 PM on June 10, 2010 [2 favorites]

It's a Fuck Shit Stack.
posted by nola at 8:37 PM on June 10, 2010

I saw Reggie open for Conan in Toronto, and he was the highlight of the show by far. However, this video is super-meh. And I made it through 27 minutes of it hoping, just hoping, that it would improve. Nope. Watch the other clips instead.
posted by evadery at 8:41 PM on June 10, 2010

So Andy Kaufman gained a bit of weight and spent time with Todd Rundgren? Cool. Great stuff.
posted by Splunge at 8:49 PM on June 10, 2010

not
funny funny
|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
^
this shit
posted by sfts2 at 9:00 PM on June 10, 2010

this shit be fucked up, know what I'm sayin'

not
funny_________________________________________ funny
|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
.......................^
.................this shit
posted by sfts2 at 9:02 PM on June 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

fuck this shit
posted by sfts2 at 9:02 PM on June 10, 2010

Brilliant.

Missed Reggie's opening set at the Conan show in D.C. on Tuesday, and that was upsetting.
posted by emelenjr at 9:18 PM on June 10, 2010

You can only hide behind the "pointing out that stand-up comedy is a rather tired, hackneyed form" bit for so long- eventually you yourself have to actually come up with something funnier than the people you're busting on. cf Anzari, Aziz.
posted by drjimmy11 at 9:36 PM on June 10, 2010

Maktub's practice room was rigt next to my band's a decade ago. Nice fellow.
posted by mwhybark at 9:41 PM on June 10, 2010

Neat. Met him at a party once but had no idea who he was at the time. Apparently he's awesome.

I should pay more attention to the people I meet, on the off chance that they are awesome.
posted by phooky at 10:03 PM on June 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

Fuck shit stack is my favorite ever. My husband and I still refer to anything disastrous as a "fuck shit stack."
posted by Nattie at 10:11 PM on June 10, 2010

Remember this? No wait, it's this one.
posted by wobh at 10:26 PM on June 10, 2010

Huh. I think I shared a joint with him and Eyvind Kang once in the back room of the cybercafe/venue where I worked in the mid-90s. And I had no idea he'd been in Hit Explosion. Those guys were awesome. (*googles* ... Good lord, they're still together and playing. Looks like I need to head up to the Tulalip casino and see them one of these weekends, to see if they still kick ass.)

Anyway, yeah. I also should pay more attention to the people I meet. Some of them do indeed turn out to be awesome.
posted by hades at 11:38 PM on June 10, 2010

I liked the music, but the comedy wasn't really to my taste.
posted by Philosopher Dirtbike at 3:22 AM on June 11, 2010

avclub interview with reggie watts

One of my favorite things is acting like a speaker or a professor or a CEO of a company and addressing the audience like a group of engineers or designers or marketers. I like sincerely talking about market analysis and how marketing is ahead of design and design needs to catch up to fulfill the promise of the marketing. We've all been to a lecture; whenever I've been in those situations I'm laughing on the inside, that there's actually a huge group of people listening to this one person talk about whatever they're talking about. It's funny that that's the way human culture can organize itself and sometimes the absurdity comes from simply re-creating it...

What I'm doing on stage now is just the tip of the iceberg. I want to be able to make a movie. I also want to mimic commercials to a T: high-budget, helicopter-shot commercials. I'm working on performance technologies—stereoscopic point-of-view camera stuff and live, augmented reality applications. I call it "Starking It," like Tony Stark. It's creating things that make enough money to create resources to generate new technologies to have those technologies to generate more resources so I can make more things happen. Ultimately I want to be able to create whatever I want whenever I want. And if that doesn't work, I don't mind just doing weird plays.

sounds fun! being funny :P
posted by kliuless at 4:28 AM on June 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

That Google buying Orchid joke KILLED!



Killed means it hurt really badly, right?
posted by orme at 4:53 AM on June 11, 2010

orkut
posted by b1tr0t at 7:19 AM on June 11, 2010

I saw Reggie when he opened for Devo in San Francisco last year. I had no idea who the large man with the giant afro was, or what he was doing on the stage. He seemed like an odd choice for Devo, especially because much of what he was doing was very improvisational. I liked his layered beatbox compositions and his intellectual tone.

Some in the audience did not like him at all. One person yelled, "Get the f*** off the stage!" Reggie said that the heckler was his cousin. He then told how when he was growing up, he and his cousin would perform in front of each other and push each other into higher levels of meditative awareness. When one of them felt that the other was not being authentic enough in their performance, they would yell "get the f*** off the stage". So he thanked his cousin for getting him back on track with his performance.
posted by oozy rat in a sanitary zoo at 8:15 AM on June 11, 2010 [2 favorites]

Maybe I'm just old, but I have no idea what he's sayin'
posted by JaredSeth at 8:49 AM on June 11, 2010

That's Zach Galifianakis right?
posted by humboldt32 at 8:54 AM on June 11, 2010

I've seen Reggie live a few times (and met him a few times, though I'm sure he doesn't remember me). His voice is staggering, and when he starts looping himself--live, right there in front of you, creating songs out of nothing but his voice and the deck--well, that shit just isn't fair.
posted by Skot at 9:25 AM on June 11, 2010

Bing jokes! Ha!
posted by GuyZero at 9:40 AM on June 11, 2010

When Conan did his show in Seattle, everyone in my office freaked out over "that guy who opened for Conan".
posted by jragon at 9:56 AM on June 11, 2010

Ha! Good stuff. I first became aware of Reggie via this Yes Men prank.
posted by stagewhisper at 11:57 AM on June 11, 2010

Comedy Death Ray Radio listeners also know him for the show's intro. I'm a long time CDR listener but I've never looked into anything else he's done. Thanks for this.
posted by tuck_nroll at 2:18 PM on June 11, 2010