In November of 2006 I uploaded a video to the relatively new site YouTube and it’s hard to imagine what my life and career would be had The Pachelbel Rant not become as popular as it did. Looking back over 20 years I’m grateful for the fans it helped find me, the friends and peers it helped me connect with, and the opportunities it opened up.
If you knew me before YouTube, or are a fan of the Dr. Demento Radio Show, you probably know that the Pachelbel Rant is even older than 20. It was a bit I started doing shortly after moving to New York and was a regular feature of my sets at The Big Bad Music Show at Catch a Rising Star. An audio recording from Catch made it onto my 1998 CD American Cheese, simply titled “Pachelbel,” and it got played on Dr. Demento in 1999, making the Funny Five in the summer and the Funny 25 at the end of the year.
I had a few other songs make it onto Dr. Demento in those years so I didn’t realize the popular potential the piece had until YouTube came along. And I didn’t know what to expect from posting it, videos of over 5 minutes were rare in those early days.
In 2006 I recorded video of a bunch of live shows to get the most current version of the ever-changing and constantly updated rant. I chose to upload the version from a show at Penn State because the audience was really energetic and, most importantly, the audio turned out really good. (For you tech nerds: I used an Audio Technica wireless lavalier mic, omnidirectional. I think I chose the make and model because Doug Stanhope recommended it in a newsgroup)
In the first few weeks of YouTube it got a few hundred, then a few thousand views. These were the days before social media allowed people to blast out posts to millions of people at once so word spread more slowly and organically. I plugged it on my blog and on MySpace (ahh, wistful sigh for MySpace), but it was when YouTube chose it as a featured video on their front page that it really took off.
A lot of college students started finding the video, either having it sent to them by friends or finding it on a site like College Humor. One of those college students was the granddaughter of George Carlin’s manager, who sent it to her dad and grandfather with the suggestion that I could fill in for Carlin’s regular road opener, fellow guitar comic Dennis Blair. That led to me opening about a dozen shows for Carlin between 2007-2008, which led to opening for Lily Tomlin in 2009 at the MGM Grand.
I still can’t believe I got to work with legends George Carlin and Lily Tomlin in the course of 2 years!
And here we are, 20 years later, and new fans still find the rant. My friend just told me her son referenced it in a recent conversation: the son is 16 (younger than YouTube!) and first heard the rant when he was 10. This summer the Washington Post referenced it in an article about another viral video that analyzes pop music, though the author chose to credit the rant to “a musician” instead of figuring out how to spell ‘Paravonian.’
I’m grateful, blessed, and humbled to have made so many memories and interconnections from this piece. And I’m glad that if one of my bits was going to blow up it was this one. It’s musical, analytical, funny, and little manic, which I feel is a good representation of what I do.
So when I realized the 20th anniversary of posting the rant on YouTube was coming up this year I decided to lean in and celebrate it with a live show, music, stories, and an updated version of the rant. The show will be live in NYC and you should totally come in person if you can. Caveat is an amazing venue that puts on top-notch and very nerdy comedy—perfect for the Rant! And Caveat has a 3-camera live streaming setup so you can get a ticket for the live stream and watch from anywhere!
So thank you from the bottom of my heart for helping the Pachelbel Rant reach the millions of people it has. And I hope you can join the celebration on Nov. 23!