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Crowd work clips are all the rage!

If you, like me, follow a lot of comedians on instagram or tiktok, you’re seeing tons of clips of comics doing crowd work at their shows. It’s almost to the point that anytime someone in the audience coughs the comic rushes to react so they can post the clip on their socials, just to keep the flow of ‘content’ going.

Crowd work clips are so prevalent the Washington Post even mentions them in their article about tiktok and standup! (That’s a gift link to get you through the paywall, because I’m a giver!)

Crowd work has never really been my thing but I can’t resist making fun of a trend so I wrote a song called “Crowd Work” and left it at that. Enjoy!

5 Years at Q.E.D.!

It’s hard to believe my monthly show at Q.E.D. is about to celebrate its 5 year anniversary! We launched as Don’t Feed the Musicians!, a title I coughed up when putting the first show together, and I renamed the show The Odd Rock Comedy Hour in 2017. That’s 60 installments of comedy, music, variety, video and more! And I only missed one show!

To celebrate we’re… well, just gonna keep doing our thing. Our November show will be Saturday, Nov. 16 at 7:30 and we’ll kick out the jams like we always do. Q.E.D. however, is celebrating their 5 year anniversary (we started the month they opened!) on Nov 4. at 7pm! I’ll be there telling a joke first told at the Odd Rock, along with tons of other comedians, writers, storytellers and more who have performed at Q.E.D. over the years.

Check out the gallery to see some of the people who’ve Oddly Rocked with us over the years!

It started with a pun, now we’re here!

I’ve accidentally embarked on the quest to create the most epic fake band trivia challenge ever!! It started as a play on words—“Sham Rock” instead of “Odd Rock” Comedy Hour to acknowledge that the March installment of my monthly variety show falls on St. Patrick’s Day.

“I’ll do a couple of covers from fictitious TV and film bands,” I thought.

“I’ll show slides of some of the more esoteric fictitious bands,” I pondered.

But when I had the idea to create a fake band trivia contest I had no idea it would become my mission in life to create the MOST AMAZING AND TRULY AWESOME FAKE BAND TRIVIA CONTEST EVER!! I’m having an absolute blast putting these questions together, I think I may have found my calling in life!

The questions will range in difficulty from “everyone should know that” to “why would anyone know that?” with a lot of room in between. Some questions will be easy with supplemental bonus points for more in-depth knowledge on the same subject. There will be some “everyone wins” questions with prizes for anyone who gets it right. So even if you answer only one question right you could still get a prize.

And on top of this epicness we still have great comedy and music: dope and dirty rhymes from La Dynasty and standup comedy from Boris Khaykin, and more! So get your tickets now! It’s only ten bucks, but you can get tix for seven dollareedoos with the discount code ORCHVIP at QED’s website.

All right, back to the research…

The Missile-Toad Holiday Special ’17!

The Odd Rock Comedy Hour is putting on an odd rock holiday show! Comedy music superduo Sam & Bill, Killy Dwyer, Lauren Hope Krass and me, Rob P., will bring to the stage twisted musical holiday cheer in the form of top-notch comedy, music, standup, sketch, and candy! And if you get your tickets in advance and use code ORCHVIP, you can get in for just $7!

It all takes place on Saturday, Dec. 16th at 7:30 pm at Q.E.D. in lovely Astoria, Queens. The Odd Rock Comedy Hour will help make your season hilarious.

The Odd Rock Comedy Hour
Missile-Toad Holiday Special!
Sat. Dec. 16, 7:30 pm
Q.E.D.
27-16 23rd Ave, Astoria (N Train to Ditmars)
With Sam & Bill, Killy Dwyer, Lauren Hope Krass, and more!

2017-Dec-ORCH-posterV1

The Odd Rock Comedy Hour! Coming Nov 18!

The Odd Rock Comedy Hour, my new monthly comedy/music/variety show, launches Saturday, Nov 18 at Q.E.D.! After a great 3-year run of my monthly show Don’t Feed the Musicians! I’m ready to kick off a new show that will feature the best of what you’ve come to love from the old show along with some new twists and turns.

One of the reasons for the name change is that I wanted the name to clearly convey that the show was a fun collection of comedy, music, and something a little off the beaten path. Also, the name Don’t Feed the Musicians! is kind of bossy when you think about it.

The new name is inspired by a very quirky rock club in Milwaukee where my old band The Steppingstones played our first gig: The Odd Rock Cafe. The venue was a converted Victorian house in an industrial section of the city and all of the interesting 80s acts played there: The Jesus Lizard, Gwar, G. G. Allin, Social Distortion, and many more. We opened for a Milwaukee-based psychedelic jangle-pop band The Petals and we were so amped to be playing our first gig we blew through our entire set in about 30 minutes.

We came off the stage to some confused looks from members of the Petals.“You’re done?” The asked if we wanted to play a few more and we had to respond, “we don’t know any more.” We should have pulled the line Bob Newhart used after his first nightclub gig earned him calls for an encore. He came back out on stage and said “Okay, which one do you want to hear again?”

So there you have it: somewhere between quirky music with a D.I.Y. aesthetic and Bob Newhart lies The Odd Rock Comedy Hour. Coming to Q.E.D. on the 3rd Saturday of every month at 7:30 pm. Come join the fun!

Thanks for a great run!

Don’t Feed the Musicians!, my monthly variety show at QED, will be coming to a close on October 21 and I want to send out a hearty “thank you” to all of the artists that have been guests, all of the people that have come to enjoy the show, and the wonderful folks at QED who supported it. But the end brings a new beginning! I’ll be launching a new monthly variety show in November at the very same venue, in the very same time slot!

So why, you may ask, if I’m doing a monthly variety show in the same time slot at the same venue would I go through the hassle of creating a new show? I suppose the 3-year anniversary made me a little reflective and I thought about the work that goes into producing and hosting a show. I really enjoy both writing new material every month, performing, and bringing wonderful guests to the stage for the audience to enjoy, but I don’t like having to explain that that’s what Don’t Feed the Musicians! is.

It’s mostly my fault for giving the show an ambiguous title. When I was first approached about doing a monthly show at the then-brand new QED, I wanted to come up with a name other than “Untitled Rob Paravonian Project” and I thought Don’t Feed the Musicians! had a cheeky, musician’s inside joke kind of vibe. But when I see it listed up there with all of the other wonderful shows at QED I think about how someone else would see the name and wonder “what the heck is that?” And in the days of social media-fueled micro attention spans that can be a liability.

So watch this space for information on the new show, which will hit the QED stage November 18th at 7:30!

© Paravonian