Stare Into The Sun

Allan's First CD Stare Into The Sun: The Best Of Allan Havey Volume 1 is now available from http://www.dcimprov.com/store/!

Liner Notes:

The first time I saw Allan Havey work was at Caroline’s Comedy Club in Manhattan, in 1986. He was opening for a near legendary performer out of the New York Neurotic school of comedy. The place was jammed, with everyone eagerly awaiting the headliner, whose television specials and long routines we all knew by heart. But when Havey hit the stage, as an unknown really, whose first TV guest spots were still in front of him, we all forgot that he was the opener. His material was fresh and dangerous. Instead of neurosis, Havey's comedy was fueled by angst, aggression and a childhood spent in the company of some seriously angry nuns. Some of his targets that night were shoulder padded-working women, suburban dads trying to outrun the automatic sprinkler, and garmentos who perhaps needed a little more exercise (briefcase, heart-attack motherfuckers). With each joke, each improvised line, our laughter built, so that by the time Havey finished, we had no more breath to laugh. The headliner couldn't have put his neurosis to bed that night, because by the time he hit the stage, his audience was wrung out.

Soon after, I began to see Allan appearing on TV. He was on Letterman, HBO, Comic Relief, and each time I saw him, he absolutely killed. The key to Havey's appeal, I realized, was an absolute lack of fear. Some comics measure every word, calculating just how far they can take an audience before the audience will turn on them. Havey refuses to pander. If he thinks of it, he'll say it. And not just out of recklessness. Listening to this CD, it becomes clear that behind the jokes is a man looking at a world that is losing its sense of humor, its individuality, its ability to take a risk. So Havey takes the risks for us.

Havey seems to yearn for a time when men with brush cuts coached football teams that knew how to gain yards on the ground, a time when dads smoked and drove big sedans with long wide back seats and no special child protection devises, a time when Americans were really free.

I don't know that there ever was a time like that in this country, but I know that when Havey talks about it I laugh. I am not alone in this. The hardest people for a comic to amuse are other comics, but I have been in the back of the Comedy Cellar watching comics watching Havey do his thing. Ray Romano, Colin Quinn, John Stewart. I have seen all of them bent over and looking at each other in amazement as Havey takes one staggering one liner after another out of his pocket.

You will be amazed too. So stop reading and start listening. And get ready to laugh your ass off.

-  Brian Koppelman