HBO Comedy Half-Hour

Before he retreated to a Highland Park garage to interview his peers, Marc Maron was a working comic turning an irritated eye toward the mid-90s. The standout moment in this early half-hour set is his take on a nascent internet. Decades before the web would define his career, Maron likens the information superhighway to the 1970s CB radio craze, dismissing it as a handful of weirdos broadcasting hype to an audience of twelve.

Filmed live at The Fillmore in San Francisco in June 1995, the set captures a performer during his initial rise in alternative comedy. He had recently finished his run hosting Comedy Central’s “Short Attention Span Theater” and was steadily racking up late-night appearances. The thirty-minute routine showcases a younger, though no less exasperated, comedian working through material on drugs, regional quirks of the American South, and the strange behavior of the general public.