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The Next To Last Joan Rivers Album

Joan Rivers

Stand Up! Records · Album · 2015 · 34 min

A 1968 Manhattan cabaret set about dating, cooking, and marriage.

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Recorded in June 1968 at the Manhattan cabaret Upstairs at the Downstairs, this set captures Joan Rivers four years after her breakout on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. She is in the process of defining her signature style, though the volume is lower than the red-carpet persona she would adopt decades later. Instead of insult comedy, she delivers conversational, tightly constructed stories aimed directly at the expectations placed on 1960s women. She talks about the pressure to get married, the absurdities of single life at twenty-seven, and the grim realities of cooking. The women in the room react with the relief of being seen, while the men laugh at someone saying things she wasn’t supposed to say in public.

Originally released on vinyl in 1969 with a prophetically accurate title, the recording received its first CD reissue in 2015 via Stand Up! Records. The release includes an eight-page booklet featuring liner notes from comedy historian Kliph Nesteroff and Sarah Silverman. The tracklist documents a specific era of her career, focusing on topics like stewardesses, nurses, and the sheer desperation of trying to secure a diamond ring.

The set list

2 bits

  1. Giving birth to daughter Melissa in the hospital

    Riffs on how absurdly youthful the hospital staff was, claiming the intern was so young his surgical gloves were pinned to his sleeves.

  2. Performing a disastrous standup gig in Omaha, Nebraska

    Jokes about the cultural mismatch of trying to perform for local midwestern farmers, wondering if she knows any silo jokes.

How it plays

Tone
Bold, frank, taboo-breaking, and self-deprecating.
On stage
Brassy, whip-smart, and unapologetic, speaking shocking truths and dropping clever asides while conspiratorially treating her set like 'the rally.'
Pace
Tight, fast-flowing delivery connecting a series of situations and locations rather than long-form vaudevillian narratives.
About
Expectations of wives and mothers, Singlehood and marriage, Childbirth and hospitals, Domestic roles and cooking, Women's daily lives and societal pressures

What the critics said

Praised as a blisteringly funny, timeless document of Rivers owning her personal life as comedy material, highlighting her craft in an era before women's stand-up was widely accepted.

In the room: The room melts into her hands, with women laughing in liberation and men guffawing, culminating in shouts of 'Brava!'

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: allmusic.com, standuprecords.com, loc.gov, recordstoreday.com, vulture.com, theseconddisc.com, en.wikipedia.org.

Backstory

Captured in June 1968 at Julius Monk's Manhattan cabaret club, delivering frank material about the expectations placed on women by mothers, husbands, and society years before debates over whether women were funny became widespread.

Details

Released
Taped
1968, Upstairs at the Downstairs, New York
Runtime
34 min
Where
Stand Up! Records (album)
Topics

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