Have you ever wondered what David Cross would sound like with a bit less creativity? Check out Auggie Smith and his stand-up comedy mp3 downloadable CD Smell The Thunder
From the first track to the last, Smell the Thunder is nonstop rants about the world today. That would be fine, if the things he was ranting about were original, but they are topics that have been observed by numerous comedians in recent years. Smith adds very little to topics that have been discussed by David Cross, Greg Giraldo, or Patton Oswalt. In fact, Smith seems to be a sort of cross between these three comics. That would make for an excellent comedian, only you have to throw Dane Cook into the mix as well. Much of the set is Smith saying things without actually saying anything, which is Dane Cook’s specialty.
Although he is also similar to Cook, Smith has very strong delivery that makes him a very forceful presence on stage, which is exactly what he’s going for. He also arranges his set to make the subjects flow, though most of that rhythm he inevitably loses by the style of his jokes. He starts almost every track slow introducing the topic, and then drives it home with an overly-sarcastic or incredibly passionate ending. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with this format, but it’s virtually impossible to keep a consistent rhythm.
Another problem with that approach is that, as a result of the slow lead-in it sometimes takes Smith a full two minutes into the track before he can deliver the punch line. Asking any audience to wait two minutes to laugh means your end result better be really funny. Unfortunately, it’s often not for Smith.
There are tracks that are very good, where Smith seemed to find a relatively untouched subject and was able to find the right twist to make quality commentary, such as the tracks Bikes and Changing School. But these are the minority on the set.
Auggie Smith‘s style is almost identical to David Cross but he has trouble finding original material that fits said style. This results in overused, overly angry material that can very easily be a turn-off for the audience.
Smell The Thunder
Auggie Smith
Stand-up Comedy download
Rooftop Comedy 2010
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