I must admit I am rather partial to buffet style stand-up comedy albums so Hostile Corporate Takeover has a leg up from the start with this reviewer.
This Stand Up! Records release features J.T. Habersaat but also includes Joe Staats, Mack Lindsay, Billy Milano, and Mike Wiebe. Hostile Corporate Takeover is like going to a comedy club without the bad comic who spoils the evening.
Staats is a social commentator with a bit of an edge. He makes the audience cringe a bit a couple of times but not because the material is offensive but because it is too soon for a Heath Ledger joke. This is a comic you have to pay attention to if you want to get the whole joke.
Mack Lindsay is good but he does not quite yet have the chops for the risky opener he uses but he has good material. His take on activists in America who are fashion shows more than activists and how we often are bigger hypocrites than we are willing to admit is certainly going to make you think. His take on religion shows this is a comic with something to say.
Both Billy Milano and Mike Wiebe musicians turned stand-up comic. Milano has an interesting set. Wiebe’s is just a long Springsteen story.
J.T. Habersaat opens cheering for the end of the world but a really good one. He also talks about trying to one-up another comic, a strange, strange bit about meeting a kid, a bit on a remake of a Harryhausen movie and how he would recast the remake of the remake. It is a bit of an in-joke. He closes with a bit about going to Jack in the Box that sets up a rant about something or other I still do not quite get.
Overall, this stand-up comedy MP3 album is a good bang for your buck and you can bring your own booze.
Hostile Corporate Takeover
J.T. Habersaat
and the American Punk Comedy Tour
Stand-up Comedy download or CD
Stand Up! Records 2013
