What gave it away that Don Jamieson was a metal head? Was it the fact that his debut stand-up album Live And Hilarious was released by Metal Blade Records? Was it that you’ve seen him perform with his acoustic death metal group Gunfire N Sodomy? Well, if you’re like most people, then you probably knew this through his co-hosting gig on VH1 Classic’s That Metal Show.
“It’s a dream come true because it’s a label that carried the metal torch for thirty years and to be the first comedian signed there, I’m on the same label as King Diamond! I mean what can you say?,” Jamieson said in an interview with our sister site, The Laugh Button.
However, Jamieson isn’t the only comedian to take their love for metal even further by signing to established metal labels. Brian Posehn released his two albums via Relapse Records. Jim Florentine (Jamieson’s comedy partner/That Metal Show co-host) will be releasing a new album via Metal Blade Records. Doug Stanhope’s Oslo: Burning The Bridge To Nowhere was the first release from Roadrunner Record’s comedy imprint. Will metal labels signing stand-up comedians become a lasting trend in the industry?
When asked by The Laugh Button, about this recent trend with metal and comedy, Jamieson said the following:
“I think it’s bound to happen, because so many comedians are metalheads and most guys in metal and hard rock are really funny guys. They all want to be comics, and comics all want to be rockstars. That dates back to the days of Sam Kinison and Andrew Dice Clay, so there’s always been that connection. But I guess Brian Posehn was one of the first big names to get signed and sort of bridge that gap with the stand-up and the metal. It was cool because when Brian did That Metal Show he said something that was smart, which I realized too. He said, that he loved metal his entire life but never talked about it on stage, and he started to feel weird about that. Comics talk about every other wrinkle of their life. He didn’t know why he never talked about metal in his act. I felt the same exact way. So it just became a natural thing where I was just like, ‘well I gotta talk about this stuff because it’s a part of me.’”
Comedy signings might not be an answer to poor record sales, but at least it’ll give labels something to laugh at during such hard times. You can read the rest of The Laugh Button’s interview with Jamieson, where he also talks about his favorite up and coming metal bands and comedians, how an opening stint on Charred Walls Of The Damned’s (Richard Christy’s group) club tour landed him the chance to be on Metal Blade’s roster, and the contribution That Metal Show has given to the metal community, online.
