In the early 90's I met Carvin Jones in a small bar in Tempe, AZ where he was performing. Carvin has a very charismatic personality who plays his guitar all over the world. Because of his gregarious nature he has always been a self promoter - meeting his fans, selling his CD's and T-shirts without an entourage.
Carvin can still be found playing in many venues in Phoenix, but he is probably better know throughout Europe where he enjoys touring many times a year. One of the hardest working entertainers around, you can always be guaranteed he will give 100 per cent to his performance.
Murray Langston owned a popular comedy club that all the stars would appear at and the club went bankrupt. So someone suggested that Murray go on the Gong Show to make a quick amount of money. But he didn't really have an act. So he decided to put a bag over his head so that people wouldn't know it was him, and got onstage and started insulting Chuck Barris with some one liners and people loved him.
He became an overnight success. He was hired in LasVegas for 15K a week and still didn't have an act. So he hired a band and called them the Brown Baggers and had some girls that danced called the Baggettes. They would play for a half hour, then Murray would come out an do a few minutes of one liners and just kept building his repertoire of jokes. Eventually he had enough material to finally take his show on the road.
Murray was headlining at Seekers Comedy Club in Scottsdale when I first shot him for my TV show. The second time he appeared he was headlining at Knuckleheads in Phoenix, AZ. He has always been one of my favorite comedians.
Long before Roseanne appeared on The Tonight Show - she appeared as a headliner at Seekers Comedy Club in Scottsdale, AZ. I shot an interview with her at United Cable Television and was going to insert excerpts from her performance into the interview. But unfortunately the machine ate the tape, so I only had a very short emergency backup tape. As fate would have it the best part of her act was destroyed. However the interview has survived as well as a short tape of her performance, and it is probably one of the first known tapes of Roseanne.
One day while I was getting ready to shoot my show, there was a Bachelorette party going on at the club. My show was starting at 9pm when the party was to be finished. The ladies in my crew wanted to shoot the Girl's Night Out. I wasn't interested, but told them they could go ahead and shoot it while I went upstairs and waited for the party to finish up. Afterwards I edited the show and aired it on Backstage Pass in Arizona and it ended up being very popular.
After meeting the guys in the Men of US Male, they asked if we could shoot a documentary. I was getting ready to go on a trip to Europe and thought this might be a good show to take there and market. Unfortunately it didn't sell in the European market, although they produced their own show copying the same concept.
Now on YouTube the videos that I produced from the original show as well as the documentary are still very popular even 20 years later.
Charlie Hill was known as the only Native American Indian comic at the time he appeared on Evening of Laughs and later on Backstage Pass and Backstage in Arizona. He was very popular in Los Angeles and played the part of the spiritual friend, Tommie Lighthorse on the series, The Bionic Woman.
When I first met Charlie I was doing promotions at Chuckles Comedy Club. He came to town with a large entourage of family and he was feeling under the weather. I gave him some herbs that cured him, and after that we became friends.
This was the opening song for this thrash metal band circa 1985. Still performing with famous bass player from Metallica, Jason Newsted, the band played several songs. This performance is one of my most requested videos from the loyal Flotsam and Jetsam and Jason Newsted fans- I hope you enjoy the show, and come watch all the other Flotsam and Jetsam videos on my YouTube channels. Joel
Clearly my most watched and favorite video on YouTube is of Dan Horn, one of the world's best ventriloquists. Dan came onto the entertainment scene before Jeff Dunham and Terry Fator. Dan was a cast member of the longest running children's television show produced in Arizona called Wallace and Ladmo.
An interesting story behind the scenes is that I had asked Dan to perform on my series Backstage in Arizona. I had bought prime time airing which was 7 pm on all the local cable channels in the valley (Phoenix).
Dan had a good act that included a bit of "blue" material with his puppet Orson.
When Dan showed up at work the next day to tape the next episode of Wallace and Ladmo, Wallace asked him if he had been on TV last night doing his adult nightclub act? Dan got really nervous and said that he didn't know, but maybe? (He had no idea when the program was due to be aired). Wallace said, - Well, Chuck Alvey (program director of KPHO) wants to see you and there's a rumor that you are getting fired.
Apprehensively, Dan walked down the hall to Chuck's office. He told me that it was the longest walk of his life. Just as he put his hand on the door nob Wallace yelled, "just kidding, Dan".
Eventually this helped propel Dan into a headline nightclub career, appearing on TV, and receiving awards for his ventriloquism act.
Nowadays Dan can be found performing on cruise ships and on his own channel on YouTube.
Hope you enjoy the show! Joel
Dan and me Posing onstage for Storer Cable TV Comedy Hour
