The rest of the crowd came to see and hear the performer on stage. Nobody wants to hear from some self-important egotist in the audience.
As hard as it is to accept, YOU are not the star of the show. The person up on the stage – the one who’s putting it on the line – they are the headliner.

I have been to dozens of live stage shows and comedy clubs. The worst experience is having some thoughtless jerk yapping on, as though anybody cared about them and their opinions.

Surely you’ve listened to music on the radio and wondered what it might be like to go to a concert. Right?

Hmmm… perhaps we assume too much. Anyone who poses the above question is either 8 years old… or 80 years old and therefore might actually have never attended a live musical performance.

The difference between watching a comedy performance on television (even a large-screen, hi-def unit) and seeing the comedian perform live is so staggering as to make them two totally different experiences that really can’t be compared. We say this not because we’re comedians ourselves.

We can recall the first time we ever attended a live comedy show. It was in a venue that held, at most, 80 people. We sat perhaps 15 feet from the stage. We recall looking up at one point and noticing that the next act was standing within half an arm’s length of us as he waited to be introduced. It was one of the most exciting and revelatory experiences we had ever had to that point.

There are few other live entertainment experiences like going to a comedy club. It is the way standup should be experienced. We hope you come out to a club sometime, Mr. Bates. You’ll not regret it.

They always think they should chime in. Its fucking horrifying. We have a great club in colorado (the Comedy Works) and it seems any time I go, there is some group of 12 frat boys there trying to participate in the act.