Two things guide the work of comedian Amy Miller: holding to one\u2019s ethics and fighting to protect one\u2019s community\u2014values the Bay Area native learned in part from the punk scene at 924 Gilman. Now she brings her own hour-long special to the beloved space she first visited as a kid.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no place quite like Gilman, a venue created by punks, for punks in the \u201980s that\u2019s inspired generations. Miller\u2019s will be the first comedy show ever taped there.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went to my first show there when I was probably 8 years old,\u201d Miller said over Zoom. She watched her brother play. \u201cNow my nephew plays shows there,\u201d she added. Her relationship to Gilman has been a long and strange family affair.<\/p>\n
In the 1980s MTV brought heavy metal imagery into living rooms, setting off a \u201cSatanic Panic,\u201d something Miller experienced from both sides. Her brother performed in the earliest days of Gilman, while her parents attended a conservative Baptist church in the area. Her church\u2019s efforts to vilify punks backfired.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy pastor encouraged everyone to pray for my brother because he was going to hell,\u201d which was basically Gilman in their eyes, she said. Instead, her brother went on to a major record deal as the singer of the band Samiam, active to this day. \u201cWe found out years later that the youth pastor was, of course, a child molester,\u201d Miller said with a chuckle. \u201cI shouldn\u2019t be laughing, it\u2019s not funny\u2014but the idea of it is ludicrous.\u201d<\/p>\n
Comedy as a form carries with it social power; the ability to say literally anything and laugh together as a group. A shared off-the-wall, even inappropriate moment, can be healing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just feel like [laughing together] is so beautiful, so I get puzzled when people use it for the exact opposite,\u201d Miller said, \u201cwhich is to try to do harm. What a waste of the platform.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
In this golden age of the American bully, the acute aversion to empathy spills out of boardrooms and into the halls of comedy\u2019s small professional community. At one time, public revolt over the revelation of sexual abuses of power by comedians Bill Cosby and Louis C.K. served as a warning that seemed to have broad structural impact. But instead the bro-verse pushback to all that shines progressive enabled a new batch of mean-spirited comedians to cash in. For a woman comedian, it\u2019s really nothing new.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re literally willing to kill us all so that they can fucking high five each other over their cybertrucks in the hallway of the comedy club,\u201d Miller said, connecting the trend to current political and economic folly. \u201cI have to walk amongst them like, \u2018I\u2019m here for my $50 to talk about my radical, left-wing politics,\u2019 which is actually just jokes about my body.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not just the conservative, libertarian comics benefit from the prevailing winds. Many of today\u2019s heralded progressive comics got to that position by not rocking the boat. By contrast Miller recently pulled out of a Netflix showcase when C.K. was added.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not gonna shake hands with a predator because we both work at the Comedy Store,\u201d Miller said, referring to glad-handing comics credited with being progressive. \u201cYou\u2019ve compromised the entire time and now you get a pat on the back for being like, \u2018Hey, we shouldn\u2019t be mean to trans people.\u2019 Shut the fuck up. You showed up at the end of the republic and our art form to try to scrape up some final views before you die.\u201d<\/p>\n
She feels strongly that women in comedy need to look out for each other. \u201cI\u2019m just like, I hope I don\u2019t get assaulted. That\u2019ll be a good weekend,\u201d Miller said, illustrating the reality for traveling comics. \u201cIn every city, I request at least one woman opening for me. Maybe it\u2019s her first weekend at that club, but it just takes a couple people to do that to really be the difference between someone keeping at it or quitting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Event promoter Blonde Medicine\u2019s Craig Billmeier, a Gilman veteran himself, said, \u201cGilman encourages that kind of intimacy. So while Amy\u2019s comedy does this natively, I\u2019m excited to see her do this in the Gilman environment.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lesson is that it matters how we go about things, and who we do it with. Being from the East Bay, Miller grew up in and around other groups of people and other types of food, with that insight that diversity gives us\u2014that the world is bigger than just ourselves, that we have a role to play in caring for each other.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had these punk ethics beaten into me, not physically, but you know what I mean,\u201d she said, laughing again. \u201cJust those sort of core values of protecting your art form, protecting your community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amy Miller will record her first hour-long special on Sunday, Aug. 23, at the Alternative Music Foundation, 924 Gilman St., Berkeley. Chris Estrada opens. Doors at 7pm, comedy at 7:30pm. Advance tickets $20; $25 at the door. 924gilman.org\/tickets<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two things guide the work of comedian Amy Miller: holding to one\u2019s ethics and fighting to protect one\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":436797,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[173338,143,145,144,121336],"class_list":["post-436796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-924-gilman","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-standup-comedy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}