Laugh, you pigs!

The 2007 album Hot February Night, recorded live during Neil Hamburger’s opening stint for frat boy favorites Tenacious D, opens with the cheers of a largely unsuspecting audience waiting to laugh. The cheering turns to confused muttering, then angry jeers, in the short time it takes Hamburger to clear his throat a half-dozen times and deliver just two jokes—one about Santa Claus sexually assaulting Britney Spears, the other about Gerald Ford benefiting from revisionist history.

Unlike many comedians, Hamburger doesn’t crave laughs or seek validation. Instead, he revels in an audience’s revulsion, incited by skewering anyone and anything in his path with an arsenal of off-kilter, off-timed jokes most comics would consider comedy killers. It’s anti-comedy, so horrible and intentionally stupid that people with certain sensibilities find it hilarious and brilliant.

Comedians can be difficult to interview, because sometimes they seem to try too hard to be funny. Here Hamburger is different, as his humor is more akin to Andy Kaufman-esque performance art. It’s difficult to tell where the character ends and the real person begins, what’s real and what he’s pulling straight from his sadomasochistic id. This interview was conducted by phone from the road between stops in “Paso Robe-lays” and “a little town called Las Vegas, New Mexico.”

CN&R: You sometimes knock your own albums. Are there any you do like?

Hamburger: They’re all exceptional; it’s like if you have children, they’re all going to be exceptional to you. Unless some of them turn out to be bad eggs. You get the occasional child who grows up to be a lout. They often get involved in drugs and/or sometimes even murder their own parent. I’ve seen this time and time again, and if you’re a newspaper reader, you’ll see the same thing. It’s scary, and when it’s your own children you have to be afraid of, that’s when you start to wonder if it’s all worth it.

Is there a point when you can feel the audience start to turn?

You can definitely tell what you’re working with, whether you’ve got some good hometown folk or just another collection of pigs. Then you have to move in the direction of what’s going to work, what your stuck with with these people. You just gotta get up there on stage and say a few things and see what you get.

Is it harder to do what you do the better-known you get, the more people know about your act and expect it?

No, it’s easy. It’s like asking a Greyhound bus driver if it’s easier or harder to drive the more they are well-known. And of course a lot of these Greyhound bus drivers do get well-known, because they’re known in the community as suppliers and manufacturers of crystal methamphetamine. You know what I’m saying? It’s like as you so eloquently put it, ‘That’s just the world we live in.’ [I never said this].

Music or comedy, which do you prefer?

Comedy. Music, that’s sort of a souvenir for people to buy. People like to listen to music and tap their feet and hum along and that sort of thing. I’d much prefer doing this comedy; that’s what I’m trained in.

What’s your formal training in comedy?

Doing thousands of shows for pigs.

Considering how angry people get, do you travel with protection?

I do bring some hand sanitizers with me at all times because you shake someone’s hand and the next thing you know you have the SARS or something of that nature. So you do have to protect yourself, yes, thanks for asking.

Who do you think is the most despicable celebrity out there now?

Well, there were some in the past but they’ve long since gone. Like most folks got really angry when Abbot and Costello were alive. It was very easy to get frustrated and angry with them, but they’re gone now. I do have a strong dislike for Madonna. She’s made this new movie now, which is ghastly. She’s made numerous bad recordings where they’ve taken her sour voice and fixed it on a computer screen and just shit it out all over. You’re just going about your business and one of these new Madonna songs just lands on you like a bowel movement from heaven, except they come straight from hell. … She’s everywhere and always terrible. It’s sad because you would like a break from that. But no, it’s essentially like McDonald’s: The quality is poor but it’s everywhere. They know it’s bad and we know it’s bad but there it is.