I didn’t know much about Mitch Hedberg until recently. I’ve been listening to his two albums for the past month and laughing my ass off. It took me a little while to warm up to his material, but now I can listen to the three clips below over and over again. Sadly, Mitch died of accidental drug overdose on March 30, 2005. He was 37 years old.

The rise and fall of comedy’s Kurt Cobain — The rock & roll life and sudden death of Mitch Hedberg, an underappreciated stand-up genius.

Sunday night, March 20, 2005. The last moments of the last show. Carolines comedy club in New York City was packed — table after table of devoted fans, jealous rivals, and even a few rock stars. All there to see him. The man on stage. And they were roaring.

Mitch Hedberg blinked into the ocean of applause and let slip a lopsided smile. The 37-year-old comic was crushing. After almost two decades in comedy, the former fry cook had all but been handed the deed to the most important stand-up joint in the country. So he grinned and ambled off the stage into the arms of his wife, Lynn Shawcroft.

”Young comedians are always trying to ape someone else,” says Conan O’Brien. ”Even when they’re good you can always tell where their influence was. ‘This guy is doing a Seinfeld with a twist.’ ‘That guy is doing Sam Kinison toned down a notch.’ And then you see someone like Mitch, and it’s like his brain was put in backwards.”

Hedberg’s stage persona read ‘’stoner freak.” He hid his face behind flowing hair and trademark amber sunglasses. He stared at the floor as he mumbled his lines. But he may have been the closest thing that contemporary stand-up had to a comic’s comic — a man who was absolutely revered by his peers.

His stuff was absurdist. Observational. At once completely clean and totally twisted. Other artists would marvel at lines like ”I like rice. Rice is great when you’re hungry and you want 2,000 of something.’‘ On the page, his humor might seem simple, even a little silly, but when delivered in his beat-poet voice it was like listening to a creature that had fallen to earth.

”I always asked people, ‘How many times did you see him?’ ‘Once.’ ‘Once?’ That was like seeing the Grateful Dead once,” says Randy Kagan, a friend and fellow stand-up who frequently opened for Hedberg. ”You can’t see the Dead once. You had to see ‘em over and over again to get an idea. That was what Mitch was like to me.”

George Carlin, Dave Chappelle, and Lewis Black were admirers. David Letterman had him on his show 10 times. And to his fans. Few other comedians had as passionate a cult following. Everyone from college kids to Canadian grandmothers called themselves partisans, lining up for blocks to see his shows, buying both his albums, and gleefully going online to swap favorite sets. By the end, they would even anticipate his punchlines, shouting them out if Hedberg couldn’t get them off fast enough. ”Didn’t you hear of a dramatic pause?” he’d complain whenever an overeager fan stepped on his jokes.

Download (Right-Click Save As):***Caution
MP3: Mitch Hedberg — Three Easy Payments. (See Wampum Below)
MP3: Mitch Hedberg - X
MP3: Mitch Hedberg — Movie Plot.
MP3: Peter Frampton - Show Me The Way

Download:
Mitch Hedberg - Mitch All Together (iTunes)
Mitch Hedberg - Strategic Grill Locations (iTunes)

wam·pum (wmpm, wôm-)
Small cylindrical beads made from polished shells and fashioned into strings or
belts, formerly used by certain Native American peoples as currency and jewelry
or for ceremonial exchanges between groups.

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