Featured Essay: Laughing in Analog: How Cheech & Chong Led Me Down a Comedy Vinyl Rabbit Hole

by Ronald Gross

It started, as most vinyl obsessions do, in someone else’s collection. My brother had some comedy records and one that stood out was Up in Smoke. We would listen to that till the grooves couldn’t hold the needle anymore. “The Ajax Lady”, “Lard Ass”, and “I Didn’t Know Your Name Was Alex” all were standouts. Then I found out that the original Cheech & Chong’s Big Bambu had an oversized rolling paper in it. I hunted that album down for a few years until I found it! The Big Bambu paper was still untouched inside the gatefold.

That night, I placed the needle on “Sister Mary Elephant” and experienced comedy in a way my YouTube algorithm had never suggested. The crackle before the first “SHUT UP!” The perfectly timed pause between “Dave’s not here” and “No, man, I’m Dave!” And just as I fell in love with Up in Smoke, I had the same reaction, these weren’t just jokes, they were performances that demanded your full attention, rewarding you with perfectly engineered timing that streaming could never replicate.

After the Big Bambu find, I was haunting every thrift store within fifty miles of my house, hunting for more comedy vinyl. Steve Martin’s Let’s Get Small became my next white whale until I found it wedged between Christmas albums at a Salvation Army. The clerk looked at me strangely when I literally jumped at the sight of it. “It’s just some guy in a white suit,” she said, but to me, it was a treasure. The album’s gatefold revealed Martin’s essay about comedy timing, something I’d never seen referenced online. It felt like finding a secret message from comedy’s past.

The real addiction kicked in when I discovered The Firesign Theatre. Their albums weren’t just comedy, they were audio theater that demanded multiple listens. Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers became my gateway drug to their more obscure works. Each side was a complete piece, meant to be experienced in order, with jokes that callback to earlier tracks and surreal sound effects that create an entire world between your speakers.

Richard Pryor’s concert albums taught me something else about vinyl comedy: the importance of the audience. On That Ni**er’s Crazy, you can hear every intake of breath from the crowd, every shocked laugh, every moment of tension. It’s like being there in 1974, experiencing a master at work. The vinyl pressing captures subtle nuances lost in digital versions, the way Pryor’s voice cracks during certain punchlines, the authentic room sound of the venue.

I remember back in 1982, my two older brothers took me to see the film “Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip.” It was a comedy altering moment. Pryor just laid it all out there about his experience with his drug addiction and how he used humor to reconcile with it and create a public conversation around it.

Back to my own addiction, my collection grew methodically: George Carlin’s complete works (finding Class Clown was a religious experience), Lily Tomlin’s This Is A Recording, even oddities like Stan Freberg’s advertising parodies. Each album offered something streaming couldn’t: beautiful artwork, liner notes that provided context, and that wonderful ritual of cleaning the record, dropping the needle, and committing to the experience.

The holy grail appeared at a flea market in Long Island: National Lampoon’s That’s Not Funny, That’s Sick! in mint condition. The vendor clearly didn’t know what he had, pricing it at five dollars because “the cover looked weird.” I tried to maintain composure as I handed over my Lincoln, knowing I was holding comedy history; sketches featuring young Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, and Harold Ramis before they were legends.

Today’s comedians are returning to vinyl, understanding what their predecessors knew: comedy isn’t just about the jokes, it’s about the experience. When John Mulaney releases his specials on vinyl, he’s not just being retro-cool. He’s acknowledging that comedy deserves the same reverence we give to music. The timing, the audience interaction, the physical artwork, it all matters.

My brother called last week. He’d found some comedy albums in an old box he was going through: early Eddie Murphy, Rodney Dangerfield, a worn copy of Bob Newhart’s The Button-Down Mind. “You’d probably appreciate these more than me,” he said. He’s right, they’ll join my now-substantial collection, each one preserving a moment when comedy wasn’t something you scrolled past on social media, but something you sat down with, gave your full attention to, and let wash over you in analog waves of laughter.

The giant rolling paper from Big Bambu remains unused, safely stored in its gatefold. Some things are better preserved as artifacts of their time, reminding us how comedy could be both disposable and permanent; one joke at a time, one groove at a time, eternally spiraling toward the center of our collective funny bone.

Ronald Gross is a seasoned music industry professional with over three decades of experience spanning radio, event programming, and music journalism. His career began in the late 1980s when he served on the Nassau Community College Concert Committee, followed by an internship at WPLJ radio. He went on to host a jazz show at WPIR, showcasing his deep appreciation for the genre.

In the mid-2000s, Gross contributed his expertise to major branded music initiatives, writing about Heineken’s Red Star Soul and AmsterJam programs. Since 2007, he has established himself as a respected independent music reviewer, contributing to multiple platforms including BNN (Blogger News Network), Stereo Subversion, Eburban, Soundcheck, and Every DejaVu Records.

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