Some comedy aficionados make the case that Andrew Dice Clay was always as much performance art as stand-up, akin to the character comedy of Pee-wee Herman and Andy Kaufman. When I interviewed Clay years ago, my impression was that if that were so, years of doing the persona had infiltrated his real self so thoroughly that the two had become blurred even in his own mind. But the relationship between an artist on and offstage is often more complicated than it appears.
The argument that his comedy has a self-aware avant-garde streak often leans on his 1990 album, “The Day the Laughter Died,” which he recorded at the intimate New York club Dangerfield’s (now called Rodney’s) around the holidays. It was a stunt, entirely improvised, filled with awkward silence, filthy trash talk and the ramblings of a man who sounds like he’s chattering away to himself.
TikTok Dice has none of the coarse language but does include plenty of the awkward tension and delirious nonsense. In one post, he approaches a man with a mustache outside an airport and asks if he’s the mathematician Vernon Spellcheck. There’s a whole subset of videos where the comic calls people “Big shot” for things like wearing shorts or talking on the phone. “Big shot, no hat,” he tells pedestrians hurrying down what looks like Central Park West.
A Jewish kid from Brooklyn, Andrew Clay Silverstein began his career with an act where he did an impression of a nerdy Jerry Lewis type from “The Nutty Professor” and then transformed into a John Travolta figure. Eventually the cocky Italian guy stuck while the nerd vanished. You could view a scroll through his social media accounts as the reverse story. In early videos, he breaks out Travolta dance moves but finds success playing the nebbish, so sticks with that.
There are echoes of the old Clay, but usually as something to deflate. In one video the week before Thanksgiving, he enters a Whole Foods and launches into a filthy Mother Hubbard nursery rhyme, a performance for one guy. Turning beloved kids’ rhymes into dirty jokes was once his signature bit, earning roars from arenas. Right before the punchline, the audience of one gets distracted, and Clay stops. The stranger apologizes and says, “I wasn’t listening.”
On one album, Clay refused an audience request to do the nursery rhymes. Now he volunteers it to people who don’t care and he posts the results. His comedy has been so polarizing that it’s easy to miss what a gifted performer he is — the timing of his delivery, the undeniable presence. Even if you hate him, it’s hard to deny that the guy is fun to imitate — you hear his influence in the snap of the voices of Natasha Lyonne (who gave him a shout-out on her series “Russian Doll”) and the comic Robby Hoffman. There was nothing exactly like Clay before him. And there’s nothing exactly like his current hypnotic feed. I find myself captivated by how easily he abases himself without getting maudlin.