The Jerky Boys

It all started in the late ’80’s, when Johnny was still working in the construction business He’d just received a speaker phone as a gift, and he was searching want ads for a pickup truck when he suddenly had a bright idea. Before long, he was playing a tape of his uproarious phone calls for family and friends. His pal Kamal then started making calls with him; a 900 line followed, and their ad hoc antics were compliled into an album for an independent label. The Jerky Boys characters have since inspired imitators, but their concept remains the same as the first day the speaker phone was used.

The act’s biggest inspiration came from the ethnically mixed neighborhoods full of wacko-crazy oddballs they had grown up in. “I pick up everything around me,” explains Johnny, born into a big Irish-American family 35 years ago. Kamal, conceived five years later by a Bangladeshi father and Trinidadian mom, based his Tarbash, the magician character on his own father’s accent. People who are themselves unhappy, Johnny says, will always manage to dig up some reason to be offended, but there is nothing mean-spirited about The Jerky Boys’ characterizations. Their audiene, incidentally, crosses all demographic barriers.

The character’s names, as well as the phone calls, Johnny explains, are created spontaneously. When inspired to name his very popular Italian-American hardguy persona Frank Rizzo, he didn’t even realized Philadelphia had a long-time mayor with the same name. And to do Rizzo is not a stretch, Johnny claims, since Rizzo is basically Johnny himself with a few tough guys, sizzlechests and nutty-asses tossed in.

They’ve recorded over 200 or so calls in their career, Johhny says, 90 percent of which they’ve wound up using. We’re making a lot of people happy, Johnny says. It just tickles the funnybone people literally piss themselves laughing. It is slapstick for your ears, improvisational theater of the mind.

Old movie slapstick The Three Stooges, Mark Brothers, Abbott and Costello serve as a basis for the type of comedy they identify with far more than the static ’90’s standup-on nightclub-stage variety. It is rare to find present-day comedians who don’t do shtick, so naturally, The Jerky Boys popularity has snowballed. First, into frat houses and dormrooms, then throughout ehtnically diverse East coast tough-guy towns like New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, then on to reaching fans both nationally and internationally. In addition, The Jerky Boys are enamored by a wide range of numerous fans among sports celebrities, actors, and musicians, including Mariah Carey (Johnny Brennan was seen in her video “Honey”). Lately, Johnny laughs, we do these signings when we go around to record stores, and a lot of parents come up with their children, three or four years old, and the kids know shit from the tapes by heart!