Sub Pop Records

DAVID CROSS

From its foundation as a Puritan colony in 1630, to the ban on William S. Burroughs’ groundbreaking The Naked Lunch during the free-wheeling ‘60s, Boston has a long, proud tradition of suppressing freedom of expression. Yet it has also nurtured some of our nation’s most provocative individuals: Donna Summer, the Pixies, Edgar Allen Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Guess which side of that cultural divide David Cross falls on?

It was here in Massachusetts’ capital city that our hero dropped out of college after the longest semester of his young life. Here that he first forged his career in the white-hot crucible of the late ’80s comedy scene, with exactly the sort of smart, thought-provoking remarks that could have once landed a man in the stockades. And here that he returned, after years in the wildernesses of Los Angeles and New York, to record the performances documented on Bigger and Blackerer.

Five years had passed since Cross’ last national trek. Originally, he’d intended his return to the live stage to coincide with a promotional tour for his 2009 book I Drink for a Reason. But, while the book was published (“One of the funniest books I’ve ever skimmed!”—Paul Rudd), this promotional tour never materialized. Undeterred, Cross took bits of new material he’d been refining at benefits, festivals, and family potlucks, and stitched them into an evening’s worth of entertainment. For the first time, Cross played mostly big houses—“theaters,” as they say in legit circles. Mercifully, plush seats or no, the venues still poured their drinks with a heavy hand.

Bigger and Blackerer was taped during two such shows, back-to-back on the same evening at Boston’s Wilbur Theatre. As you may have…