21 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK – WHO KNEW?

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

At this time in the year 2000, I was about to turn 50 in, of all places, Cork, Ireland, which I’d never heard of until I was booked there. Cork would be the final stop on my first of many journeys from California to mostly England over the next three years until I would decide to completely abandon my country of birth. I still have no regrets about making that decision, especially given what’s happened to the US the past five years.

I was booked for the weekend in Cork following a week tooling around mostly London, except for three nights of gigs in and around Exeter, where I remembered looking at this very British pub set up for a comedy show, and thinking, “My God, I’m in Fucking England!” I would say that a lot over the next few years, and still say it every now and then. The gigs were mostly triumphant for me, a relief because it was hard to say going in how I was going to be received.

It was an interesting time in US history, as a few days earlier there had been the notorious 2000 Presidential Election, where the phrase “hanging chad” came into fruition. Normally, it would have meant maybe some Old West criminal named Chad was about to be lynched, but now it meant some little bits of cardboard that had screwed up the tabulations of votes in the state of Florida, so much so that the Democrat Al Gore conceded, then took back his concession. George Bush was eventually declared the winner by the courts in Florida who gave the state and the majority of electoral votes to him. Seeing that crap going on made me think more than a few times that if I was going to leave the US, I couldn’t have picked a better time.

Meanwhile, the gigs were mostly going very well. This was a nice contrast to what I’d been experiencing in LA clubs over the last half of the 90’s. With both The Comedy Store and Laugh Factory throwing me the occasional bone, usually well after midnight, the LA scene seemed like pretty much a dead end. I didn’t feel creative, nor did I feel any enthusiasm. Once I made this little two-week jaunt to UK and Ireland, it’s like the creative dam burst, and with every gig I was feeling more confident. During the days, I actually thought of new material, and similar to times from about a decade before, I could think to myself, “Ooo, that’s a good idea. And I can actually try it out tonight while it’s still fresh on my mind!” In LA, I might come up with an idea and have to wait upwards of a week to try it out, by which time I may have forgotten it.

With confidence brimming, I was ready to face an entirely new challenge by playing Ireland. This by the way, is not a horror story, but only because I had a second night to redeem myself. I was doing OK for the first 10-15 minutes on the Friday night in Cork, then decided to be candid with the crowd, and remarked about how much fun I’d been having on this trip, and how great it was “playing the UK,” and I’m not even sure what was shouted back to me almost in unison from the crowd, but it was clear I had made a major faux pas. I had forgotten about “the troubles” and how they had only been resolved within the last couple of years, not to mention ignoring the fact that the Republic of Ireland is not in UK! I tried to shift gears and ask for requests, something which worked about 95% of the time. This night would fall in that other 5%, because one of the requests was for Irish folk singer/legend Christy Moore. I buried myself even deeper by asking, “Who’s SHE?” My death for the evening was now written in stone. The smattering of applause I got as I left the stage was no big surprise.

But because I had been on a creative roll, I decided to do some research the next day. It was easy to remember not to mention UK, but it behooved me to at least read up on a little history. I not only did that, but went to a music store that had listening booths and listened to Christy Moore’s greatest hits album. The night went really well, and yes I got a Christy Moore request. When that happened, I mentioned what had happened the night before, got a good laugh out of it, and sang the chorus to his best known song, Ride On. I totally floored the crowd when later someone requested Johnny Logan, the Irish crooner who was the only act ever to win Eurovision Song Contest twice. (Not to be confused with the Milwaukee Braves shortstop from the 1950’s with the same name!) I knew as much about Eurovision then as most Americans did, which was virtually nothing, but when I sang the opening lines to his Euro winner What’s Another Year, the look of “How the hell does he know that one” permeated the room, followed by a pretty fair sized cheer. The manager of the club, who had given me a lecture the night before, now was congratulating me after I left the stage. I did work that room again, but not until 10 years later.

The next day was a flight back to London, and a night hanging out at The King’s Head in Crouch End, London. I have seen a lot of that place since then, between numerous comedy gigs and weekly DJ spots. Just for fun, two weeks ago I was back in Ireland (Dublin), finally meeting some of Maggie’s family and friends who have been hearing about me for the past six years. And here I am tonight in London with only an hour left of being 70! Jolly good, sure and begorrah.

November 8th, 2021



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