ADVENTURES DOWN UNDER

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

It was almost exactly 25 years ago today that I was on a flight from LA to Sydney, Australia, where I would be spending the next six weeks entertaining five nights a week in the city’s posh Double Bay area. This would be my first time entertaining English speaking audiences who weren’t Americans, for even though I had previously gone to Korea and Japan, those gigs were for US military. Would they get my act as it was, or would I need to adapt? Actually, yes on both counts, but happily the music was a universal enough language that my need to adapt was minimal.

I was booked there by fellow Comedy Store comic Bruce Smirnoff, who had been there a couple years before, and managed to persuade one of Oz’s best known comics at the time that booking American comics over there could be a big money maker. The man known as Austen Tayshus agreed, and I was on the second run of which there would be a total of three. Bruce appeared on the shows with me, along with a comics’ favourite, Lenny Schultz, who was 63 at the time, is now 88 and still with us, though the Crazy Lenny that he was renowned for has been retired. It was an interesting mix with Bruce, a straight monologist, myself with the music, and Lenny with his barrelful of props and ideas seeming to come from Mars.

We were put up at rather decent hotels, with Bruce staying at the Ritz Carlton (the same one where Michael Hutchence, the lead singer of the Aussie band INXS killed himself), and Lenny and I at a nearby bed and breakfast. It was also nice that there was only one show per night, as most of my US road gigs would have two, sometimes three, shows on weekends. It was good there was only one show, because one of the things we weren’t prepared for was the endless waits to go on.

The shows lasted nearly three hours, for only one reason. Austen, the producer of the shows, was also the emcee, and he was fairly well known for past career peaks. He’d had a huge hit novelty single in 1983 called Australiana that held the #1 spot for eight weeks, but much of the money he’d made off of that single had gone to excesses, familiar story. He was bitter that his best days were behind him, but it didn’t stop him from doing 30 minutes to start each show, then another 30 between each act. In his opening “concert,” he would announce, “As the evening moves on, we’ll be bringing some Americans on stage, and as they’re doing their acts, you’ll be asking yourself ‘When does Austen come back on?'” We did well most every night in spite of his apparent desire for us to fail.

I mentioned in blogs from December 2020 and May 2021 about doing the local afternoon talk show called MidDay with Kerri Anne and meeting country star Charley Pride and pop/country star B.J. Thomas on my two guest appearances on the show. Both were lovely people that have passed on in the last 13 months. The second time I did the show was a bonus in that it was the only time in any TV appearance where I was allowed to take requests from the studio audience. The producers had a game plan where they would have audience plants to request stuff just in case there was any lull. As it turned out, that was not a problem. From the very second I asked, “What do you want to hear,” I was besieged, and fortunately it was for stuff I already had material for. The audience plants were largely silent.

What was a shame was I never got outside of greater Sydney the whole time I was there, though I often spent my daytimes looking in used record shops for records I knew I wouldn’t find anywhere else. (Never found a copy of Australiana though) I met this one couple at one show who were mutual friends of someone I knew in LA, and she had told me to look them up. They came, we got along great, and they invited me over for dinner on one of my off nights, and I brought a few of my record finds to play as after dinner nostalgia. They were a lovely couple, and they arranged for one of my last Mondays to come to my hotel and take me for a ride to see The Outback. I was really looking forward to that, then they called me on that Monday morning, to say in a rather mournful tone, “I’m sorry Rick, we can’t do the trip today, we just broke up!” I tried to dismiss it lightly, saying “Could you maybe hold off one day and pretend it hasn’t happened yet?” but there was no movement there.

Meanwhile, tensions were high in the club those last couple weeks. Austen had a very loud voice, and one night as I’m sitting in the show room, I could hear him talking outside to the owner of the venue, who was losing a lot of money on this gig. Austen had no sympathy, and I could hear him loudly calling the owner an idiot, and that his idiocy was why the shows weren’t making money. After hearing about five minutes of that vitriol, I came back and said “You know the customers can hear this shit,” to which Austen jumped on me for interfering and appearing to take the owner’s side, which was not true. Austen never spoke to me again for the remaining two weeks. By this time, Bruce had already bailed and gone back to LA, because he had one bad night and decided the novelty of Australia had worn off. There were local acts added to the bill each night along with Lenny and me for the remaining two weeks. I doubt there’s any reason I’ll see Australia again.

I was told a funny story about Austen many years later in England by someone who knew him well. He was booked to play a private party for $10000, and when he got to the gig, he noticed the only person his age was the person who booked him. Austen saw the average age was about 70, and got nervous, asking the booker what he should do. The booker said “Do the exact same act I saw you do last month.” He agreed and did a stream of profanities of the worst order, being greeted by total silence at every turn, carrying on for close to 45 minutes while the geriatric audience looked aghast. He went off to no applause and immediately sought refuge in the company of the booker, who was delighted. As he handed Austen the $10000 in cash, he congratulated Austen on a job well done, then explained, “It was my mother-in-law’s birthday party!”

January 31st, 2022



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