END OF AN ERA

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

Yesterday I got the news I was expecting to get, which was that my eight-year run as vinyl DJ at The King’s Head in Crouch End was done. Granted, because of the Pandemic, there was a gap from March 2020 to New Years Eve 2022 that got in the way. Even so, my actual return to anything regular wouldn’t start until May, and I would only go once a month, so I had a total of five chances to prove my worth. The final blow was when the guy who had rehired me left the club to return to Australia. That left it up to a new regime, and I knew they either didn’t like what I was doing, or didn’t get it, or a combination of both.

My history with the club goes back to my first gig in the downstairs comedy room in August of 2000. Even when I was moving away from comedy as my main source of income, the fact that I moved in 2013 to a place that was a 15 minute walk from the club made me wander over there with some regularity. In 2014, the then manager was running a monthly “Bring Your Own Vinyl” night, and I frequented that, eventually sort of taking it over, as my choices of music spanned so many styles and decades. In June of 2015, the manager texted me with an idea that maybe I could bring some vinyls and play them on Sunday afternoons. I didn’t have to ponder that offer too long! I mean, getting paid to do what I had been doing as a hobby for about 50 years? Easy peasy.

It wasn’t that easy at the start. I was set up downstairs and the music was piped into the upstairs. I was still playing great music, but it was a waste of their money if nobody was going to see that I was playing original copies from a stack of about 300 that I had brought along. During the two months I was down there, I was lucky if anyone came downstairs, and usually it was someone I knew. I thought I was done back then.

But at about the same time I was going to America for a couple of weeks, the manager decided to close the club and do some refurbishment. One of the things she did was get a sound system set up in the main upstairs area so people could actually see what I was doing. I got moved from Sunday afternoons to early evenings. The club had weekly jazz in the downstairs on Sunday afternoons (they still do), and the musicians often hung out upstairs after to hear my stuff.

So it went for the next year and a half, sometimes well received, sometimes not, but in 2017, the manager left to manage a place in Bristol, and I thought uh oh! However, the new manager had seen what I did and liked it, plus he’d seen my stand-up and liked that as well. He said he had no plans to change anything, so my gig was safe. A year later, he decided to move me to Friday evenings, as the crowds on Sunday weren’t enough to justify what they were paying. I got a raise and the first Friday was insane with people dancing and applauding. It wouldn’t always be that way, but there were some devotees who would come almost every week and stay the entire time.

So it went right up until the Pandemic, and even though the club was closed for a year, we kept in touch. It was slow going and I had given up on it, until last year right before Christmas, he asked if I’d like to do New Years, as the act he had booked had to cancel. I was happy to do it, even if I wasn’t the first choice. We did well enough that he promised he’d have me back, but only on a monthly basis. I was fine with that, since I was busy with plenty of other things. The warning sign was an assistant manager who was spending more time there than he was. She was younger and clearly had a different agenda. When she told me in August that the manager was leaving, I felt like every gig I did there would feel like an audition. Last Friday, there were 12 people that were there specifically for me and most of them stayed the entire night. It wasn’t enough to impress the assistant manager to hype me to the incoming manager that they should keep me on, and that was that!

I had a similar experience with a comedy room in Encino called the LA Cabaret, where I worked from 1986 until 1998 when a new manager came in. He and I got along really well at first, and he was also a musician who floated the idea of me playing with him in a house band. We gave that a couple of rehearsals, but were not connecting well. I remember saying to him, “I don’t mind playing ‘Sweet Home Alabama,’ I just mind REHEARSING it, as I already know it.” The artistic differences wound up affecting my comedy stage time, and I had that same feeling I would have at King’s Head, that each spot felt like an audition. I saw him once sitting there watching me with an expression that plainly said, “You’re done,” and I was so offended by his attitude that I immediately left and never returned there again. The club would close a year or so later. Just desserts!

I am scheduled to play at the Downstairs comedy room at King’s Head on January 27, but until then I plan to impose my own boycott. Maybe that’s petty, but there’s plenty of other places to go. Maybe there’s even one that would be interested in a vinyl DJ!

September 22nd, 2023



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