ONE DREAM WAS OVER, TIME FOR ANOTHER

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

In April of 1985, 40 years ago, my partner and I were still working a fair amount, but enjoying it less. She was living in Burlingame, near San Francisco Airport, but she would be on the verge of tears every time we left her house for some meaningless gig, especially as her children, then 4 and 2, would be looking sadly out the window as Mommy was going away. I was living in LA, but the work with her in NoCal was paying the bills. Sadly, the people we were getting bookings from really didn’t regard us that highly. One comedy club booker said she couldn’t headline us, and I said to her if she looks on us as an opening act, at least put us on with someone of a certain status level. I also said as an example, don’t book us as an opener for (a comic we didn’t particularly respect). She agreed, but then the second time she booked us, of course we opened for the one I told her not to book us with. Even he said he felt stupid following us. Slaps in the face like that and the ultimate humiliation of agreeing to play at a horse racetrack in between the races, probably in the bottom five of most humiliating gigs I had ever done, and suddenly we were The Fabulous Baker Boys (One of my favourite films of the 80s). Something had to change.

One of San Francisco’s more prominent comics at that time was a guy named Doug Ferrari, who in the previous year had won the SF Comedy Competition, which as far as I know is still going as an annual event. Doug and I hung out quite a bit and while he never blatantly said I should go solo, we found we were kindred spirits in that we thought the same musical stuff was funny. He wrote some material for me, and also gave me some gigs as his opener, most of which were restaurants and bars that had comedy once a month. I don’t even remember what I was doing in my act then, but since I always did a few minutes to open our shows before bringing Ruby on, I at least had that much material to play with. I was discovering I liked it, but wasn’t sure what direction I was going to go with it. I knew I had to figure something out as the days of the duo were clearly numbered.

I would spend a couple weeks each month in Northern Cal, working not only with Ruby, but also doing music gigs with the novelty band The Stupeds, which did manage to become some sort of cult favourite. The idea of playing the most obnoxious songs ever to make the top 5 caught on with a select group of people, and LA had taken some interest in the band as well. We had a gig earlier in the year at a trendy club on Hollwood Boulevard called Club Lingerie, and because a writer for the LA Times did a feature on us in the Sunday paper the weekend before the gig, the place sold out. We did a return gig in April where they gave us the entire night, and we made $1400 to be divided up among a personnel of ten. However, momentum was a problem, as I was the only one in the band who lived in LA, so that April gig was our swan song at Lingerie. However, I was able to book us at other LA venues over the years, including the Comedy Store, where we found new fans in Rosanne Barr and Bill Murray.

One of the things that set Rick and Ruby apart from other cabaret acts was our special events, most prominent being our annual Last Prom. Staged at the Great American Music Hall, a San Francisco venue that is still going, we would enlist comedians and musicians to create an adult version of the sort of high school prom we would have liked to have. Most of our guests would play the character they were (or wanted to be) in high school. We did it almost every year from 1978 to 1985, and Robin Williams showed up for almost all of them, playing the student body president Bud Johnson. He once referred to our Prom as “Performance Art before there was Performance Art.” In 1985, knowing our draw was not what it had been, we thought we’d ask someone higher up if he’d like to co-produce it with us. He had been an admirer of ours, and agreed to meet up with us. We told him about the Prom, and he knew of it, but said he was pretty busy with the show he had been producing (for 11 years at that point) and couldn’t commit to anything. He wished us best of luck, and then about a month later, announced a new show titled “(name withheld because you never know) Goes to the Prom!” The attitude reeked of “Yeah, we stole it, try to sue us!”

We did manage to do our Prom, featuring one of the former cast members of the revue that was ripping us off. It had its moments, and drew fairly well in spite of all the backstage intrigue. It would be a final effort for Rick and Ruby, as she would be moving to Sacramento, which made the prospect of working together that much less of a possibility. Spring of 1985 was transitional in so many ways. In my personal life, a 4-year relationship was hanging on by a thread, finally ending in September. I thought I’d leave LA and head back to San Francisco with my tail between my legs after that was over, but in November, my career would change for something much better. That’s a whole nother story.

April 23rd, 2025



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