OPENING ACT HIGH AND LOW….. IN THE SAME EVENING!

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

Last night I did my weekly podcast Comedy Dish with host and fellow comic Steven Alan Green, and I persuaded my former partner Ruby (Monica Ganas) to be our special guest. What excited me most about it was the advance promo on Facebook got about ten times the number of “likes” and comments that we usually get. It seems there’s a large pocket of people who found whatever it was we did not just memorable but influential and a host of other superlatives.

It was 30 years ago this month that I had a gig at LA’s Roxy Theatre (the same place we recorded the Pee Wee Herman Show 10 years before) opening for a guitar hero who was one of those avid fans of ours when he was coming up through the Bay Area. Because he’s still among us and working, I’ll leave him anonymous for now. He never had chart singles, but had a pretty solid cult following, with one platinum and three gold albums. Because I have always primarily followed top 40 and not so much albums, I had not heard of him before I was booked to open for him.

I showed up at the Roxy about an hour before the gig was to start, did my sound check, then went to introduce myself to the virtuoso and his band. He looked at me and almost instantaneously said, “Wow, you’re from Rick & Ruby aren’t you?” I said yes, and he recounted the times he saw us at one San Francisco club we both worked. He was so impressed that I was opening for him, he asked for an autographed photo! I’m sure it’s happened before, particularly if some legend agrees to open for some flavour of the month, but little old me?. I was blown away that he spoke so admiringly about us and we had some fond reminiscences about the Bay Area club scene. Unfortunately, that was as good as it was gonna get!

My dressing room could have passed for a hallway, as there were no doors, plus the club had not even provided me with water, let alone any actual food or beverage. Meanwhile, the headliner had a full spread of cold cuts, fruit, salad, beer, soft drinks, treats. I knocked and asked if I could just have a Coke, and his attitude went 180 from what it had been only about 10 minutes before. He had this agonised expression on his face, and said something akin to, “Yeah, just take it and get the fuck out.” I was shocked by how quickly the admiration had faded, but refused to let it get in the way of doing the first of two shows, and thought maybe he’d be in a better mood after he got a show out of the way.

His show was brilliant, I gotta say, and I did alright too, considering I was the warm up who about half the crowd wasn’t going to pay attention to anyway. This was a time that has come and gone, where comics were often hired to open for music acts. I have a lengthy list of music acts that either I or Rick & Ruby opened for, and most of the time, it made for a nice contrast. I had some disasters in that milieu too, but for now let’s focus on this one.

In the audience to witness this Rising Star was the 70’s star Peter Frampton, and what made it interesting for me was I had a bit in my act where I imitated the vocoder guitar lick from “Show Me The Way,” then would say, “Yeah, what a legacy he left behind!” It’s only happened about three times where someone I trash has actually been in the audience, but Frampton, being a nice guy who had heard much worse over the years, found the humour in it. He said so when he came backstage after the show, but then excused himself to hang with the headliner.

A LOT of people wanted to hang with the headliner, but in keeping with his possessive attitude, he kept the throng out of his dressing room, instead bringing about 30 people into MINE! Without asking! I was hosting a party I wasn’t even invited to, all this going on as I was changing clothes to start the second show. There were too many of them for me to be heard protesting this intrusion, and though the party broke up after about 10 minutes, they were crucial minutes, as I was now pissed off to begin my second show. I was appeased when Frampton said to me with a smile, “Go easy on me up there, OK?” Not so appeased when the headliner said, “You can tell me to get the fuck out of here if you want.” That was about as close to an apology as I got from him.

Safe to say I did my second show and “got the fuck out of there.” I was just thankful my wife was with me for that one so I had someone to keep me from retaliating against someone being a jerk by being a bigger jerk. I was surely tempted.

August 26th, 2021



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