PARTYING LIKE IT WAS 1999, BECAUSE IT WAS

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

Tomorrow, to ring in the New Year, Maggie and I will be at home dog-sitting while her daughter is away, and for the most part I’m relieved to not be dealing with the rigamarole that New Year’s gigs can be. I’ve detailed my past history with those gigs, good and bad, and ultimately the only thing I’m missing about it is the money. We’ll probably just toast with a couple glasses of champagne and watch Jools Holland’s musical cavalcade. When you’re in your 70’s, your definition of partying differs from what it was in your 30’s and 40’s.

One gig of the past that I was reminded of when I was blogging last week was the next to the last New Years Eve I would play in LA. My last would be three years later in 2002. This was one of several times where I would double up with gigs at The Comedy Store and Laugh Factory. The Factory liked to have me on at midnight as I was most often their only musical comic who was available, and it was easier for me with my guitar to lead the singing of Auld Lang Syne. It also helped in scheduling that there was a regular from the Comedy Store who had been there forever and he liked leading the countdown there. I was amazed that there was never a conflict even with shows almost always running late, but I managed to get from one gig to the other (the two clubs were only a 5-minute drive apart) with plenty of time to spare.

1999 was going to be different because of the Y2K scare. It was believed by many that with the calendar switching to a new millennium, that somehow computers would have major malfunctions and revert back to 1900 rather than 2000, creating chaos worldwide. I knew even less about computers back then, and there’s still plenty I don’t know, but even computer-illiterate me knew this was just a projection. I had a plan for what to do at the Laugh Factory, which had a big clock on the stage that was counting down the minutes and seconds until midnight. It was actually the idea of the woman who was my date that night that it might be funny to have the club turn out all the lights at the stroke of midnight and see if anyone freaks out.

I asked the club about it, and they seemed to think it would be funny, so long as A) The feared catastrophe doesn’t happen, and B) They only leave the lights out for maybe 5 seconds. I was glad the people in charge were on board for it, and as the seconds ticked down to midnight, I was reasonably sure they’d know what to do. In short, they didn’t! At stroke of midnight, the only lights that went out were the ones on stage, while the rest of the room was lit, and the only discomfort came from me, as this whole prank failed miserably. I gained enough composure to start singing Auld Lang Syne while the staff kept me literally in the dark for the next 30 seconds or so before they figured out how to reilluminate me. It also helped that I moved directly from singing Auld Lang Syne to singing Prince’s 1999, which brought the audience energy back. From there I was able to make the crowd forget the awkward moment.

One other memorable thing that happened with that gig was a young guy coming onstage with his girlfriend, getting down on one knee, pulling out a ring, and proposing marriage. Good thing she said yes. I remember seeing one of those public proposals backfire at a baseball game, where a guy posted his proposal on the scoreboard’s video screen, then when the camera panned on the couple, you could clearly see the woman say no. The couple at the Laugh Factory left the club as soon as they had kissed, and I felt a sense of melancholy, as their happiness just reminded me that my own marriage of nearly nine years had gone bust that year. My ex was already ensconced in a relationship while the person I was with that night would only be a friend.

That may have been a lonely New Years for me, but I would find some relief in the year 2000 with a whole new country to work in and three years later move to. I wouldn’t have believed it at the time that such drastic changes were coming, but I don’t even want to think of what would have happened to me had I not made the UK connection. Hope you’ve all got somewhere to be and/or someone to be with, but if you don’t have either, I would hope you’re comfortable wherever you are. All the best to all of you in 2024!

December 30th, 2023



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