The Worst New Year’s Gig Of All

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

And in the 48 years since my first New Year’s Eve gig, I’ve only not worked on six of them, and five of those were consecutive (2008-2012). For the most part, New Year’s Eve sucks from a performance standpoint. Why should people in the mood to get totally shit-faced be in a venue where they must be relatively quiet while someone else is talking into a microphone? Theoretically, no one should be near a microphone at midnight, unless they’re counting down the final seconds. In those minutes before, it’s usually a chaotic mess, and having experienced it 42 times, I think I know from whence I speak.

When I was writing my master list of December 31 gigs yesterday, there was a bit of a blur in the mid-90’s, which probably meant that I was in the ho-hum routine of doing the Comedy Store and/or The Laugh Factory in LA, though in 92 and 93, I worked in Memphis when the Laugh Factory had a venue. Still one of those years (1998) stood out as a good one. I made a ton of money in 1979, but really didn’t have that much fun. There were a couple times (1972 and 1987) where I was paid a lot less than promised. There was a drug-addled gig at a comedy room in the East Bay in 1988 that was a lot of fun except the party sort of usurped the actual gig. And 1973 in Anchorage, Alaska was surprisingly fun, considering that the rest of the month we were there had been total crap.

So while the best one may have been 2000, where I made a good day’s pay, had a fun gig, and got to stay at the San Francisco Hyatt Regency (where the gig also took place) and view the fireworks from my suite, the Absolute Worst was 24 years before in San Jose. 1976 had not been a good year for a variety of reasons, mostly financial. I stayed at my parents’ house for an entire month that year, as there were just no gigs for that whole time, and I had just enough money in my account to pay the next month’s rent. Everything else was going to have to slide.

I’m not sure who booked or offered this particular gig, but clearly we had no other options but to take it, and I seriously doubt the money was much more than $100 for each of us. It was at a health spa in the San Jose suburbs, and I knew on our arrival that things were not going to go well. At the time, I wore a cowboy hat as part of my daily attire, and as I drove up to the parking area, I identified me and my partner as the entertainers for the night, and the attendant’s first response was, “Oh cool, a Country music act.” I said, “Well, not really,” and I think I might have abandoned that hat shortly after.

The thing that can be really scary about NYE gigs is that frequently they’re attended by people who feel pressured to enjoy the night only because of what date is on the calendar, and they might be lonely and depressed otherwise. The people at this party personified that factor. As my partner went to find a changing room, someone in charge recommended the sauna room, which was turned off. But as she went into the sauna, she found it was packed with women in their full party dress, sitting in the unheated room, and as my partner asked what they were doing there, one of them indignantly said, “We’re cold!” They would be that way as an audience as well.

As for the show itself, our entire act was engulfed by a distorted sound system, and no monitor speakers for us to hear ourselves, and when we asked the designated sound person if there were monitors available, he said, “What are they?” By the time we started, it was about 9:30, and very few people paid us much attention, except to give us piecing stares as if we were responsible for spoiling their evening. They expected us to lead the countdown to midnight and sing Auld Lang Syne, which we managed to do, but with the audience having as much enthusiasm as they would for root canal surgery. One guy had an explanation for why we didn’t go down too well: “You need to play some stuff with a Latin beat!” Gosh, the solution was right in front of our eyes!

I’m not sure what infectious disease was spreading throughout the room that night, but we quit at about 12:30, just before some possibly once-a-year drunk threw up in another girl’s hair. I don’t know that the girl could complain that Mr. Vomit spoiled her evening, as she was likely part of the throng of gloom that was dictating the energy flow. If she was determined to have a lousy night, the puke shampoo put a nice exclamation point on it.

We didn’t exactly leave the party in fine fettle either. We felt that if more of this was on tap for 1977, maybe it was time to call it a day. Fortunately, 1977 was a turning point year for us, as our innocent little act started to finally catch the eye of the Bay Area cognoscenti. In the meantime, however, the NYE gig had one more whammy to put on me. I had a girlfriend meet me at the gig, but because there was so much disorganisation among the supposed party-planners, I really couldn’t talk to her much during the gig. She left before we were even done, and then called me a couple days later to break it off.  Happy New Year, indeed!

All that said, I look forward to tonight, the 4th year in a row of DJing, and letting the music be the entertainment. I hope that if I don’t see you tonight, it’s because you’re in a good place and in a good mood. Happy 2019 to all of you.

 

December 31st, 2018



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