A Little Side Project That Lasted 30 Years

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

In 1980, slightly bored and in our first stages of preparing to leave San Francisco, our keyboard player Joshua (Raoul) came up with an idea of a one off gig saluting the worst (by our own reckoning) songs to make the top 10. In the process, he christened the Rick and Ruby offshoot The STUPEDS (Society To Undertake the Preservation of Endangered Dumb Songs), though it was mostly through his own initiative that the project ever got off the ground. We debuted the idea at the Palms Cafe on Polk Street in SF, where we had racked up many triumphs.

We would do several incarnations over the ensuing years in San Francisco, and in early 1985, I managed to book us at Hollywood’s then-trendy Club Lingerie on Sunset Blvd. The gig sold out, as some journalist friend of Joshua’s wrote an article about the band that appeared in the Sunday LA Times only a few days before. We were actually booked as an opener for a Jackie Wilson tribute act, but that would switch the day after the article came out. Sadly, the only thing that really came out of that gig was a return gig at Lingerie later that spring.

Flash forward to 1988 and after being in the Comedy Store’s good graces as a solo standup for just over two years, I was able to book The STUPEDS to play The Comedy Store Main Room where we took 60% of the door. The club did virtually nothing to help us promote the show, yet we still drew about 100 paying customers on a Sunday night. We got panned by Variety, whose reviewer clearly didn’t get that by presenting the annoying songs in rapid fire medleys without changing anything would be entertaining and funny, whereas the reviewer from the late LA Herald-Examiner completely got it and loved us for it.

But The STUPEDS weren’t through with the LA hype machine. There was enough LA interest that a year later. I managed to use my minimal connections to book us on three consecutive nights in various SoCal venues, and managed to get the bookings without us auditioning. This time, we were also able to get LA TV stations interested, and they came in full force. “Happy News” was where we fit in, and every segment that ran had the presenters introducing it with something on the level of “We love those silly songs from the past like That’s The Way Uh-Huh Uh-Huh I Like It and Yummy Yummy Yummy I Got Love In My Tummy,” though neither of those songs was in our repertoire. Didn’t really matter in the long run.

I was a total idiot in this situation, totally freezing when the interviewers asked “What is it about you that appeals to so many?” I hemmed and hawed, and ultimately I was probably the only member of the band who had no screen time when the segment aired. There were a lot of things I could have said but didn’t. And then just to bury myself even deeper, when I was on the phone with one of the hosts after the segment aired, I asked her why she had put spangle in her hair for the broadcast, None of my goddam business should have been the answer, but she sort of agreed with me. I pretty much guaranteed that any footage of me would be totally erased, and it was.

Still, the gigs at the Santa Monica jazz club At My Place, the Encino comedy club LA Cabaret, and North Hollywood’s legendary Palomino club were all very well attended. Attending our show at LA Cabaret were Rosanne Barr and her first husband Bill Pentland, and a brief friendship developed. I also remember when we sound checked at the Palomino, the managers of the legendary but on-its-last-legs club complemented us on the fact that we were actually singing and harmonising and everything was on key! God knows what they had to deal with previously.

We didn’t gain any further ground from this run, but nonetheless we remained a cult favourite in San Francisco even after I had moved to UK. We would continue to do gigs if I was in California, including a 2006 show at Cobb’s Comedy Club in SF that sold out a 400-seat room on a Monday night. The gigs were few and far between, but fun when they happened, and we would keep reuniting until 2012, when our long time lead guitarist extraordinaire, Jeff Kane, succumbed to cancer. Still, I listen to the recording of that night at Cobb’s, and marvel at what a good band we were. It was only our material that sucked!

August 28th, 2022



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