8/24/22
Newsletter82
The Crack of Dawn
It’s the lark. No, it’s the nightingale.
Last night I heard a comedian say, “I believe in science, religiously.”
There was a show on British radio show called Desert Island Discs that has been on since 1942, is still on, and as of this moment has 3,227 episodes. The idea is simple: if you were stuck on a desert island, what is the one album you’d take with you? For years my knee-jerk response was Led Zeppelin (one). But just recently I was discussing this idea with a friend, and he quickly responded with Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, which is a great choice. As I was about to say, Led Zeppelin (one), I considered the question more seriously for a moment. Yes, I love Led Zeppelin (one), but do I listen to it all the time anymore? No. So, what album do I listen to the most? That’s easy because I listen to it almost every day: Ellington at Newport by Duke Ellington. It is a live recording of the Duke Ellington Orchestra at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival and was the Duke’s biggest-selling album, thirty years into his career. The performance itself is famous for Paul Gonsalves’ 27-chorus solo in Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue, which he went off microphone so he could play directly to a pretty blonde gal. Paul Gonsalves’ son, Renell, is a drummer, lives in Detroit, and I’ve spoken to him on the phone once. I gushed about his father for about fifteen minutes and he couldn’t have been more appreciative or nicer.
In 1985 Bruce Campbell, Scott Spiegel and I drove to Toronto to do the sound mix of my first feature film, Thou Shalt Not Kill…Except (1985). At that time the currency exchange rate was about two to one, so I got a $20,000 mix for about $9,000. The process took a full week and went over a weekend. I don’t remember what Bruce was doing, but Scott and I went to a shopping mall. We were in the Roots Clothing store (started by two former counselors of mine from Camp Tamakwa, Don Green and Mike Budman). As we perused sweatshirts, we both looked up at the same time as a man walked past the store. Scott said to me, “Was that Charles Bronson?” I said, “I think it was.” So we followed him all over the mall. Finally, Scott had the guts to say, “Excuse me, Mr. Bronson.” He turned around and it was most certainly Charles Bronson (As Lee Marvin said, “Buchinsky”). Bronson asked, “Are you here for the film festival?” We didn’t know there was a film festival. We explained that we were doing the sound mix on a feature film we’d made, which seemed to impress him a little. He said that he was in Toronto shooting one of HBO’s first movies, Act of Vengeance (1986). HBO until then had been exclusively boxing matches. Once again, Bronson could not have been nicer, smiling patiently as Scott and I imitated him from our favorite Bronson films. I did his line from The Great Escape (1963), which he plays with a Russian accent. The Germans are coming, Bronson hastily gets out of the escape tunnel, and when they enter the barracks they find him in the shower. He’s asked, “What are you doing?” Bronson says, “I’m taking a vash.”
And still the lark has not sung. As a note: when I started smoking cigarettes at the age of eleven (I still smoke), I smoked Lark Cigarettes with charcoal filters. Their TV commercial was, “Have a Lark, have a Lark, have a Lark today.”
And I don’t know if this is true or not (and I’ve checked), but I heard that John Williams was sued over the Raiders of the Lost Ark theme which is highly similar to the Kent Cigarette commercials’ song. Just add the tune of Raiders: “To a goalie, it’s a save, save, save/To a surfer, it’s a wave, wave, wave/To a colonel, it’s a regiment/To a smoker, it’s a Kent.”