Sport Spiel |
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Sunday, July 24, 2005
Posted
2:42 AM
by sport
There's this Chrysler campaign... I've seen 2 different ads so far... where a older gentleman sits, face conspicuously obscured by a newspaper. In one, Jason Alexander (as George Costanza) comes into his office, doing the usual bluff-n-bullshit routine he did so memorably on "Seinfeld." In the other, a little girl talks to the old guy, and in both ads the big moment comes when the newspaper is put down to reveal that the old guy is... Lee Iacocca! Whoo-eee! What fun! What MAGIC! Before we see the face, we know there's someone special there... but who? Why it's blesed ol' Lee, that's who! Returning like an old friend! Dear Old Iacocca! Keeping the Chrys in Chrysler! B.B.D. and O. really hit the jackpot here; these ads for the "Employee Pricing Plus" sales incentive tap into that special sense of childlike wonder we associate only with Iacocca. Why, when that little girl is talking to the mysterious man, and he is suddenly revealed as Mr. Lee Iacocca, all one can think is: “yes, Virginia, there is a former CEO.” I get chills just thinking about it, and now I am going to buy a Chrysler just because of the nostalgic rush these ads provide. I don't drive, of course, but every time I look out to the driveway and see that gleaming car, I will relive the gleeful moment when Lee Iacocca first revealed his face. Sigh. In other TV news, I was watching the TV news. After all the reports on muslim-related miseries worldwide, the anchor introduced a piece on a Westchester region protected from development, due to its importance as a source of drinking water for the NY metro area. When they went to the report, the audio went farkuckt, so all my TV presented was a series of lovely shots of this verdant lakeside, with no audio whatsoever. The anchor apologized and quickly moved on to something else. “No…” I thought “…go with it! It’s the most useful thing you’ve shown me so far!” What a relief! I'm thinking there ought to be a channel where we are shown nothing but nature. Someplace to turn when the electrosluice torrent becomes too depressingly human-beshitted. A window to the idyllic, with nary a mosquito, nor any other of actual nature’s multitudinous annoyances. We may gaze thereupon, belching our sodee pop, tongue-ing a Slim Jim skin lodged between the teeth, groaning: “mmm, tha’s nize” as our damned world wobbles its idiotic course through the cold cosmos. Before I leave the TV (rather, return to it), mention must be made of a program I just caught on PBS. WILLIE “THE LION” SMITH. A documentary on a giant of American music. Friends, this guy was the SHIT. I was frustrated that every time they showed a clip of the man playing his piano, some narrator would intrude, but that’s how it goes. At least someone finally saw fit to spread the word about a giant who still gets nothing close to his just due. Idolized by the likes of Ellington and my beloved Thelonious Monk… whew, Willie! That’s like being idolized by Vermeer and Van Gogh. I recall when I first lucked upon a film clip of the Lion playing his sublime “Echoes of Spring.” It was one of those unforgettable musical moments of discovery where you just stop the fuck cold and GAPE. Like Howard Carter first peering into Tut’s tomb: “I was struck dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, 'Can you see anything?' it was all I could do to get out the words, 'Yes, wonderful things.'” There have been many moments like this: my first listen to a SMILE bootleg in 1985… watching some baritone (Sherrill Milnes?) sing Ives’ “The Things Our Fathers Loved” in the mid-70s… Allen Toussaint playing at Professor Longhair’s funeral, seen in yet another PBS documentary in the ‘80s (an experience so moving that I tracked down the filmmaker, Stevenson J. Palfi, and persuaded him to dupe me a copy of his film). “Echoes of Spring” is a light piano solo in the Beiderbecke vein that somehow melds Stride, Debussy, Cowboy Americana, and that ineffable vout one only recognizes in the work of a real inventor. Played with a feathery touch by an old cat in a bowler hat with a stogie clamped in his teeth, swinging like all get-out even while imparting a diaphanous Maxfield Parrish glow as fine as the most subtle nancyboy etude, the thing slew me. William Demarest opening his mouth and ad-libbing John Donne: how? Wha? I used the motif from Willie’s left hand as the basis of a recurring theme throughout my album Magic Beans, only to suggest the depths and heights of music… how it defeats cruel time, binds distant and disparate hearts and reveals infinity. With humor, yet. Much of Smith’s work of that period carries the same incredible spirit. Not all of it is that Beleek-delicate; many pieces are rollicking and as ripe as Willie’s stogie, but no less glorious for that. You’ll hear Scott Joplin in it. Gottschalk. Leroy Shields. Phineas Newborn. Chopin. Satie. God, in other words. There’s a great cd comp (assembled by Frenchmen, unsurprisingly) collecting the cream of this work. Find that thing and listen. I fear that anyone catching this docu will leave it with no idea of the Lion’s brilliance: “hmmmm… One of those influential musical Negroes; note the name for the file of unheard notables, to mention if needed.” Bah! Find the thing and LISTEN.
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