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Ah been tagged

Submitted by Steve on Thu, 01/18/2007 - 1:57am

Chicago 2-Flat tagged me. For those who don't know this Houseblogs game, if you're tagged by another house blogger you're supposed to reveal five things about yourself that most people don't know. Then you tag five other house bloggers.

Because of something I revealed about myself on this blog, I won This Old House Magazine's Stupid Human Trick. So I don't have much of a problem making an idiot of myself for a little attention. The challenge is finding five other house bloggers who haven't been tagged already.

Okay, here goes.
  1. I'm an Army brat who was born and partially raised overseas, including three years in Japan. My dad was a JAG who finished his hitch as a bird colonel at the Pentagon. He would have been livid over how the military and its justice system are being abused now. He was also a relentless home tinkerer so this stuff is in my genes, I guess.
  2. I'm a former professional musician (bass player). I've played professionally since I was 16 years old and came to NYC from Alexandria, VA at age 19 to be a hired gun. I played on a lot of jingles, demos and toured with some well-known 70s and 80s acts. The highlights of my musician years were playing with George Harrison and Eric Clapton on a Super Session cut (I was in too much awe to speak with them beyond a few babbled questions about the song), jamming with the James Brown Band, playing in the last Christmas show at the Fillmore East and spending a couple of hours in a hotel bar in Cleveland chatting about woodworking with one of my early idols, Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. But, mainly, my livlihood was as a Local 802 hack working in the pits of Broadway rock musicals, including eleven tedious years in Oh! Calcutta! (which is when I decided I needed a career change).
  3. Continuing on that thread, only because this is something that very few people know: I was in a studio band with four blond, white guys, including a native Swede, Georg Wadenius. We did all the rhythm section work for a large Latin pop music label. To us, it was just non-union chump change work. We played, they paid us cash, we left. They booked a Saturday at Radio City Music Hall to showcase their talent and called us. I showed up in my ratty black tee shirt and jeans, expecting to be playing off stage, only to find a 40-piece orchestra (which we'd never rehearsed with) and spotlights on each of us because we were one of the featured acts! They had repackaged our dance tracks and released them as an album, calling us "Salsa Gringa, Super Groupo". Both shows were sold out. We had no idea how huge this stuff was in the hispanic world. We were passable salsa dilettantes but I never wanted Tito Puente to hear us.



  4. While I was scuffling in my early NYC music career I paid the rent by doing carpentry and building maintenance jobs. One of those gigs was set carpenter for a busy porno film studio. Forget the fantasy, guys. It was the most grueling job I'd ever done: 14 hours/day, six days/week under intense pressure ("where's my !#% hospital room set?!!"). Thankfully, Godspell picked me up so I quit after a short time. But it was culture shock going from Caligula to a Jesus rock musical.
  5. I'm the only single guy who owns a house in a neighborhood where even childless couples are viewed suspiciously. After seven years here many of my neighbors still believe that I'm a professional house flipper.
Is there a central registry of which bloggers have already been tagged? If not, I tag:

Days' Shore House
Enon Hall
Here Is The House
Hudson River View Restoration
Crazy Stable
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thanks

Submitted by Jocelyn (not verified) on Sat, 01/20/2007 - 8:03pm.

very interesting stories. I had to laugh at the last one about your neighbors. We don't really have that problem here as the demographics are so varied. It's funny to be the "wild card" or "mystery" in the neighborhood.

If I haven't told you before- I like your blog quite a bit!

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Wow!! You definitely have a

Submitted by Leslie (not verified) on Thu, 01/18/2007 - 2:57am.

Wow!! You definitely have a fascinating history. Military brat and moving I can relate to (AF brat here, though), but I'm definitely impressed by the music and carpentry history. Oh,Calcutta? RCMH doing your salsa gringa (I wonder if you're on any of my latin cd's...)? Godspell? Very cool.

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I doubt you'd find us in your old latin CDs

Submitted by Steve on Thu, 01/18/2007 - 3:37am.

Most of the stuff we did were Spanish versions of American Top 40: the Latin Sting, the Mexican Pat Benatar, etc. Kinda lame. That's why they hired a bunch of gringo studio rats like us. We were also hungry for recording credits so we worked cheap. We never actually met any of the singers. The only name I remember was Blanca Bassion.

The arranger was Cuban, German Pifferer, and he was trying to break into the A-list as a salsa producer so the company gave him an instrumental cut or two on each album. That's where the Salsa Gringa stuff came from. His bass lines were some of the hardest I've ever had to read, not because they were complex but because of where the note fell in the beat. It's that tension between the bass and percussion that makes me love salsa but also what makes it so hard to play well.

German didn't speak a word of English. In fact, I don't think he knew any of our names. I was "basso man" and the keyboard player, a skinny, sarcastic guy with long blond hair, was "Jesus Christo". But his charts were so clear and the sessions ran at such a brisk pace that there wasn't much talking anyway. About the only word he spoke was "grabando" (start recording).

I was picked up for the NY company of Godspell when the original company was shipped to LA so I'm not on the original cast album. I did the Godspell movie soundtrack and the cast album for another Steven Schwartz musical, The Magic Show.

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Well at least I have Godspell!

Submitted by Leslie (not verified) on Thu, 01/18/2007 - 11:31am.

"the Latin Sting, the Mexican Pat Benatar"

This cracked me up. OK, I get it, so we're not talking Celia Cruz and Willie Colon here, then.

I do have the CD of the movie soundtrack to Godspell though, so you do have a small spot in La Casa Jorgetown (in which I'm the only pure gringa but I'm also the best salsa y merengue dancer). In fact, I'm making good use of it as part of my Evil Plot to turn my 11 year old granddaughter onto a really wide range of music, when all her mom listens to is hip-hop and rap. It's just SO much fun to see the "I love you because you're my child but you're driving me crazy" look on my step-d's face when grand-d burst out into a full dramaqueen rendition of "When you feel sad..." (complete with tapdancing). The latest mix CD she made at my house included tracks from Godspell as well as songs from Phoebe Snow, Zap Mama, the Flirtations, Peter Paul & Mary, Stray Cats, the Oklahoma (original cast) soundtrack, the Chicago (movie) soundtrack, and Stevie Wonder. Her wide eyed comment of "WOW Abuela, he's really GOOD!! Too bad he's not popular!" after picking her 3rd or 4th Stevie Wonder song to include in her mix led to a little internet research on Mr. Wonder's popularity and music industry and artistic influence.

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