Happy 100th Birthday, Sound Bite Era

Thanks to some nuts in NY and NJ — especially the Edison fellow in NJ — the sound bite era was born a hundred years ago, in 1908.

According to Science News, “In New York City, an enterprising businessman set up a penny arcade featuring a Bryan-Taft [1908 presidential] ‘debate.’ Mannequins stood before a phonograph that spouted the candidates’ voices…”

Excerpts from the article:

The phonograph was invented in 1877. By the early 1890s, it was being used in arcades and exhibition halls…

Harold Voorhis…, an agent for the National Phonograph Company…had brought a phonograph into the library of [congressman and presidential candidate William Jennings] Bryan’s house in Lincoln, Neb., to record some of his speeches…

[T]he 1908 campaign was the first in which presidential candidates recorded their own voices for the mass market. …an advertisement in the September 1908 Edison Phonograph Monthly exclaimed[:] “Now, for the first time, one can introduce the rival candidates for the Presidency in one’s own home, can listen to their political views, expressed in their real voices, and make comparisons.”

The sound-bite era was born…

“You could draw a genealogy from the televised presidential debates of today straight back to these” recordings, says record historian Patrick Feaster of Indiana University in Bloomington.

Read more, see more images, even listen to the 1908 sound bites themselves by clicking thru to the Science News feature.

Image credit: Science News/A. Nandy

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Ginsburg, Seinfeld, Suzanne Vega (plus Tom and St. John)

Flashback to 10 years ago… May 14, 1998… a lifetime ago in New York City…

That was the night of the last Seinfeld episode, a sitcom I had never seen at that time, even though my friend Eamon swore I would dig it. (I belatedly saw a few episodes and… yada, yada, yada… was hooked.)

Anyway, that spring evening my girlfriend Maryam and I strolled from her place on West End Ave over to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine to attend a tribute to Allen Ginsberg, who had died sometime earlier. It was a massive event, with musical performances by Patti Smith, Phillip Glass and others.

Maryam and I only became aware of the sitcom finale as we passed a group of Seinfeld fans gathered around Tom’s Restaurant, on 112th & Broadway. The diner, we learned, was used for the exterior shots for the diner frequented by the Seinfeld characters in the show, although it was actually filmed in California.

In this account of the Ginsburg tribute, Livia Sian Llewellyn refers to the Seinfeld fever in NYC that evening. And she reminds me of the Seinfeld mockery provided at the Ginsburg tribute by Danny Schecter (whom I knew vaguely from my days as a “South African musician”, when I wrote a free press-inspired anthem, Keep the Dream in Focus, for a benefit I co-produced at the Knitting Factory for his PBS show South Africa Now):

Danny Schechter broke the taboo, and uttered the name that had been in the backs of all our minds. Schechter gave an angry and hilarious speech about the ineptitude of the media, their attention to the Show About Nothing, while doing little more in the way of coverage for the tribute than a small blurb in the Times, which listed the date as May 15, instead of the 14th. He read a Seinfeld/Ginsberg comparison list, noting the differences between the non-realities of a show about New York, filmed in Los Angeles, and a man who spent much of his life living in and writing about this city. Seinfeld was about nothing, he said, Ginsberg was and is about everything.

Now, fast forward to 2008… Lo and behold, today I learn from Popwatch.com that that UWS ‘Seinfeld diner’ is the same “Tom’s Diner” referred to in Suzanne Vega’s classic song by that name. Who knew?!… (Probably everyone else?)

Vega described the genesis of the song in a blog entry the other day:

I wrote it in the spring of 1982… When I was at Barnard College in Manhattan, I used to go to Tom’s Restaurant for coffee, and after I graduated I also ate there before going to work. It was then a cheap, greasy place on 112th and Broadway, and it still is, in spite of its celebrity… And yes, it is the same one they use in the Seinfeld credits — the neon sign that says “RESTAURANT.”

Via: Popwatch.com

Photo credit: jarhead

© 2008 NutsInNY.com

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Bugs Bunny in “Bowery Bugs” (Warner Bros, 1949)

Having lived on the Bowery for a couple of years, I enjoy cultural references to it slightly more than to other parts of NYC. For example, the following gem was posted on the Bowery Boogie blog:

The Bowery makes a guest appearance in this 1949 Bugs Bunny cartoon, entitled Bowery Bugs. The story follows a gambler with a terrible string of bad luck, and his mission to quell the hard times. Oddly enough, his quest begins in the forest primeval - Flatbush.

Read the Wikipedia entry on Bowery Bugs here.

And watch the full cartoon via YouTube here.

Two stills from the animation, the title (featuring the Brooklyn Bridge)…

And this Bowery street scene…

Image credits: Warner Brothers/Merrie Melodies

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From jazz pioneer to Nutty Squirrel

WHO: Don Elliott (1926 - 1984), musician, multitrack recording pioneer and Nutty Squirrel

WHERE: New York City

THE STORY: Don Elliott was “an American jazz trumpeter, vibraphonist, vocalist, and mellophone player… Elliott recorded over 60 albums… He recorded with Terry Gibbs and Buddy Rich before forming his own band… Elliott scored several Broadway productions… He also provided one of the voices for the novelty jazz duo the Nutty Squirrels… Elliott owned and operated one of the very first multitrack recording studios in New York City.” (Wikipedia)

The Nutty Squirrels were “a scat singing imitation of The Chipmunks… Both musical groups featured the defining sped-up voices, but [the] Chipmunks favored popular music while the Squirrels favored jazz… Ultimately, the Squirrels made it to television first (appearing in September 1960), but they were not as popular… partly because of the less popular nature of jazz music…” (Wikipedia)

The Nutty Squirrels on YouTube: Uh-Oh (Squirrely, indeed!)

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The Philosophy Professor and the Subway Cop

WHO: Sidney Morgenbesser (1921-2004), Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Columbia University

WHERE: the subway

THE STORY: One day in New York City, Morgenbesser put his pipe in his mouth as he was ascending the subway steps. A policeman approached and told him that there was no smoking on the subway. Morgenbesser pointed out that he was leaving the subway, not entering it, and that he had not yet lit up. The cop repeated his injunction. Morgenbesser repeated his observation. After a few such exchanges, the cop saw he was beaten and fell back on the oldest standby of enfeebled authority: “If I let you do it, I‘d have to let everyone do it.” To this the old philosopher replied, “Who do you think you are—Kant?” His last word was misconstrued, and the whole question of the Categorical Imperative had to be hashed out down at the police station. Morgenbesser won the argument.

Source: Powerset

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