Prime Times

Through a referral one afternoon, I got in touch with a small agency that needed a radio script. They wanted me to write a sample commercial to help them land a new client. No problem. I typed up a humorous dialogue script requiring a male and a female voice and faxed it to the agency. The owner phoned me – he loved the spot and wanted it recorded ASAP. CLICK! He hung up. Wait a sec! A few minutes later the phone rang again. This call was from a recording studio I’d never heard of. A man’s voice told me I should be at his place at 6 p.m. that same night. What? I’m supposed to produce this spot? This was news to me. Production is a whole different ball game, requiring time and travel. The voice gave me an address – it was way out west in the super boonies. What the hell is going on here? It was now past 5 p.m. I phoned the agency to get more info. Nobody answered. It was the end of the workday and I was suddenly forced into making this commercial out in the middle of nowhere. How did I get myself into this? I grabbed the script and drove west, wondering what the next surprise would be. The engineer, who was also the studio’s owner, met me at the door. After we’d introduced ourselves I asked, “Where’s the voice talent?” “We’re it,” he answered. “What? I’m no radio voice!” “Neither am I!” What kind of crazy con game is this? I wondered. “One of the voices is supposed to be a woman,” I said. The guy shrugged his shoulders and offered to put on a high voice. He seemed to be taking this mess in stride, as if it were all part of a normal day’s work. I started to question him, but he urged me to hold off until we laid something down on tape. We went through the script and recorded take one. He played it back. Truly horrible! His female voice sounded like a sissified Sly Stallone. We switched parts, so I was doing the woman. Take two made the first take sound good. It was obvious that we had to go with two male voices, but that meant changing the script. I did some fast editing and we recorded a few takes until we got one that wasn’t completely awful. The engineer promised to get the tape to the agency in the morning. “Wait,” I implored him, “I need to know a few things!” “So do I,” he answered. Anxious to get going, he said the agency we were dealing with did everything at the last minute. Chaos was their MO. He told me to check with them about getting paid as he ushered me to the door. Moments later I was on the Eisenhower heading home and feeling like I’d escaped from a nuthouse. Did that really happen? Impossible! Better get home and get some sleep. I billed the so-called ad agency $100. A few weeks later, a check arrived in the mail. Written on the bottom was, Really Joe, this is pretty stiff! Are you joking? After writing and rewriting the spot, producing it, performing in it and putting 20 miles on my car, I should feel bad about charging $100? I’d easily put $400 worth of time and sweat into the demo. That episode was one of several that showed me how many bush-league advertising outfits were operating just a few miles from downtown Chicago. I guess there will always be plenty of schlock shops like these out there – light years away from good writing, professional art direction and quality recording studios where talented voice people work for union rates. Do you wanna dance? This should be fun, I imagined, walking north on Oak Park Avenue. I was headed for the field house at Fox Park for a group tap dancing lesson. About 30 students of all ages were standing on the floor when I entered. A pleasant young fellow up front described tap as a fun form of dance that provided great aerobic exercise. He told us to relax our ankles. Having relaxed ankles, he said, is the secret of tap. We should make a conscious effort to keep them loose and keep their movement minimal. This sounded easy enough. Then he picked up the pace, throwing a lot at us in a hurry. We should lean forward so our center of gravity stays in the middle hold most of our weight forward … balance on the balls of our feet … make sure we keep in time to the music. Maybe this won’t be all that simple, I feared. We learned the toe tap and the heeltap. Not too hard. But then we had to combine them and move around the room in a circle toeing and heeling. My feet seemed to be drunk; they were way out of step with this simple exercise. Then came more steps: the brush and drag, the shuffle-hop step, the pull back. My muscles refused to obey the signals from my brain. As things got worse my embarrassment became complete. Then the tap guru explained a few “simple” combinations and transitions. The class tapped its way around the room again, integrating these new maneuvers. When I reached the corner near the door, I shuffled my way out of the building and walked home, thinking that I might give square dance lessons a shot. Howling on the bridge “He stinks!” I said aloud the first time I heard him play. This hulk of young humanity was standing on the Michigan Avenue Bridge making god-awful noises with his saxophone. I figured he was playing some form of far-out jazz; the sound was unmusical, unpolished and repetitive. I soon got used to hearing it however, because working in the Wrigley Building I walked by this incessant noise polluter day after day. He seemed to be a permanent fixture on the west side of the bridge. On a sweltering July afternoon he’d be standing in the same spot, his instrument case lying open at his feet. Even on subzero days I’d see him on the bridge with his sax, white steam billowing from his mouthpiece. This cacophonous character called himself “Little Howlin’ Wolf.” I learned from my co-workers that he’d been part of the scene long before I came along. And, as it turned out, he was still there making his unique music long after I’d moved on. In fact, ten years after leaving my job in the WrigIey, I read a newspaper article that said Howlin’ Wolf was still blowing his sax on the west side of the bridge. However, another sax player had suddenly appeared, setting up business on the bridge’s east side opposite the Wolf Man. This intruder was Yusef Watts from Providence, Rhode Island. Howlin’ Wolf was clearly pissed. He’d been playing on the bridge since 1968. To him it was a matter of principle. “Look at these hands,” he said to a reporter. “I`ve been out here every season…this cat comes to this place and plays, like, ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’ in my face.” Wolf said he believes jazz musicians should compose their own music. He called his own style “free-form hokomo.” The tall, tall bus What ever possessed me to take that insane job? I was panic stricken the second I took a seat behind the wheel. Hell, I’d never driven a bus in my life, but here I was doing just that on this dark, dreary afternoon. Heavy sleet pelting the windshield blurred my vision as I inched along the slush-smeared street. Trying to navigate through downtown traffic in those conditions was a hellish nightmare. Vehicles trying to turn were held back by throngs of pedestrians oblivious to traffic signs and signals. They just kept coming, right in front of cars that were stuck halfway into their turns. Horns blared, angry motorists shouted, rude pedestrians yelled back at them. I was finally nearing the busy corner where I had to turn left. God help me, I prayed. This situation would test the mettle of a top-flight driver maneuvering a normal CTA bus. But my bus was quite different; it was five stories high! I was sitting 60 feet above the street doing my best to guess my way through the tangled Loop traffic below. My view of the street began half a block in front of me. I had no idea of what was right in front of me down there at ground level. People could be darting across the street inches from my front bumper and I wouldn’t see them.