Klarinet Archive - Posting 000250.txt from 1999/12
From: Ken Wolman <ken.wolman@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] stage fright
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 1999 14:49:56 -0500
johnvos@-----.com wrote one of the best reminiscences I've read here!
This is a fabulous retelling of an incredible time. I don't know how
old you are, but the last Greek restaurant I can think of on 8th Avenue
was the Acropolis on 47th and 8th, and it disappeared about two years
ago. I took a bunch of people there on a rainy night in June 1997 and
it was GONE. The sign is still there but now there's some some of
tourist chotchkeh/chazerei palace there, the kind of place that sells
t-shirts to out-of-towners with "New York F--k--g City" silkscreened on
it. How droll for those folks from Horse's Breath, Arkansas. Actually,
the Acropolis was rather sedate. Even when I'd go there in 1969 it was
sort of quiet. But the food was excellent and not at all expensive.
If there's a good Greek restaurant in New Jersey aside from some of
those hideous diners with so-called "Greek Specialties" on the back
page, I'd like to hear about it so the owner can adopt me and I can
assume Greek nationality.
> Stage fright? Not when your standing in the middle of a horde of
> drunken Greeks, screaming "Yassou Klarino Yanni!!" in your ear while
> spitting paper bills and slamming them onto your forehead.
>
> Reeds? The best clarinetists I ever heard were Greek & Turkish
> gypsies... they only purchased 1 to 1-1/2 Ricos and seemed to prefer
> rubber bands and chewing gum to springs and pads.
Justaminutenow. You mean the Greeks and Turks could play in the same
club and not beat the crap out of each other with their clarinets and
cases if table legs weren't handy? These HAD to be different clubs,
right?
Chewing gum? Well, I reattached a pad to my bass clarinet by
doubling-over a small strip of duct tape. So why not chewing gum? I'd
have figured rubber bands for the ligature, but how you do this for
springs is beyond my imagination.
> And diet? Well, just imagine squat, smudged glasses filled with 100
> proof Raki (Armenian/Turkish form of Ouzo)... yes at fourteen they
> had me drinking this as if I were a new born suckling mother's
> milk... along with a steamy bowl of "Pacha", a gray colored stew made
> from lamb's head, tripe and GARLIC!!!
I was once in a group therapy meeting in 1966 where we took the evening
off from therapeutics and drank two or three bottles of Metaxa. Then
one of the guys in the group drove one of the women home and impregnated
her. It kind of messed up the therapeutic aspects of the group, y'might
say, at least for those two. That stuff is one of the two liquors I've
ever tasted that has almost psychedelic properties. Tequila is the
other.
The surviving liquor stores on 8th Avenue still have Raki. But reading
the above...I consider myself properly warned....
> Great memories. The kind that would've pasted a smile on Paul Bowles.
> John V.
Yeah, there's a sort of Sheltering Sky casbah ambiance to the whole
thing....
Ken
---------------------------
Kenneth Wolman Deutsche Bank, NA 212-469-6494
1251 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020
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