MEMOIRS OF A TEENAGE TYPESETTER ON THE NIGHT SHIFT:
The Saturday Harvard Square Heijira and The Selector, review #2
I was a sophomore at BU in 1980, and had declared my major (geology) the second week of freshman year. I was still fulfilling non-science required courses and working around 20 hours a week at the paper. Milo and I lived together at 137 Pearl Street, Cambridge, which meant I could walk down to the BU Bridge and be at the school relatively easily, and we both could walk the five blocks up to Central Square to catch the Mass. Ave. bus to 100 Mass. Avenue.
After publishing my first review, on March18, 1980, I was eager to write again, but I was also taking more challenging classes, and making frequent trips "into the field" on the weekends (Maine, Vermont, New Brunswick -- the BU Geology Department was a restless crowd). What I was learning in school was fascinating -- how the earth really works. The language, the images, the vocabulary was ornate and specialized. Meanwhile, the soundtrack back at the apartment was getting more and more stripped down. Milo's taste in music was, and is, unique. He had an appetite for discordance, shouting, and weird rhythms, and whatever was new. At this point, he was writing for the Phoenix, and had started writing for Subway News (Doug Simmons' paper), but not often enough to start calling record labels to send over recent releases. Besides, most of the stuff Milo wanted to hear was available as import-only, and who the hell knew how to get in touch with those people?
We had settled into a routine whereby Saturday morning we'd walk down Mass. Ave. to Harvard Square, shopping at record stores, and any boutique that took our fancy. Milo would have cashed his paycheck, and the purpose of the Saturday walk was to get every new single or album that had arrived at Cheapo Records, Discount Records and the Coop (in that order), as well as to stop at Harvard Book, to see what gigantic essential book had arrived. Million Year Picnic had the latest underground comics, and we'd also stop at Oona's for used clothing.
Once we arrived at the Square, we'd start the shopping marathon with getting coffee at Coffee Connection, a fragrant and intimate restaurant/retail establishment in the Harvard Square garage. Our usual order was a half-pound of Kenya AA and a half-pound of Sumatra, "just-the-beans-please," as Milo had a filter and carafe. I only started drinking coffee after living with Milo, and Coffee Connection (which preceded Starbucks and was, IMO, so much better) could fuel one for hours of caffeinated record-sifting.
Milo was starting to be known at some of the record stores because he'd be looking for items that Christgau had reviewed in the Voice, or that he'd read about in NME. If Discount Records didn't have it, the Coop surely would, and Milo spent many happy hours going through the bins. He had a unique method of shopping for records, muttering and commenting as he looked at covers. Every now and then, he'd yank a record out and look over his glasses to peruse the fine type. He usually spoke with a drawl, but record-shopping would speed up his natural speech rhythms to that of a cartoon character at time -- all intentional on Milo's part, as he conversed with the record. Every now and then, he'd come across something he hadn't known about, or an artist on one of the obscure labels that intrigued him. Kit's music section was designed to be varied and encyclopaedic, with Bob Blumenthal covering jazz, Lloyd Schwartz covering Classical, and the rest of the music writers duking it out over the increasingly vast field of pop music. Punk, New Wave, Disco, Top 40, Arena rock, pub rock, and then the variants of reggae, ska, dub and so on.
One of our regular weekend soundtrack was Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols, and when the news came out that Johnny Rotten's subsequent band, the sardonically, and accurately titled "Public Image Ltd" (or PiL) was releasing a unique item: the Metal Box, Milo's gleeful anticipation knew no bounds. We headed straight for the Coop, where Milo handed over (I recall) the obscene price of $30 for the gigantic silver film cannister of 45s. Even better was that PiL was coming to Boston, and Milo was set to review the show and interview Johnny Rotten (now Lydon again) for Subway News.
I remember him grumbling about carrying the big silver disc -- one of the rare times he complained about our increasingly hefty burden of packages. Milo is over six feet, with large hands, and he usually happily schlepped our pile of records, books and goods back, although usually we would get a cab, if things had gotten ridiculous (like the time I insisted we purchase a case of Saratoga water). We would also stock up on various foods. We both liked Cardullo's, where the chocolate came in adorable packages -- elves, cottages, and so on. Milo preferred the deli counter and would get some exotic sliced cheese, and usually a pound of head cheese (having grown up in cattle/sheep country, Livingston Montana, Milo had a great fondness for any kind of weird preserved meat).
In the spring of sophomore year, I believe I took some archaeology classes along with a fascinating, and mind-bending class in mineralogy, which required an understanding of geometry and chemistry along with comprehending the idea of mineral classes (silicates, carbonates, etc). Still, I couldn't resist the music section, and as soon as the semester was over, I was after Kit to see what I could review next. I knew I didn't have the momentum of any of the other writers, with my first review appearing on March 18, and here it was nearly two months later!
Kit assigned me a new album by a ska band, The Selector who were -- thank god -- not American. I was aching to review "something authentic" after what I perceived as the phoniness of Pearl Harbor and the Explosions. You may remember their big hit, "Too Much Pressure," or the newest single off the record, "On The Radio." Milo thought they were commercial, but in a sincere way, and Pauline Black, lead singer had more in common with Ari Up than with Pearl E. Gates, which suited my taste. But even as I enjoyed the record, and wrote the review, I had a disquieting feeling of possibly being pigeon-holed. Two reggae-inflected bands with chick singers in a row?? Something needed to give for the third review I wrote.
So here is my review of The Selector (May 27, 1980), for which I was paid $35. I have annotated it with reflections on the editing process, which included Milo having a couple of passes over this before I brought it to Kit.
The Selecter
TOO MUCH PRESSURE
(Chrysalis)
Unlike the Specials, their 2-Tone labelmates, the Selecter may prove that ska really is the limit. [This definitely was Milo's lead -- he liked the Specials more than I did] Too Much Pressure replaces reverence with infectious energy -- rock 'n' roll's return to reggae [at some point at the Phoenix, the powers that be later decided that that kind of music would be "rock AND roll" instead of the abbreviation]. The Selecter's music keeps the Jamaican phrasing but pins it to a pop-busy backbeat. You can still do the rude-boy walk (you know, the one Mick Jones does) to this album, but the Selecter's moves don't end there. [As I was learning to review, I focused on exactly how dance-friendly all this stuff was, and what kind of moves one would do]. "On My Radio," their new single, is kicky [total Milo word!] with sharp drum busts complementing vocalist Pauline Black's sweeping declaration that "it's just the same old show/On my radio." With wry roller-rink keyboard from Desmond Brown, the repetition of the verse spoofs the mulish banality of Black's late-night listening. At the same time, the Selecter recognize the potential hazards of being a rude boy in songs like "Out on the Streets" and "Danger." The latter begins with a keyboard "oo-ee" that mimics a British paddy wagon and shimmies into Black's punch retelling of her racially motivated arrest, which only strengthened her avowal to "live beside the rules." Though this theme of false arrest is common and British and Jamaican reggae, it's a neat twist to have a woman deliver it. The authorities might have won this round, but Black isn't quelled; the band surges on, alerting us to the "danger because there's going to be a terrible fight."
Pauline Black's position as lead vocalist and front-woman was better demonstrated at the band's recent Paradise show. A slight, wiry woman with a riveting stare, she catalyzed band and audience with her infectious animation. [I remember how intense a performer she was -- her confidence had nothing to do with wanting to make people like her -- very different from other girl-fronted bands I'd seen up to that point.] Arthur "Gaps" Hendrickson is an able partner to her husky but tone-true voice, which ranged from the full-bodied cheerleader's whooping on "Three Minute Hero" to the falsetto squeal of "On My Radio." Black should be a punk's ideal: a tough girl who is aware but not self-absorbed. She prefaced the Paradise version of "Missing words" by jocularly asking the crowd, "Does anyone here like love songs? That's good, 'cause we don't do none." [Part of the point of reviewing a band live, as you review the record is to get that depth of being there -- much easier when the band actually has depth.] Amusing, because "Missing Words" is about painfully permanently lost love. It's a mournful song, though the rhythm section hustles along -- the sooner to forget -- but when her voice catches in a sob on the "missing words," her soulfulness equals her loss.
There are no clunkers [Another classic Milo word!] hidden on Too Much Pressure -- each song is fast, tight, and ferociously attacked. Even the received ska touches -- the brass on "Carry Go Bring Come" and "Black and Blue" -- are refreshing without being nostalgic. Too Much Pressure is actually rooted in rock 'n' roll; not coincidentally, the sole white member of the band, lead guitarist Neol Davies, has written the more rock 'n' roll-influenced songs on the album. Though there are two guitarists in the band, they solo less than the keyboards and percussion do. Even the bass is nearly superseded by the drums; in "Time Hard," the percussion and keyboard carry the peppy melody and the rhythm guitars spice it with contrapuntal slashes.[Given that my brother Hal is a bass player, I was always very sensitive to making sure rhythms sections got some credit.] The beat is pervasive enough to make the "Every day/Things are getting worse" lyric ambiguous. This song is the sort of light anthem for dancing, not marching, down the street away from it all -- and Too Much Pressure is the rock 'n' soul revue that should keep moving long after ska camp wears out.
And so it was published, and I walked on a cloud from the night I saw it on the boards for the next week. It was an epic to write, but having the live performance meant I had a deadline that was going to be met no matter what. I definitely sense some desperation on my part writing this -- sentences got longer and longer as the piece continues, and that Kit clearly was trying to rein it in -- thus interspersing colons and semi-colons in place of the frequent dashes. But the best part of writing this was that I actually felt like listening to the record again after writing about it. I was so new at this that my "process" was basically to listen to the record so much I basically had it memorized, and then to re-listen to certain parts to see how lyrics connected between songs, as well as similarities in instrumental stuff.
I was still a geology student -- I was getting trained to look at rocks as collections of minerals, as collections of chemical combinations (ruled by formative processes), created out of elements. At the same time, I was aware -- due to Milo's frequent editorializing -- that record production at major labels was designed to grind the creativity and roughness out of a band -- even a straightforward pop-ska group like The Selecter.
I went back and listened to the album online (ah, the Alexandrian Library of the internet) and found it sounded current more than quaint, and still pretty darn charming. However, not as charming as the next artist I was to review: George Thorogood. More TKTKTKTK.
Saturday, April 27, 2013
TEENAGE TYPESETTER ON THE NIGHT SHIFT: Learning to review.
Starting in the fall of my sophomore year at Boston University, I knew I wanted to write about music. Milo suggested reviewing the Slits, since no one had claimed it yet, and I was completely besotted with the record. I loved the Slits, a British band so fierce, weird and proud that they'd posed topless on their record cover, coated in brown mud. The music was off-center, deliberately bash-and-howl, and their song topics ranged from shoplifting, to class warfare ("Typical girls") to just out and out weirdness. It was a hypnotic record, and Milo and I played it constantly, along with other amazing work by the bands emerging from the punk scene.
I must have written three separate drafts of this, over the course of the fall and early winter. Each time, I'd bring my pages to music editor Kit Rachlis (usually during my typesetting shift -- this was not cool, but mildly tolerated). Each time, he would read it, with his pencil poised over my lines. Sometimes he would lower the pencil to the paper, but he wouldn't make a mark. This was a Very Bad Sign. The fact that he changed nothing, meant it was all so awful there was nothing to edit. He would sigh, and we would talk about the record. What did I like about it? Everything. What was my favorite song? I liked them all. How do you describe music that sounds like it's being made by children who have grown up on an island where a volcano killed all the grownups? Well, if I'd been able to do something with an image like that, I might have been in business as a rock critic months earlier.
Finally, sometime in late winter, after I'd brought in several drafts, Kit pushed my draft to one side, and just as my heart was really sinking below my sternum, he scooted his swivel chair around my chair, leaned down and yanked out a record from one of the piles leaning against his cubicle wall. "You might give this a listen," he said, handing me the Pearl Harbor record. I looked at it. It was a band with a chick singer (that's how we talked) who also looked to be of mixed race like Ari Up.
"Have you played it?" I asked. "No," Kit replied, and then grinned beneath his Pancho Villa mustache. "They're playing at the Paradise. Why don't you listen to the record and go see the show, and turn something in." He slid his chair back to his place and picked up his pencil again. He gave a brief smile and told me, "it might be easier."
I was dismissed. I rose, clutching the record and walked briskly out of the newsroom back to Production. There, I'm sure Karen Bitter gave me a glare (I was a chronic break-taker), and I gave the mostly-good news to Milo. I remember calling up the Paradise, and arranging for a pair of tickets ("me, plus one, please") for the show.
At this point, Milo and I had been to a lot of shows -- mostly national acts. We occasionally went to local shows at local bars, but some places were tough, and requested an ID. I remember being shut out of a B52s show Milo was covering (at Spit, on Lansdowne Street) and Milo pitching a fit at the door. After that, his friend Joel's girlfriend Cindy gave me her old New York ID -- we looked nothing alike, but the ID was legitimate. This made it easier to get into bars, so we saw the occasional up-and-coming local band, like Mission of Burma, Pastiche, and Peter Dayton (who was a favorite among the critics).
Now, it was my turn to be "on the list." I'd been with Milo, when he was the one holding the reporters' notebook, which he kept in the inside pocket of his brown corduroy jacket. For me (still underage at 19), going to the Paradise as a critic filled my heart with joy. Surely they wouldn't card me if I was "on the list"?
They didn't. I got waved through, with Milo right behind me. I had listened to the record several dozen times and found each successive listen pointed out the band's short-comings, and the lack of catchy melodies, or "hooks," which was an essential ingredient in successful pop. Their big hit was a number with reggae pretensions, "Drivin' " Pearl had a lot of gulps in her voice and the production values put a lot of special audio effects like engine revving, but everything sounded really processed to me. But I made an important discovery, which is that it's a lot easier to explain what you don't like about an artistic project then to say why you do like something. So when Milo and I went to Paradise, I definitely felt like they'd have to defy expectations to prompt me to write a good review.
The Paradise was on the western edge of the BU campus on Comm. Ave. It was basically a narrow, low-ceilinged black box, with two entrances. The room on the left had TVs and comedy on the weekend. On the right was the rock club. There was a tiny bar in the hall, and then a long hallway leading to a pair of swinging doors painted black. It was owned by Don Law, who was to Boston clubs what Rupert Murdoch is to tabloids. And it's one of the few clubs from this era of my life that still exists.
Milo was over 6 feet, but he was sensitive to the fact that I was only 5'4" and we elbowed our way down front, to the stage-right side of the stage, which was closest to the bar. "You okay here?" he asked. I felt nervous with anticipation, almost as if it was me who was going onstage. He slipped back into the crowd to get a beer -- I didn't want anything because I wanted to keep my hands free. I looked around the club -- I saw no one I knew. There were some jocks with baseball jackets, and some girls with those floofy blonde bangs you now see on pubescent gymnasts. It looked like a bunch of kids from BU (although not my classes, because I was in the geology department, and everyone there wore flannel shirts and hiking boots, with holes in the seat and knees from scooting over outcroppings).
"These are not my folks," I thought to myself, and then felt badly because I really did want to give Pearl Harbor and the Explosions a chance. Even though the singer did go by the name "Pearl E. Gates," which was actually cooler than the band name.
Milo returned with his Heineken. We'd gotten there just before the headliner, as we knew that the chances of door people scrutinizing IDs went down if there was a crowd to get through the door. I thought about what the band was trying to say -- before they ever got on the stage. Alluding to the (then most) horrific attack on American soil definitely had a punk-rock "Fuck You" vibe, yet the album cover showed the band (all guys except for Pearl) wearing vertical stripes and skinny ties and looking perfectly harmless. This burgeoning "new wave" fashion was the antithesis of the ripped, torn and safety-pinned look of punk. Personally, I didn't like most new wave -- it was too smooth and processed. Not weird enough, not dangerous, not improvised. I was grateful to have the chance to write about a "chick singer," but I had misgivings about the situation.
"Just watch the show," Milo grumbled, finishing his beer. Finally, the band came on and they seemed very serious, and a lot older than they had on the record jacket. Pearl's speaking voice had a pleasing huskiness, but when she started to sing, and throw her head back and forth, it seemed mindlessly frenetic.
Their songs started to blur -- "Drivin' " "Shut Up and Dance," and "Don't Come Back" sounded instrumentally-clotted -- too much going on. As for sincerity and charisma -- sadly lacking. They started with a bunch of Meters covers (which Milo instantly identified -- I just knew they sounded familiar) and Pearl was in the habit of pogoing in place when the band members took their solos. She had a whistle on her wrist, and every so often kicked her leg in the air, but she didn't seem to connect with the guys behind her (named Peter Bilt, and the Stench brothers -- oh for the era of punk rock, when everyone had a nom de guerre).
I wrote some notes, including song titles, which I knew was crucial if you're reviewing a live show along with a record. But ultimately, I started to feel let down. This band wasn't fun, wasn't interesting, and wasn't whipping the crowd into any kind of action. I'd been to a Plasmatics show at the Rat when I was a freshman at BU and when Wendy O. Williams brought out her chainsaw, it had been thrilling and appalling all at once. There was little that was explosive about the Explosions, but I knew I could write about what I was seeing.
Over the weekend I drafted and drafted and started writing about the record, and then realized it would be easier to just write about the show, with the occasional allusion to the record. Record reviews were three and a half double-spaced pages (and paid $35, a fee that did not rise, in my recollection, ever in subsequent decades).
I wrote in the front room of our three-room flat on Pearl Street in Central Square, Cambridge. It was a "railroad-style" flat, with a front room, tiny hall with adjacent bathroom, kitchen, complete with 1940s carved wood trim and a bedroom with a window that overlooked the tiny shed where the trash cans resided. There was a built-in desk in the wall on which Milo's green Olivetti rested, a durable machine that actually typed "elite" style, which meant there were more letters per line than a "pica-style" machine. So I knew I didn't have to go three and a half pages -- three pages would probably do it.
My typewriter was a Hermes desk model given to me by my dad (in lieu of any offer to assist with tuition). After so much typesetting, it was a lot easier to whale away on an electric keyboard. We had a stereo in the front room, and I am sure Milo was spending his time in the kitchen, reading the papers while I was toiling. After I wrote a few labored lines, I put the record on. I skipped between a few songs and realized I couldn't tell the difference between the record and the show.
Milo came out. "It's not very punk, is it," he opined, picking up the jacket. "I know," I said and realized I probably shouldn't hear the songs again unless I wanted to quote from them, and there was a lyric sheet for that. I wrote more, and tried to write about the songs themselves, rather than the performance. I realized I could use the idea of "Pearl Harbor" as a metaphor (which is exactly the sort of move any critic would have done, but I needed to discover this on my own). And where that was a "sneak attack," this show, and this band and the record weren't. There was no mystery here -- just a bunch of peppy pop songs that didn't stick in your head once they were over.
I am pretty sure I brought the review in to Kit on Monday afternoon before my shift. We'd arranged a time for him to edit it the following day and -- god be praised -- he rearranged some sentences, cut out some extraneous adjectives (he didn't like "very" or "a bit" or any hedging). We worked on the lead, and somehow came up with: "Pearl Harbor and the Explosions are a sneak attack designed to make dance-oriented punk palatable," and kept the show review to the bottom quarter of the review. We finished the last page, and then did a quick read from top to bottom again. When we were done, Kit put the pages in his outbox to go to Copy.
"That's it?" I asked. "It's going to be in the paper?"
"Yeah," Kit grinned. He stubbed out his cigarette (he liked to smoke while he was editing).
"It's going to be in the paper this week?" I asked.
"Uh huh," he said, and then paused. "Good work."
I exhaled -- I hadn't realized I had been holding my breath.
"You might even get to type it," he said.
"Ha," I laughed, and then thought about it. "I probably should."
"I would," Kit replied, and then smirked. Then he turned back to the next stack of pages while I walked back through the newsroom. I was returning to the Comp Shop, where other people's stories awaited. But this time, sometime tomorrow, mine would be among them.
TEENAGE TYPESETTER ON THE NIGHT SHIFT: ASPIRATIONS
Sometime in the fall of 1979, I decided I wanted to write too. Mostly, the music critics were guys, except for Ariel Swartley (who was married to Kit Rachlis, the music editor) and Deborah Frost, who occasionally wrote lifestyle pieces. Ariel looked like a folkie, with smock tops, long brown hair and a nice smile. Deborah was, literally, the antithesis, with a shock of black hair, one lock bleached pink. She wore a black motorcycle jacket, black jeans, and usually dark glasses. Her copy was more frequent than Ariel's and usually had her own scrawled additions in the margins, along with Kit's edits, which meant one occasionally had to tilt one's head 90 degrees to get all the words in. Deborah (who later became a friend) was extremely intimidating, but she set a good example on how to enter a room (scowling and talking). There was a photobooth snapshot of her that hung in Ande Zellman's cubicle office on which she'd scrawled: The Fabulous Debulous par Scavullo! For the first few times I saw it I actually believed it was Francesco Scavullo's work -- she had that kind of style.
Another music critic was a tall graying fellow with glasses who looked like he could have been a poli-sci professor, but who was, in fact a lawyer: Mike Freedberg bonded with Milo early over a shared interest in dance music a/k/a boogie, get-down, R&B and is still a friend to this day. Bob Blumenthal was also a lawyer, although more clean-cut, and usually came in wearing a suit (which totally set him apart from the newsroom males, all of whom were dressed up if a shirt tail was tucked in). He had bright red hair, wire-rimmed glasses and a deep and intense knowledge of jazz. James Isaacs was still writing Cellars by Starlight then, but you never saw him unless Ande Zellman was working late.
The Phoenix, under Kit Rachlis's editorship covered a variety of music, Lloyd Schwartz wrote about classical music, Bob and Mike covered traditional and adventurous jazz (so did Paul D. Lehrman occasionally, more about him later). Pop, mainstream and edgy was also of interest. Kit had connections at Rolling Stone, and had written reviews, so we had pieces by John Morthland. Kit was also in intense competition with the eminence grise of pop criticism, Robert "Bob" Christgau. I don't believe Christgau ever, ever wrote a piece for the Phoenix, but I know he got it every week because Kit was canny about making sure subscriptions were sent to him as well as anyone who mattered in the music business. In my time as a teenage typesetter, I once picked up the phone and found legendary Columbia producer John Hammond at the other end of the line. He was calling for Kit and thank god I had the presence of mind to say, it is very cool to speak to you, the work you've done is just amazing (a rare moment of gush, since I tried to keep a game face in that place).
I also once typed a piece by Lester Bangs, which was memorable in that the type was so faint, one suspected Bangs last changed his typewriter ribbon sometime after the Beatles broke up. Yet the piece had been typed so vigorously that the circles in the 'o's and 'g's and 'p's were just angry dots. Under Kit's meticulously steady pencil excisions, this piece was about eight pages, but reduced to four and a half pages of copy as whole paragraphs had been sheared away, like calved glaciers,. I wish I'd saved the Bangs copy -- it was spirited off after it hit the manila file of "typed" items. Still, I can see it in my mind. He used the the wood-chip inflected paper that was usually used for carbon copies. Typing Bangs's copy, after reading his hysterical pieces about Iggy Pop, Lou Reed and heavy metal bands in my brother's copies of CREEM brought me tantalizingly close to someplace I did want to be. The Comp Shop was close to all that, and as much as I'd prefer to have been lurking around Kit's desk at the periphery, listening to the conversation, I had to earn a living, and so typing is what I did.
EATING
At night, there were a few places open. We frequently went to Despina's on Mass. Ave, a Greek subjoint. Because I was poor, and saving my money, I would basically eat half of a half of a sub, which meant someone had to buy the other 3/4s, and Milo was usually obliging. I remember living on apples back then, but also smoking more than was probably good for me. Despina's was good about getting you food quickly -- we had 45 minutes tops -- mostly, a half-hour, so we usually had a dinner break around 9 pm. That meant, if we didn't hustle back, the night would be even longer. Milo and I were never organized enough to bring a meal in. And the prospect of spending the entire night in the Comp Shop wasn't attractive.
AKU AKU
This Polynesian restaurant was around the corner and it was not a good place to go for a quick bite for dinner. Before long, you'd settle into a seat, and someone would propose the first Scorpion bowl, and then you'd have to get another, while the crab rangoon and chicken fingers arrived, and there was no way you could type blind after that. Blind drunk, maybe. The Aku Aku had the dimmest lighting, the comfiest banquette seats and the Phoenix had a deep investment in the place in terms of scrip (scrip = credit in lieu of cash payment -- staff could save 40 percent or more by purchasing scrip from various advertisers). The "official" parties were staged her, as was the occasional Friday night blow-out. I do remember Aku Aku platters coming to the comp shop (probably left over from ad/sales or traffic) and dining on cold shrimp and feeling like I'd scored.
More TKTKTK
TEENAGE TYPESETTER ON THE NIGHT SHIFT: Clif Garboden, Supplements, Ellis the Rim Man and Me.
SUPPLEMENTS. No, not vitamins. By the dawn of the '80s it was clear that the Phoenix had a lot of business going on. Production did work for other businesses that needed graphic arts. We also typeset the Bay State Banner, and some college newspapers, including the Brandeis Justice. Milo called this the "Just Us," because the Phoenix, in some insane version of payback, hired out our typesetting and pasteup departments as mentors for Brandeis students putting together their student newspaper. I recall this as happening at least every other week during the school year, and it was really nuts, because these kids thought they could rewrite a story once it was on the boards. Some of them would stab themselves with the Exact-o blades (I remember screams, and blood on the floor), and our work included much babysitting along with getting their damn paper on the boards, in the boxes and out the door. The "Just Us" crew came in early in the week, before the real work started, but before long I noticed a disturbing frequency, and increase in number, of Supplements.
The Phoenix made money from ads, the Classifieds, the display ads, the movie ads, the record company ads, the Eastern Mountain Sports ad. Tons of ads filled the paper. But there were so many other customers out there that the Phoenix got in the habit of producing Supplements regularly. These were devoted to a variety of themes that Never. Seemed. To. End.
For example: Summer Preview -- easily three times as big as a regular paper. Or maybe the Band Guide (many, many thousands of free listings for bands, the tiny smeary columns of which were bordered by big, bold, smeary ads for music or pop culture related items.) Or Skiing. How about Audio or Automotive? We had a Tech Supplement that morphed into a PC supplement. All of these piles and packages of writing were stacked into the plastic envelopes bolted to the wall.
Behind the sea of Supplements was a man I later came to know as a true hero, friend, mentor and sage. But as a teenage typesetter, my heart sank to see him. His advent in Production always meant More Effing Work. Yes, the Sea of Supplements was presided over by a young Clif Garboden, who first donned his natty beige invisible Superman cape and guided the gigantic teetering piles of copy into the Comp Shop, where we typesetters toiled (Rosie, Milo, Lisa, Karen), along with night-proofreader Donna Kay Williams, before her ascendancy to "8 Days a Week," an expanded listing feature.
Clif, like the other editors, wore soft-soled rubber shoes, and you only knew he was there by the cigarette smoke when he left. He worked incredibly fast, leaning over the tilted desk where the Boards were to scrawl a "cg" in the right top corner of each Proof. That meant, "take this one away, and bring on the next batch."
Other Supplements editors (Barbara Wallraff, then Tory Carlson, then Vicki Hengen) were hard working, but compared to Clif, they were mere mortals. I don't ever remember being at the Phoenix when a Supplement was hatching in Production and finishing a shift before Clif, who undoubtedly had been there all day anyway. He had some regular writers for the sections, though it wasn't uncommon to see an entire Supplement with just two or three bylines. (the most frequent bylines were those of E. Brad Miller, Paul D. Lehrman probably wrote 80 percent of all Supplement copy that was related to gizmos, gadgets, machines, and music items).
The concurrent proofing, pasting and checking had people hunched over the boards for long hours standing up. Somehow, a 24 or 32, 64, 128 page Supplement would be cruising alongside our typical week (Wednesday, Lifestyle and Listings, Thursday, Arts and more listings, Friday, news) like a giant white shark looming over a friendly pod of dolphins.
Back then, the Phoenix was free on college campuses, but cost a dollar in the stores. When there was a Supplement, people had to use two hands to heft these mighty wads of information from the shelf at Store 24. I tried not to huff and sigh along with Milo ("it's another gawd-DAMN supplement, grrrr" -- yes, he really said "grrrr" just like Scrooge McDuck, one of his heroes, along with Carl Barks). Mostly, I was grateful to have the work, ever-mindful that I was vulnerable, being the last person hired, the youngest, the "student," the expendable one.
Even with the extra work, after time, I noticed I was becoming a faster and more accurate typist with the punch tape. I learned how to input the codes, and became more adept on the editing machine, at least for simple galleys. The other typing, the galleys for ads that had a variety of type sizes and fonts, as well as line-lengths took a little longer. I got to work on those during weeks when there wasn't a Supplement, usually the dog days of summer. Superviser Karen Bitter eventually shifted to daytime work, and Mary Kinneavy, a tremendously sweet and kind person came in on the nightshift. Milo, and Lisa Deeley Smith continued typing. Lisa did most of the ads the art department would hand over.
These, you had to translate, and read the font requests, the style (flush left, right, or centered), and any other particulars. There were "double truck" ads from businesses like Ellis the Rim Man who sold tires. Since there are a lot of different sized tires, these ads had hundreds of tiny numbers marching in antlike columns all over the pages. All those numbers had to be individually typed, and proofed. If the ad was reduced or changed in any way, it was shot on the photostat camera. You did not want an Ellis the Rim Man ad with lots of bits of type stuck to it with wax, which would eventually flake off.
Ellis the Rim Man, the Harvard Coop record ads and other big advertisers required skilled typing, which Karen and Lisa could do (amazingly, without once ever picking up a cigarette the way the rest of us did). So if you had a new Ellis the Rim Man ad, and a gigantic Supplement, plus the usual amount of ads from the art department, it was very, very tempting to go to the ladies room the long way, and walk through the newsroom and see what people had on their desks, or their walls. There, in the mostly quiet editorial room during the late evening, it was tempting to stand and survey the cluttered desks, each with a Selectric (except for Charlie Pierce who may have inherited Bob Sales' manual). What would it be like to be in Editorial, sitting at one of those desks, typing something that came out of your own brain? Not someone else's marked-up copy on a metal easel by one's side. I imagined this piece of writing that would, miraculously, leap over the pencils of editors to get on the Boards and onto the street.
But how to write? Where to start? The Phoenix had lots of short items that were contributed by staff. We also had a regular "listings" sections which encompassed everything from AA to Movie Listings, to Therapy. This was a broad subject under the aegis of the Phoenix as some therapists included a photograph in their ad which showed them dressed in thigh-high stockings and a theatrical mask. The text that was repeated, like Listings meant a particular piece of punchtape carried over from week to week, requiring only minimal editing for updates (bands for music venues, movies for theaters, or "cinemas," depending on where it was).
I could have looked around and decided to write something for Supplements. I'm sure Clif would have been open to it. But none of it struck me as an area I'd be comfortable passing myself off as an "expert." Certainly not Audio, nor Automotive (I'd wanted to live in Boston partly so I'd never have to drive). The prospect of a great big 800-word story on some aspect of fun in the warm weather for a summer preview piece was beyond my scope at that time.
Besides, Clif seemed to be full up. Each and every one of these gigantic sections seemed to spring newborn from his brain. He oversaw each Supplement with phlegmatic and low-key anxiety. Of course, he was always expecting something to fuck up, and he always knew he'd be the last man standing to get these damn things out the door. At one point, we had a Supplement on, of all things, Home Security -- it probably was Interior Design or something like that. Anyway, Clif had written a whole piece about locks on the home, window locks, etc. It was unusual for Clif to have a byline (beyond, of course the brilliant 7 pt Hot Dots television listing, which he also wrote for decades). Clif called the protagonist in his piece "Eric."
I think Milo was typing the piece initially, but I ended up reading it too since Milo kept chortling at the copy. This "Eric" seemed to have a lot of concern about making sure his locks were deadbolts and that his alarm system was reliable. Milo whispered to me, "Clif IS Eric." I remember looking over to the Boards. Clif was smoking -- as he always was -- holding the cigarette between thumb and forefinger. If there had been a camera on the Boards pointing up at his face it would probably be clocking the rapid-movement of his eyes as he scanned copy he'd edited and proofed. Meticulous, exacting and tireless, Clif moved onto the next Board.
"He's fussy --" Milo whispered. "JUST LIKE ERIC!" And then Milo gave his characteristic snort of laughter. Clif probably looked up, registered an unusual sound, took the measure of the room as we hustled back to our terminals, and continued on with his page proofing.
Sometime in the fall of 1979, I decided I wanted to write too. Mostly, the music critics were guys, except for Ariel Swartley (who was married to Kit Rachlis, the music editor) and Deborah Frost, who occasionally wrote lifestyle pieces. Ariel looked like a folkie, with smock tops, long brown hair and a nice smile. Deborah was, literally, the antithesis, with a shock of black hair, one lock bleached pink. She wore a black motorcycle jacket, black jeans, and usually dark glasses. Her copy was more frequent than Ariel's and usually had her own scrawled additions in the margins, along with Kit's edits, which meant one occasionally had to tilt one's head 90 degrees to get all the words in. Deborah (who later became a friend) was extremely intimidating, but she set a good example on how to enter a room (scowling and talking). There was a photobooth snapshot of her that hung in Ande Zellman's cubicle office on which she'd scrawled: The Fabulous Debulous par Scavullo! For the first few times I saw it I actually believed it was Francesco Scavullo's work -- she had that kind of style.
Another music critic was a tall graying fellow with glasses who looked like he could have been a poli-sci professor, but who was, in fact a lawyer: Mike Freedberg bonded with Milo early over a shared interest in dance music a/k/a boogie, get-down, R&B and is still a friend to this day. Bob Blumenthal was also a lawyer, although more clean-cut, and usually came in wearing a suit (which totally set him apart from the newsroom males, all of whom were dressed up if a shirt tail was tucked in). He had bright red hair, wire-rimmed glasses and a deep and intense knowledge of jazz. James Isaacs was still writing Cellars by Starlight then, but you never saw him unless Ande Zellman was working late.
The Phoenix, under Kit Rachlis's editorship covered a variety of music, Lloyd Schwartz wrote about classical music, Bob and Mike covered traditional and adventurous jazz (so did Paul D. Lehrman occasionally, more about him later). Pop, mainstream and edgy was also of interest. Kit had connections at Rolling Stone, and had written reviews, so we had pieces by John Morthland. Kit was also in intense competition with the eminence grise of pop criticism, Robert "Bob" Christgau. I don't believe Christgau ever, ever wrote a piece for the Phoenix, but I know he got it every week because Kit was canny about making sure subscriptions were sent to him as well as anyone who mattered in the music business. In my time as a teenage typesetter, I once picked up the phone and found legendary Columbia producer John Hammond at the other end of the line. He was calling for Kit and thank god I had the presence of mind to say, it is very cool to speak to you, the work you've done is just amazing (a rare moment of gush, since I tried to keep a game face in that place).
I also once typed a piece by Lester Bangs, which was memorable in that the type was so faint, one suspected Bangs last changed his typewriter ribbon sometime after the Beatles broke up. Yet the piece had been typed so vigorously that the circles in the 'o's and 'g's and 'p's were just angry dots. Under Kit's meticulously steady pencil excisions, this piece was about eight pages, but reduced to four and a half pages of copy as whole paragraphs had been sheared away, like calved glaciers,. I wish I'd saved the Bangs copy -- it was spirited off after it hit the manila file of "typed" items. Still, I can see it in my mind. He used the the wood-chip inflected paper that was usually used for carbon copies. Typing Bangs's copy, after reading his hysterical pieces about Iggy Pop, Lou Reed and heavy metal bands in my brother's copies of CREEM brought me tantalizingly close to someplace I did want to be. The Comp Shop was close to all that, and as much as I'd prefer to have been lurking around Kit's desk at the periphery, listening to the conversation, I had to earn a living, and so typing is what I did.
EATING
At night, there were a few places open. We frequently went to Despina's on Mass. Ave, a Greek subjoint. Because I was poor, and saving my money, I would basically eat half of a half of a sub, which meant someone had to buy the other 3/4s, and Milo was usually obliging. I remember living on apples back then, but also smoking more than was probably good for me. Despina's was good about getting you food quickly -- we had 45 minutes tops -- mostly, a half-hour, so we usually had a dinner break around 9 pm. That meant, if we didn't hustle back, the night would be even longer. Milo and I were never organized enough to bring a meal in. And the prospect of spending the entire night in the Comp Shop wasn't attractive.
AKU AKU
This Polynesian restaurant was around the corner and it was not a good place to go for a quick bite for dinner. Before long, you'd settle into a seat, and someone would propose the first Scorpion bowl, and then you'd have to get another, while the crab rangoon and chicken fingers arrived, and there was no way you could type blind after that. Blind drunk, maybe. The Aku Aku had the dimmest lighting, the comfiest banquette seats and the Phoenix had a deep investment in the place in terms of scrip (scrip = credit in lieu of cash payment -- staff could save 40 percent or more by purchasing scrip from various advertisers). The "official" parties were staged her, as was the occasional Friday night blow-out. I do remember Aku Aku platters coming to the comp shop (probably left over from ad/sales or traffic) and dining on cold shrimp and feeling like I'd scored.
More TKTKTK
TEENAGE TYPESETTER ON THE NIGHT SHIFT: Clif Garboden, Supplements, Ellis the Rim Man and Me.
SUPPLEMENTS. No, not vitamins. By the dawn of the '80s it was clear that the Phoenix had a lot of business going on. Production did work for other businesses that needed graphic arts. We also typeset the Bay State Banner, and some college newspapers, including the Brandeis Justice. Milo called this the "Just Us," because the Phoenix, in some insane version of payback, hired out our typesetting and pasteup departments as mentors for Brandeis students putting together their student newspaper. I recall this as happening at least every other week during the school year, and it was really nuts, because these kids thought they could rewrite a story once it was on the boards. Some of them would stab themselves with the Exact-o blades (I remember screams, and blood on the floor), and our work included much babysitting along with getting their damn paper on the boards, in the boxes and out the door. The "Just Us" crew came in early in the week, before the real work started, but before long I noticed a disturbing frequency, and increase in number, of Supplements.
The Phoenix made money from ads, the Classifieds, the display ads, the movie ads, the record company ads, the Eastern Mountain Sports ad. Tons of ads filled the paper. But there were so many other customers out there that the Phoenix got in the habit of producing Supplements regularly. These were devoted to a variety of themes that Never. Seemed. To. End.
For example: Summer Preview -- easily three times as big as a regular paper. Or maybe the Band Guide (many, many thousands of free listings for bands, the tiny smeary columns of which were bordered by big, bold, smeary ads for music or pop culture related items.) Or Skiing. How about Audio or Automotive? We had a Tech Supplement that morphed into a PC supplement. All of these piles and packages of writing were stacked into the plastic envelopes bolted to the wall.
Behind the sea of Supplements was a man I later came to know as a true hero, friend, mentor and sage. But as a teenage typesetter, my heart sank to see him. His advent in Production always meant More Effing Work. Yes, the Sea of Supplements was presided over by a young Clif Garboden, who first donned his natty beige invisible Superman cape and guided the gigantic teetering piles of copy into the Comp Shop, where we typesetters toiled (Rosie, Milo, Lisa, Karen), along with night-proofreader Donna Kay Williams, before her ascendancy to "8 Days a Week," an expanded listing feature.
Clif, like the other editors, wore soft-soled rubber shoes, and you only knew he was there by the cigarette smoke when he left. He worked incredibly fast, leaning over the tilted desk where the Boards were to scrawl a "cg" in the right top corner of each Proof. That meant, "take this one away, and bring on the next batch."
Other Supplements editors (Barbara Wallraff, then Tory Carlson, then Vicki Hengen) were hard working, but compared to Clif, they were mere mortals. I don't ever remember being at the Phoenix when a Supplement was hatching in Production and finishing a shift before Clif, who undoubtedly had been there all day anyway. He had some regular writers for the sections, though it wasn't uncommon to see an entire Supplement with just two or three bylines. (the most frequent bylines were those of E. Brad Miller, Paul D. Lehrman probably wrote 80 percent of all Supplement copy that was related to gizmos, gadgets, machines, and music items).
The concurrent proofing, pasting and checking had people hunched over the boards for long hours standing up. Somehow, a 24 or 32, 64, 128 page Supplement would be cruising alongside our typical week (Wednesday, Lifestyle and Listings, Thursday, Arts and more listings, Friday, news) like a giant white shark looming over a friendly pod of dolphins.
Back then, the Phoenix was free on college campuses, but cost a dollar in the stores. When there was a Supplement, people had to use two hands to heft these mighty wads of information from the shelf at Store 24. I tried not to huff and sigh along with Milo ("it's another gawd-DAMN supplement, grrrr" -- yes, he really said "grrrr" just like Scrooge McDuck, one of his heroes, along with Carl Barks). Mostly, I was grateful to have the work, ever-mindful that I was vulnerable, being the last person hired, the youngest, the "student," the expendable one.
Even with the extra work, after time, I noticed I was becoming a faster and more accurate typist with the punch tape. I learned how to input the codes, and became more adept on the editing machine, at least for simple galleys. The other typing, the galleys for ads that had a variety of type sizes and fonts, as well as line-lengths took a little longer. I got to work on those during weeks when there wasn't a Supplement, usually the dog days of summer. Superviser Karen Bitter eventually shifted to daytime work, and Mary Kinneavy, a tremendously sweet and kind person came in on the nightshift. Milo, and Lisa Deeley Smith continued typing. Lisa did most of the ads the art department would hand over.
These, you had to translate, and read the font requests, the style (flush left, right, or centered), and any other particulars. There were "double truck" ads from businesses like Ellis the Rim Man who sold tires. Since there are a lot of different sized tires, these ads had hundreds of tiny numbers marching in antlike columns all over the pages. All those numbers had to be individually typed, and proofed. If the ad was reduced or changed in any way, it was shot on the photostat camera. You did not want an Ellis the Rim Man ad with lots of bits of type stuck to it with wax, which would eventually flake off.
Ellis the Rim Man, the Harvard Coop record ads and other big advertisers required skilled typing, which Karen and Lisa could do (amazingly, without once ever picking up a cigarette the way the rest of us did). So if you had a new Ellis the Rim Man ad, and a gigantic Supplement, plus the usual amount of ads from the art department, it was very, very tempting to go to the ladies room the long way, and walk through the newsroom and see what people had on their desks, or their walls. There, in the mostly quiet editorial room during the late evening, it was tempting to stand and survey the cluttered desks, each with a Selectric (except for Charlie Pierce who may have inherited Bob Sales' manual). What would it be like to be in Editorial, sitting at one of those desks, typing something that came out of your own brain? Not someone else's marked-up copy on a metal easel by one's side. I imagined this piece of writing that would, miraculously, leap over the pencils of editors to get on the Boards and onto the street.
But how to write? Where to start? The Phoenix had lots of short items that were contributed by staff. We also had a regular "listings" sections which encompassed everything from AA to Movie Listings, to Therapy. This was a broad subject under the aegis of the Phoenix as some therapists included a photograph in their ad which showed them dressed in thigh-high stockings and a theatrical mask. The text that was repeated, like Listings meant a particular piece of punchtape carried over from week to week, requiring only minimal editing for updates (bands for music venues, movies for theaters, or "cinemas," depending on where it was).
I could have looked around and decided to write something for Supplements. I'm sure Clif would have been open to it. But none of it struck me as an area I'd be comfortable passing myself off as an "expert." Certainly not Audio, nor Automotive (I'd wanted to live in Boston partly so I'd never have to drive). The prospect of a great big 800-word story on some aspect of fun in the warm weather for a summer preview piece was beyond my scope at that time.
Besides, Clif seemed to be full up. Each and every one of these gigantic sections seemed to spring newborn from his brain. He oversaw each Supplement with phlegmatic and low-key anxiety. Of course, he was always expecting something to fuck up, and he always knew he'd be the last man standing to get these damn things out the door. At one point, we had a Supplement on, of all things, Home Security -- it probably was Interior Design or something like that. Anyway, Clif had written a whole piece about locks on the home, window locks, etc. It was unusual for Clif to have a byline (beyond, of course the brilliant 7 pt Hot Dots television listing, which he also wrote for decades). Clif called the protagonist in his piece "Eric."
I think Milo was typing the piece initially, but I ended up reading it too since Milo kept chortling at the copy. This "Eric" seemed to have a lot of concern about making sure his locks were deadbolts and that his alarm system was reliable. Milo whispered to me, "Clif IS Eric." I remember looking over to the Boards. Clif was smoking -- as he always was -- holding the cigarette between thumb and forefinger. If there had been a camera on the Boards pointing up at his face it would probably be clocking the rapid-movement of his eyes as he scanned copy he'd edited and proofed. Meticulous, exacting and tireless, Clif moved onto the next Board.
"He's fussy --" Milo whispered. "JUST LIKE ERIC!" And then Milo gave his characteristic snort of laughter. Clif probably looked up, registered an unusual sound, took the measure of the room as we hustled back to our terminals, and continued on with his page proofing.
posted 3/ 20 / 13
Before the beginning
When Stephen started "Boston After Dark" I was in kindergarten, but definitely was aware of the paper during my childhood because my dad frequently brought it home. We were a multiple-newspaper household, since my dad had a very glamorous job as the film critic for the Boston Herald Traveler -- then the top newspaper in Boston. (We were a three-newspaper town back then, and on Sundays, I remember we always got the Herald and the New York Times and the Worcester Telegram, and then my aunt Irene's copy of the Hearst-owned Record-American, which she got for the racing news and which my brother Hal Cragin preferred because how can you beat three pages of color comics? We liked Hirschfeld's "Nina" drawings, but didn't see the point of the NYT otherwise).
I never understood "B.A.D" or why one spelled out the letters, versus saying them outloud, but I remember meeting Stephen at intervals during my childhood and young personhood at opening nights in Boston. My mom always joked that he told her he liked her best because they were eye-to-eye (literally -- my mom is about 5'2").
In May of 1979, I finished freshman year at Boston University, and made plans to spend the summer at my dad's Henchman Street flat in the North End. I'd been a typesetter at the Daily Free Press, so I had some skills, but for some completely idiotic reason, I decided to look for waitressing jobs (figuring there were a lot more restaurants, there were tips involved, and completely forgetting that in the 2 years I worked at the family dry cleaning business, I loathed dealing with the public). Fast forward a few frustrating weeks later. My dad, in his inimitable way, got movie passes to the opening of "The Bell Jar," a godawful movie about Sylvia Plath. There was Stephen, and I discovered that I, too, was eye-to-eye with him. He asked me what my plans were and I said I didn't have a job, but I'd been typesetting at the Freep. His eyes lit up. "You should come work for me!" he said. I remember my mood lifted appreciably. (to be continued....)
posted March 17, 2013
GETTING TO THE NIGHT SHIFT
On June 4, 1979, I was assigned space on the day shift. What I didn't know is that the day shift was actually over-populated, and though there wasn't a lot of work for me, apparently the word had come down to give me some hours. Typing then was the opposite of typing now. Now, you can see your letters, change your font, the size, flushing copy right, left or center. Back then, those commands all needed to be input with specific codes, and the Phoenix typeface then was Palatino (it later changed to Malibu). Those codes needed to be input along with the words. We worked at desk-top metal Compugraphic machines with a reel on the right side. These were similar to a movie projector with no "uptake" reel. A large spool of yellow paper tape fed through a slot above the middle of the keyboard, and then, as you typed, each letter or number was "punched" in a different six-dot vertical configuration. This punchtape looped on the floor in a heap, giving unmistakable evidence of one's industry (or glaring lack thereof).
I remember my delight realizing after months that I could "read" some of this gobbledygook, making it easier to find one's place (experienced typesetters suggested you finish the damn paragraph before taking a bathroom or smoke break). After you finished typing, you had the pleasure of threading your heap of paper tape onto an empty spool mounted on a metal pedestal with a handle. All that typing -- what seemed like hours and hours of typing -- instantly spiraled into a yellow paper disc. It was always so tempting to fling it in the air and yell "Happy New Year!" It was very, very, very tempting to spin that spool many more times than it needed to create a little "whippita-whippita" sound as the end of the tape flew, but I stopped that after my finger caught in the spool and I screamed in pain. A very odd day-shift typesetter named Jane Sexton laughed, and thought that was really funny. I thought I didn't like the day shift very much. But there I was.
Once we had rolled up our spiral, we wrote the name of the story on the end because that little length of punchtape resembled all the other little lengths of punchtape produced in the course of an evening. These precious little streamers were hung on hooks on a board, until they were ready to be edited.
Had enough of typesetting history? Oh, wait, there's more. What did you do if your length of paper tape had errors? Or, like mine so often was, perforated with errors, mistypings, making a misteak making a mistake and so forgetting forgettttttting where you ended typpppping and starting over again?
Why then, you threaded that punchtape into a larger terminal, this one with a tiny red squinty screen that may have had as many as 32 characters running across. This terminal created a new, perfect punchtape as you typed in corrections. If I had time, and people were on break, I'd get my ragged little bits into the machine (once I was told how it worked) and destroyed the evidence. Voila, a perfect "first pass" of typesetting.
The finished yellow punchtape was fed into another machine, which produced the "cold type" of galleys. These were put into a chemical bath and then hung, like laundry, to dry in the cubicle adjoining the photostat ("stat") camera. The stat camera was its own artform. This device reduced photographs to pixillated collage, and those could be expanded or reduced as needed. The stat camera was operated by MaryAnne Williamson (M.A.) who was masterful at making images for ads as well as turning movie 8 x 10s into images to run along Stephen Schiff or David Chute's film review.
My dad, the old journalist, was always looking for something to lament in the era of journalism I was coming to inhabit. "None of these people know about hot type," on the rare occasion I'd allow him to enter my workplace. "So what?" I'd think. What we were doing was completely hands-on. We were producing galleys, from writing that had been edited and re-edited in the other room. We'd hand-type it, and then Jeffrey Gantz, the mysteriously flawless proofreader would go over copy that had already had at least six sets of eyes on it and find errors! These, we'd correct with a line of type, and many of us had bits of waxed phrases or words attached to our clothes.
By the way, this system of turning words on pages ("hard copy") into words formatted into columns ("galleys") is incredibly frustrating unless you are an exceptional typist like Lisa Deeley Smith or a perfect typist like Karen Bitter. For me, it was disasterville, because I was used to my manual typewritter (a Hermes desk model), and the electronic keys were more sensitive. I learned I had to slow my typing way down, not to have it riddled with errors.
About 10 days into my tenure as a day-typesetter, I got a call from a nurse at New England Medical Center. She told me my father had had a massive heart attack and was in the ICU but he was currently stable. I had only just arrived at work, and I took this call from the phone on the wall directly above Jeffrey's desk. (How he endured all that cord-twisting that happened when people made calls around his monkish lair, I can't imagine). Jeffrey asked me if everything was okay and I said, "no, not really," and told him about the call. I said, "So, I guess I should go back to work?" (I was 18 at the time). He said, "No, absolutely not, go to the hospital. NOW!" For once, I used the subway (I had been used to walking from the North End to 100 Mass. Avenue to save the 50 cents the train cost).
I think Jeffrey must have told Karen who then told Dennis, the production manager and I didn't go into work for a few days and when they called me back it was for my true home: the night shift (to be continued).
March 18, 2013
TEENAGE TYPESETTER ON THE NIGHTSHIFT and RADIO WARS
Sometime in the summer of 1979, I was offered the opportunity to work part-time on the night shift: 3 to 11 pm. I think I did this four days a week, all the while attending geology classes at Boston University. B.U. had a nasty habit of raising their tuition $500 or $1000 a semester, and in my sophomore and junior years, this meant I was also trying to rack lots of hours. This was reckless, and ultimately a mistake, as I left school at the end of Junior year.
Of course starting at 3 pm wasn't really possible, what with late hours and the 90 minute walk from the North End to 100 Mass. Ave. (to save 60 cents on the subway). And "11" was seldom the case except early in the week. We'd go to midnight easily enough. The Phoenix published on Saturday, which meant that all the boards (finished pages), all the art, and those miles of classifieds (then part of the paper which was, my journalist father observed, probably the most lucrative part) had to be packed in their boxes before being driven to the printer (Deedee Freedberg can speak to this!)
The nightshift crew consisted of Lisa Deeley Smith, a serene woman with long brown hair and glasses who was also a student at Harvard Divinity School, supervisor Karen Bitter, who was much kinder and more tolerant of my shenanigans than I deserved, and a guy from Livingston, Montana: Milo Miles. Milo had long hair, and a beard, and usually a corduroy jacket over a shirt with a swirly pattern, and flare jeans, and silver rings on many fingers and a genuine tiger-claw pendant on a necklace he'd show you if you asked.
"Yeass, yesss, I've heard all the jokes," Milo would say, "Milo-" and Lisa would cut in: "Minderbinder," and someone would sing, "Moving to Montana," and Milo would retort, "Yeass, yeasss, going to raise some dental floss--yeah, great song, Frank Zappa, but if you haven't heard Captain Beefheart you don't know where Zappa's coming from..."
Milo was, in short, a marvel. Nowadays, the western world hears him opining on World Music for four or so minutes on Fresh Air periodically, but in the era of the night shift, he was the authority on all kinds of music. He'd worked for a record store when he was in college in Missoula, and was the first (so he told us) person to stock any African pop records in the entire state. Looking back, I'd love to know who his equivalent was in Idaho, Wyoming and the Dakotas but I'm quite certain that Milo stood alone as a rare music appreciator. He also appreciated other things: detective novels of the 1940s (not cool again yet), underground comics, dinosaurs (because the Miles family owned 3000 or something acres of farmland and his dad had found T-rex bones and cemented them along the driveway at the family home. He liked Indian food, Japanese food, Chinese food, and barbeque, all cuisines that had yet to arrive in my hometown of Lunenburg, Mass.
So...what's a guy like this doing in the production department, instead of out front, in the newsroom? There they had windows for goddsakes, whereas the entire production department languished in the interior of the building, with only the fire escape for those who needed fresh air, or a safe place to smoke a doobie.
Well, Milo had every intention of being IN the paper and not just responsible for producing it, and during the summer of 1979, he was working on getting an assignment from music editor Kit Rachlis. And I am proud to say I was there for that first assignment which was, I believe, a short review of "Lust for Life," by Iggy Pop. (In a bizarre example of 'small worldism," my brother Hal Cragin, started playing with Iggy in 1992, and recently produced a record of Iggy singing in Spanish. I haven't heard whether Milo likes this or not...)
Milo was interested in all aspects of pop culture -- and at some point during that traumatic summer, when my dad spent literally months having his coronary plumbing rearranged -- I stopped going home to Henchman Street in the North End, and found it easier to get to night shift typesetting from Milo's three-room apartment in Cambridgeport Since it was the two of us, we weren't usually late, and Karen found it difficult to be angry with Milo, who was lively, charming, a decent typist and willing to out-mutter anyone.
RADIO WARS
WCOZ, WBCN, WXKS (KISS). How tragic that only KISS-108 prevails these 34 years later. The day shift in the art department, which adjoined the production seemed chamber, seemed to prefer the uptempo, and unabashed disco of KISS-108. Whereas the night shift art department (including Caryn Hirsch, Cliff Smythe and probably Brian Codagnone, though he was the quietest) were more drawn towards the authentic Bawstin-rock of BeeeCeeYEN. Every now and then, one of the art department people insisted on WCOZ, but they'd always play some stinker of a song, or lard the airwaves with ads, that WBCN usually won out. I seem to remember (Ma)Donna Donovan, a fetching blonde who dated David Bieber was loyal to the station. This is before WFNX, which was, before that, WLYN, which I remember came along about the time that Production upgrade to VDTs (with square black screens and one could actually SEE what one was typing!). More to come...
Post-script
Oddly enough, I don't remember there being a record player in the joint. Strange, when considering how many dozens and dozens of cardboard boxes from Columbia, Polygram, MCA, Warner, Chrysalis, and then all the indy labels flooded into the mailroom. So many, they'd be stacked in leaning stacks. Kit Rachlis was the music critic then, and I remember seeing him carrying an armload back to his cubicle, and patiently and diligently slicing open the mailing tape. Once you got the day's haul of records out, you still had a giant pile of cardboard, and I don't remember any recycling back then.
Before the beginning
When Stephen started "Boston After Dark" I was in kindergarten, but definitely was aware of the paper during my childhood because my dad frequently brought it home. We were a multiple-newspaper household, since my dad had a very glamorous job as the film critic for the Boston Herald Traveler -- then the top newspaper in Boston. (We were a three-newspaper town back then, and on Sundays, I remember we always got the Herald and the New York Times and the Worcester Telegram, and then my aunt Irene's copy of the Hearst-owned Record-American, which she got for the racing news and which my brother Hal Cragin preferred because how can you beat three pages of color comics? We liked Hirschfeld's "Nina" drawings, but didn't see the point of the NYT otherwise).
I never understood "B.A.D" or why one spelled out the letters, versus saying them outloud, but I remember meeting Stephen at intervals during my childhood and young personhood at opening nights in Boston. My mom always joked that he told her he liked her best because they were eye-to-eye (literally -- my mom is about 5'2").
In May of 1979, I finished freshman year at Boston University, and made plans to spend the summer at my dad's Henchman Street flat in the North End. I'd been a typesetter at the Daily Free Press, so I had some skills, but for some completely idiotic reason, I decided to look for waitressing jobs (figuring there were a lot more restaurants, there were tips involved, and completely forgetting that in the 2 years I worked at the family dry cleaning business, I loathed dealing with the public). Fast forward a few frustrating weeks later. My dad, in his inimitable way, got movie passes to the opening of "The Bell Jar," a godawful movie about Sylvia Plath. There was Stephen, and I discovered that I, too, was eye-to-eye with him. He asked me what my plans were and I said I didn't have a job, but I'd been typesetting at the Freep. His eyes lit up. "You should come work for me!" he said. I remember my mood lifted appreciably. (to be continued....)
posted March 17, 2013
GETTING TO THE NIGHT SHIFT
On June 4, 1979, I was assigned space on the day shift. What I didn't know is that the day shift was actually over-populated, and though there wasn't a lot of work for me, apparently the word had come down to give me some hours. Typing then was the opposite of typing now. Now, you can see your letters, change your font, the size, flushing copy right, left or center. Back then, those commands all needed to be input with specific codes, and the Phoenix typeface then was Palatino (it later changed to Malibu). Those codes needed to be input along with the words. We worked at desk-top metal Compugraphic machines with a reel on the right side. These were similar to a movie projector with no "uptake" reel. A large spool of yellow paper tape fed through a slot above the middle of the keyboard, and then, as you typed, each letter or number was "punched" in a different six-dot vertical configuration. This punchtape looped on the floor in a heap, giving unmistakable evidence of one's industry (or glaring lack thereof).
I remember my delight realizing after months that I could "read" some of this gobbledygook, making it easier to find one's place (experienced typesetters suggested you finish the damn paragraph before taking a bathroom or smoke break). After you finished typing, you had the pleasure of threading your heap of paper tape onto an empty spool mounted on a metal pedestal with a handle. All that typing -- what seemed like hours and hours of typing -- instantly spiraled into a yellow paper disc. It was always so tempting to fling it in the air and yell "Happy New Year!" It was very, very, very tempting to spin that spool many more times than it needed to create a little "whippita-whippita" sound as the end of the tape flew, but I stopped that after my finger caught in the spool and I screamed in pain. A very odd day-shift typesetter named Jane Sexton laughed, and thought that was really funny. I thought I didn't like the day shift very much. But there I was.
Once we had rolled up our spiral, we wrote the name of the story on the end because that little length of punchtape resembled all the other little lengths of punchtape produced in the course of an evening. These precious little streamers were hung on hooks on a board, until they were ready to be edited.
Had enough of typesetting history? Oh, wait, there's more. What did you do if your length of paper tape had errors? Or, like mine so often was, perforated with errors, mistypings, making a misteak making a mistake and so forgetting forgettttttting where you ended typpppping and starting over again?
Why then, you threaded that punchtape into a larger terminal, this one with a tiny red squinty screen that may have had as many as 32 characters running across. This terminal created a new, perfect punchtape as you typed in corrections. If I had time, and people were on break, I'd get my ragged little bits into the machine (once I was told how it worked) and destroyed the evidence. Voila, a perfect "first pass" of typesetting.
The finished yellow punchtape was fed into another machine, which produced the "cold type" of galleys. These were put into a chemical bath and then hung, like laundry, to dry in the cubicle adjoining the photostat ("stat") camera. The stat camera was its own artform. This device reduced photographs to pixillated collage, and those could be expanded or reduced as needed. The stat camera was operated by MaryAnne Williamson (M.A.) who was masterful at making images for ads as well as turning movie 8 x 10s into images to run along Stephen Schiff or David Chute's film review.
My dad, the old journalist, was always looking for something to lament in the era of journalism I was coming to inhabit. "None of these people know about hot type," on the rare occasion I'd allow him to enter my workplace. "So what?" I'd think. What we were doing was completely hands-on. We were producing galleys, from writing that had been edited and re-edited in the other room. We'd hand-type it, and then Jeffrey Gantz, the mysteriously flawless proofreader would go over copy that had already had at least six sets of eyes on it and find errors! These, we'd correct with a line of type, and many of us had bits of waxed phrases or words attached to our clothes.
By the way, this system of turning words on pages ("hard copy") into words formatted into columns ("galleys") is incredibly frustrating unless you are an exceptional typist like Lisa Deeley Smith or a perfect typist like Karen Bitter. For me, it was disasterville, because I was used to my manual typewritter (a Hermes desk model), and the electronic keys were more sensitive. I learned I had to slow my typing way down, not to have it riddled with errors.
About 10 days into my tenure as a day-typesetter, I got a call from a nurse at New England Medical Center. She told me my father had had a massive heart attack and was in the ICU but he was currently stable. I had only just arrived at work, and I took this call from the phone on the wall directly above Jeffrey's desk. (How he endured all that cord-twisting that happened when people made calls around his monkish lair, I can't imagine). Jeffrey asked me if everything was okay and I said, "no, not really," and told him about the call. I said, "So, I guess I should go back to work?" (I was 18 at the time). He said, "No, absolutely not, go to the hospital. NOW!" For once, I used the subway (I had been used to walking from the North End to 100 Mass. Avenue to save the 50 cents the train cost).
I think Jeffrey must have told Karen who then told Dennis, the production manager and I didn't go into work for a few days and when they called me back it was for my true home: the night shift (to be continued).
March 18, 2013
TEENAGE TYPESETTER ON THE NIGHTSHIFT and RADIO WARS
Sometime in the summer of 1979, I was offered the opportunity to work part-time on the night shift: 3 to 11 pm. I think I did this four days a week, all the while attending geology classes at Boston University. B.U. had a nasty habit of raising their tuition $500 or $1000 a semester, and in my sophomore and junior years, this meant I was also trying to rack lots of hours. This was reckless, and ultimately a mistake, as I left school at the end of Junior year.
Of course starting at 3 pm wasn't really possible, what with late hours and the 90 minute walk from the North End to 100 Mass. Ave. (to save 60 cents on the subway). And "11" was seldom the case except early in the week. We'd go to midnight easily enough. The Phoenix published on Saturday, which meant that all the boards (finished pages), all the art, and those miles of classifieds (then part of the paper which was, my journalist father observed, probably the most lucrative part) had to be packed in their boxes before being driven to the printer (Deedee Freedberg can speak to this!)
The nightshift crew consisted of Lisa Deeley Smith, a serene woman with long brown hair and glasses who was also a student at Harvard Divinity School, supervisor Karen Bitter, who was much kinder and more tolerant of my shenanigans than I deserved, and a guy from Livingston, Montana: Milo Miles. Milo had long hair, and a beard, and usually a corduroy jacket over a shirt with a swirly pattern, and flare jeans, and silver rings on many fingers and a genuine tiger-claw pendant on a necklace he'd show you if you asked.
"Yeass, yesss, I've heard all the jokes," Milo would say, "Milo-" and Lisa would cut in: "Minderbinder," and someone would sing, "Moving to Montana," and Milo would retort, "Yeass, yeasss, going to raise some dental floss--yeah, great song, Frank Zappa, but if you haven't heard Captain Beefheart you don't know where Zappa's coming from..."
Milo was, in short, a marvel. Nowadays, the western world hears him opining on World Music for four or so minutes on Fresh Air periodically, but in the era of the night shift, he was the authority on all kinds of music. He'd worked for a record store when he was in college in Missoula, and was the first (so he told us) person to stock any African pop records in the entire state. Looking back, I'd love to know who his equivalent was in Idaho, Wyoming and the Dakotas but I'm quite certain that Milo stood alone as a rare music appreciator. He also appreciated other things: detective novels of the 1940s (not cool again yet), underground comics, dinosaurs (because the Miles family owned 3000 or something acres of farmland and his dad had found T-rex bones and cemented them along the driveway at the family home. He liked Indian food, Japanese food, Chinese food, and barbeque, all cuisines that had yet to arrive in my hometown of Lunenburg, Mass.
So...what's a guy like this doing in the production department, instead of out front, in the newsroom? There they had windows for goddsakes, whereas the entire production department languished in the interior of the building, with only the fire escape for those who needed fresh air, or a safe place to smoke a doobie.
Well, Milo had every intention of being IN the paper and not just responsible for producing it, and during the summer of 1979, he was working on getting an assignment from music editor Kit Rachlis. And I am proud to say I was there for that first assignment which was, I believe, a short review of "Lust for Life," by Iggy Pop. (In a bizarre example of 'small worldism," my brother Hal Cragin, started playing with Iggy in 1992, and recently produced a record of Iggy singing in Spanish. I haven't heard whether Milo likes this or not...)
Milo was interested in all aspects of pop culture -- and at some point during that traumatic summer, when my dad spent literally months having his coronary plumbing rearranged -- I stopped going home to Henchman Street in the North End, and found it easier to get to night shift typesetting from Milo's three-room apartment in Cambridgeport Since it was the two of us, we weren't usually late, and Karen found it difficult to be angry with Milo, who was lively, charming, a decent typist and willing to out-mutter anyone.
RADIO WARS
WCOZ, WBCN, WXKS (KISS). How tragic that only KISS-108 prevails these 34 years later. The day shift in the art department, which adjoined the production seemed chamber, seemed to prefer the uptempo, and unabashed disco of KISS-108. Whereas the night shift art department (including Caryn Hirsch, Cliff Smythe and probably Brian Codagnone, though he was the quietest) were more drawn towards the authentic Bawstin-rock of BeeeCeeYEN. Every now and then, one of the art department people insisted on WCOZ, but they'd always play some stinker of a song, or lard the airwaves with ads, that WBCN usually won out. I seem to remember (Ma)Donna Donovan, a fetching blonde who dated David Bieber was loyal to the station. This is before WFNX, which was, before that, WLYN, which I remember came along about the time that Production upgrade to VDTs (with square black screens and one could actually SEE what one was typing!). More to come...
Post-script
Oddly enough, I don't remember there being a record player in the joint. Strange, when considering how many dozens and dozens of cardboard boxes from Columbia, Polygram, MCA, Warner, Chrysalis, and then all the indy labels flooded into the mailroom. So many, they'd be stacked in leaning stacks. Kit Rachlis was the music critic then, and I remember seeing him carrying an armload back to his cubicle, and patiently and diligently slicing open the mailing tape. Once you got the day's haul of records out, you still had a giant pile of cardboard, and I don't remember any recycling back then.
The End. Phoenix closes.
posted March 15
Wow, I just found this on my page. Thank you for adding me Dan Kennedy. I have "worked" with many recent Phoenicians, though I have not been a 3D presence in the newsroom, due to writing "moon signs" offsite. "Moon Signs" and Symbolien Dai were midwifed by Clif Garboden and Peter Kadzis a zillion years ago in the 20th century. It is the 5th column I have written for the Phoenix.
My memories are of the 100 Mass. Ave office. A low-ceilinged arena separated by wooden dividers, and a heap of broken swivel chairs, manual typewriters, and sagging boxes of files in the wayback. Production artists and typesetters in one zone (without windows, but with a fire escape for those who smoked pot). The rest of us smoked cigarettes -- there was an ashtray by every terminal.
This was the Phoenix of typewriters, and a bottle in the bottom drawer, a straw in the pencil tray and smears on the desk tops. I was a teenager in this Phoenix, a place that gave me license to type fast, listen hard, and drink slow (cheaper that way) at the Eliot, or "news room west." The Phoenix gave me a little bit of money, interesting characters to contemplate and some great friends. I am also grateful to the Phoenix for a fabulous array of romantic interests (Hi David Edelstein, Hi Scott Rosenberg, Hi David Barber, Hi Milo Miles, Hi Robert Polito. It was fun. Sorry I left as I did.)
I am rich in swag and records and oddities like a Tiffany Phoenix bookmark made for the 25th anniversary. My brother Hal Cragin still has the low-tech Yoko Ono "It's Alright" t-shirt I was sent. I am addicted to the music I heard then, and the memory that the death of Samuel Beckett merited a front page. Or that the Turbines deserved a front page. I mourn John Ferguson and Clif Garboden (jf and cg in their lowercase initials on page proofs).
The Phoenix gave me giggles and lead me to true love, en route to reviewing a record: Chuck Warner's "Nobody Gets on the Guest List" a compilation of great songs by local bands. That was the best column ever, Cellars by Starlight.
The Phoenix made me crazy, especially during the periods of incipient unionization. It was not fun dealing with the nice folks I worked with who felt they needed to be mean after meeting with the suits from Modern Management Methods, or whatever the fuck it was. The Phoenix gave me a phone and a desk, and a mailbox and in 1989 I gave those things back and disappeared to LA. When I returned in 1992, Clif said, "We have a paper in Worcester, are you interested in writing for it?" That was the best column ever, Tales from Tritown.
And now. No more. Words continue. They jiggle and glow under glass. It's not the same. But it's what we have.
posted March 15
Wow, I just found this on my page. Thank you for adding me Dan Kennedy. I have "worked" with many recent Phoenicians, though I have not been a 3D presence in the newsroom, due to writing "moon signs" offsite. "Moon Signs" and Symbolien Dai were midwifed by Clif Garboden and Peter Kadzis a zillion years ago in the 20th century. It is the 5th column I have written for the Phoenix.
My memories are of the 100 Mass. Ave office. A low-ceilinged arena separated by wooden dividers, and a heap of broken swivel chairs, manual typewriters, and sagging boxes of files in the wayback. Production artists and typesetters in one zone (without windows, but with a fire escape for those who smoked pot). The rest of us smoked cigarettes -- there was an ashtray by every terminal.
This was the Phoenix of typewriters, and a bottle in the bottom drawer, a straw in the pencil tray and smears on the desk tops. I was a teenager in this Phoenix, a place that gave me license to type fast, listen hard, and drink slow (cheaper that way) at the Eliot, or "news room west." The Phoenix gave me a little bit of money, interesting characters to contemplate and some great friends. I am also grateful to the Phoenix for a fabulous array of romantic interests (Hi David Edelstein, Hi Scott Rosenberg, Hi David Barber, Hi Milo Miles, Hi Robert Polito. It was fun. Sorry I left as I did.)
I am rich in swag and records and oddities like a Tiffany Phoenix bookmark made for the 25th anniversary. My brother Hal Cragin still has the low-tech Yoko Ono "It's Alright" t-shirt I was sent. I am addicted to the music I heard then, and the memory that the death of Samuel Beckett merited a front page. Or that the Turbines deserved a front page. I mourn John Ferguson and Clif Garboden (jf and cg in their lowercase initials on page proofs).
The Phoenix gave me giggles and lead me to true love, en route to reviewing a record: Chuck Warner's "Nobody Gets on the Guest List" a compilation of great songs by local bands. That was the best column ever, Cellars by Starlight.
The Phoenix made me crazy, especially during the periods of incipient unionization. It was not fun dealing with the nice folks I worked with who felt they needed to be mean after meeting with the suits from Modern Management Methods, or whatever the fuck it was. The Phoenix gave me a phone and a desk, and a mailbox and in 1989 I gave those things back and disappeared to LA. When I returned in 1992, Clif said, "We have a paper in Worcester, are you interested in writing for it?" That was the best column ever, Tales from Tritown.
And now. No more. Words continue. They jiggle and glow under glass. It's not the same. But it's what we have.
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