On this ride, your hosts Steve and Mal hurtle from Point A to Point B while educating Steve about musical genres and talking about malingering at the piano and elsewhere. Strap in for … The Ride To Redacted!
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Show notes:
The various names of the rock band Steve was in back in high school days: Captain Lafunga; Lhasa Apso (not that Steve could’ve spelled it back then); Nightwatch.
The members of that unstably named band were: Steve on keyboard, Peter Levitt on guitar, somebody else (perhaps Danny something) also on guitar, Marvin Goldberg on bass, Buddy Maltin on sax, Dick Harley on trumpet, David Singer on trumpet — my goodness, there was a horn section! — Billy Head on drums, though for a while the band had the excellent Mark Ulano on drums and even more briefly, making the band’s Santana covers sound way better than usual, the band was joined by Raun Barretto on congas. Once or maybe twice Robin Hiltzik was on vocals.
Bud Maltin stayed with music, and may well still be at it with a wedding band outfit he runs, though back in the day in our high school band his sax solos sounded (to Steve) like someone strangling a goose. He will undoubtedly have improved greatly since then. His web site: https://budmaltin.com/
Steve once saw the great Santana play at the Fillmore East. That band was loud as hell.
Below is a copy of a long-ago newspaper clipping saved and sent to Steve by his former classmate, Gloria Cheng. (Steve does not remember being in any Teaneck High School orchestra worthy of the name. He suspects that the newspaper’s claim to the contrary was journalistic hyperbole.)
In later years, Gloria went on to become a virtuoso and Grammy-winning pianist; she has been a featured soloist with the L.A. Philharmonic. Her bio can be found at https://www.gloriachengpiano.com/.
Note the caption she wrote underneath that newspaper clipping, which she apparently saved in a scrapbook. Back in the day, Steve somehow managed to be unaware of the extent of the crush she must’ve had on him then, though when he was a first- or second-grader years earlier he had a bit of a crush on her.
Alas, the photo of Gloria with Frank Sinatra that she sent Steve some years ago, probably along with a copy of the newspaper clipping pictured above, may lie hidden somewhere among the plentiful bric-a-brac that fills the house at Point A where Steve lives.
Ah, the cluelessness of adolescence when it comes to all the emotion flying around then! Over half a century later one would like to think one has achieved, if not wisdom there, at least greater familiarity with the dynamics of the stuff. And, one feels one must add, one hopes that one’s considerably virtuosic former classmate has since found good fortune in love, as indeed one has done oneself.
The piece by Charles Gounod that was played as the intro to the Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV show, and that Steve played on the piano as a teenager, was Marche funèbre d’une marionnette (Funeral march of a marionnette). Check it out kids, it’s wonderful.
A recording of the excellent Jeeves and Wooster theme, composed by Anne Dudley, can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMkqA016VyQ&list=RDiMkqA016VyQ&start_radio=1.
An article on “malingering mental disorders” can be found at https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bjpsych-advances/article/malingering-mental-disorders-clinical-assessment/8AACFE2F200E95F161B77CB9FF90F9C5. It states: “Malingering is the dishonest and intentional production or exaggeration of physical or psychological symptoms for external gain.” Steve doubts he was all that mentally disordered in making excuses to his erstwhile piano teacher, the by now undoubtedly late Florence Hilbert. Were those excuses intentional? Yes. Were they dishonest? Hardly.