Category Archives: vintage

January 27, 2009 · 12:44 pm

It Will Stand

Woody doesn’t read my blog. I know that he doesn’t read it because when he asked me what had happened to the pie I was going to make him, and I cut-and-pasted the blog excerpt of the pie that was born from the withering apples of “his” pie, he seemed pleased that I’d written about him. I explained to him that no, I hadn’t. I’d written about pie. Which then made him cyber-pouty.

Good friend that I am, I poke around for any mention of him on my blog, to cheer him up. And I find one, vague reference: I touch on a song I heard on “a friend’s” iTunes playlist in my tale of the WPLJ montage. I send him the link for the post, and passionate music nerd that he is, he doesn’t care about the lame allusion but needs to know WHAT song it was. We squabble for a while, because I’m sure it had been W.P.L.J. by either The Four Deuces or The Hoodoo Rhythm Devils and he is sure that those aren’t in his library. While we’re typing back and forth, I’m listening to the Carol Miller aircheck of the montage. 8:11 in, the song I heard at his place comes on for 4 seconds. He’s right, it’s not W.P.L.J. after all. But with only a snippet of song, and no real lyrics to speak of, I can’t look up what it is. He can’t play RealAudio files, so he can’t hear the snippet. “Well,” he asks, “what are the words?” Of course, he’s not going to be able to get it from that. But I type, “Rock, roll, rock, roll.” Two words, common to the genre, repeated once. No music to go by. No clues, other than it’s something, somewhere, in his library of +/-4,000 vintage tracks.

He immediately types back to me, “It Will Stand by The Showmen.” Okay, he’s taking a stab. This is his first guess. We’ll narrow it down, because I can say “No, the tempo is faster” or “The guy’s voice is lower” and stuff. I head to iTMS to play samples. Hmm… none of them are playing anything that sounds like the bit used in the montage. I broaden my search, and find the whole song on YouTube.

It was no guess. He knew exactly what song it was. Yup, it’s the brief intro to It Will Stand, by The Showmen. It’s short, it isn’t repeated anywhere in the song, and Woody managed to “Name That Tune” in no notes. I tip my hat to you, ’60s Music Geek. I still owe you a pie.

1 Comment

Filed under blogging, friends, music, nostalgia, vintage

December 17, 2008 · 12:25 pm

Dim-Out Anklets

Hi! Remember me? I used to post 5 days a week. Now I seem to post twice a month. It’s something I will try to get better about. I think perhaps I need to get out of the house more.

Okay, so if you know me at all, you know that I collect, among other things, vintage clothing. Always have. Well, as long as I’ve had money to spend, I have. My mom had a beautiful, I’d guess late-1800s jacket that I used to adore as a girl. It was too fragile to atually wear out, but I would put it on, and wonder about how to fix the worn and frayed bits. I have no idea what ever happened to it, or to the gorgeous, ’40s-era ivory satin wedding dress (tea-length, therefore not a gown) that I bought on Canal Street in NYC back in 1990. I spray-painted a pair of pumps to match. I kid you not.

All of the collecting that I’ve done over the years has been with a huge amount of luck, and a small understanding of what it is I’m looking for. I recognize silhouettes and colors and fabrics from the photos I’ve always admired, and as a graphic designer, I can guesstimate an era by the typeface used on the label, but I’ve never done any serious studying. I could be wrong a lot of the time. In fact, I’m sure that I am. So from time to time, I do a little online hunting to brush up and maybe learn a thing or two.

This morning, I was scouring the LIFE archives on Google Images (boundless thanks to Ryan Cochran over at The Jalopy Journal for pointing me there). The image search feature is capped at 200 matches, so I kept finessing my keywords based on intriguing hits. Some magical combination of words let me to a series of photos of a woman’s ankles, wrapped in a variety of large white cuffs. There was a mention of “dim-out fashions.” Of course, I know what a dim-out is, but it inspired a fashion trend? And what on earth could it have to do with these giant anklets? My internal research alarm was buzzing madly, so I went about finding out.

If there is an online archive of LIFE articles, I don’t know about it and can’t find it. I know that these photos accompanied an article that ran in the March 22, 1943 issue. And while I couldn’t find a LIFE archive, I sure know where to find the New York Times archive. On January 16th of 1943, the Times ran an article which explained,

White anklets, which would make New York women pedestrians visible to motorists 100 feet away on the city’s dimmed-out streets, were suggested yesterday by the Public Safety section of the Greater New York Safety Council as part of a five-point program to reduce the mounting number of fatal traffic accidents here.

Ah-ha! Now I get it! There’s also a mention of “college girls” being asked to “help out” which only strengthens my belief that the entire concept was thought up by a bunch of ankle fetishists. I mean, c’mon. Take a look at these photos.

2 Comments

Filed under fashion, Is it safe to remove the gas masks?, nostalgia, shoes, vintage

November 21, 2008 · 9:54 am

White Port and Lemon Juice

The year is 1979. My sister and I listen almost exclusively to a radio station that goes by the call letters WPLJ*. It’s AOR, with some great DJs including Carol Miller and Pat St. John (both can still be heard on Sirius). This is before WAPP started up, and their only competition is WNEW (where rock lives). What sets WPLJ apart are the station ID montages that are spliced together by Pat St. John. Each is built around a theme such as New York City or the gas crisis, and each is brilliant. Over the course of a year, Pat spliced them all together into 22 minutes of montage genius. And my sister caught it on tape.

For years, I ask my sister to make me a copy.

For years, neither of us get around to it.

In September of 2000, some old and decomposing wiring in the front porch light fixture of my sister’s house shorts out, causing a fire that takes the house, and its contents, to the ground. Everything that my sister and my brother-in-law own is lost. Their cars, their wedding photos, my sister’s pageant awards, even their beloved cat. And, I slowly realize as the tragedy settles in, the WPLJ tape. Yes, it weighs that heavily in our lives.

Clothes are easy to replace, but everything else takes work. I contact their all-inclusive wedding chapel to see if I can have their photos reprinted, but the cost is too steep. I can’t find a duplicate of the tiara that my sister won as Ms. Petite New Jersey, but for her 40th birthday, I buy her the biggest pageant tiara I can afford. The WPLJ tape, we occasionally think of with a glassy, distant look in our eyes. I even play some of the cuts in my head from time to time. Oh, well.

Last week, listening to a friend’s iTunes playlist, I heard one of the songs that Pat St. John had used a snippet of. A song that I had never actually heard the full version of. And it got me to thinking.

Thanks to the magic of the Internet, I present to you The Big Montage.

(Be sure to listen all the way to the end, so you can hear the first half of a radio ad for the “upcoming” film American Gigolo, which is how I know this montage is, at the absolute earliest, from 1979 and NOT 1978 as the link would indicate.)

*The station took its name from a 1956 song called WPLJ, by The Four Deuces, about a drink concoction made from white port and lemon juice. The song was later covered by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. Both versions are in the montage.

6 Comments

Filed under family, music, nostalgia, vintage

November 4, 2008 · 11:06 am

November’s Header

If you’re wondering, and you probably are, this month’s header is from a color slide taken at the 1959 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. My mom and I are big fans of the parade, and she actually got to march in it one year as a “balloonatic,” one of the handlers for the giant helium balloons. I still tear up a little every year when I watch the Rockettes perform for the grandstand.

The very last Horn & Hardart Automat closed in 1991, and I am so very sad that I never ate there.

2 Comments

Filed under blogging, family, holidays, nostalgia, vintage

October 16, 2008 · 8:50 am

Mrs. Blandings

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House is not my favorite movie. It’s not included in my admittedly small personal library. But there is one scene which, due in no small part to the nature of my “day job,” is very near and dear to my heart.

Jim Blandings, feeling the constraits of a small, New York City apartment on his growing young family, decides to move them all to a more spacious spread in rural Connecticut. Jim’s wife, Muriel, is in charge of the decorating.

In my favorite scene, Muriel Blandings is discussing with the painter her color choices for the walls, as workers scurry about in the background. This is the dialog between Mrs. Blandings, the painting contractor, Mr. PeDelford, and his painter, Charlie:

Mrs. Blandings – Now, Mr. PeDelford, we’ll discuss painting.

Mr. PeDelford – Okay.

Mrs. Blandings – I had some samples. Here we are. Now, first, the living room. I want it to be a soft green. Not as blue-green as a robin’s egg.

Mr. PeDelford – No.

Mrs. Blandings – But not as yellow-green as daffodil buds. Now, the only sample I could get is a little too yellow. But don’t let whoever does it get it too blue.

Mr. PeDelford – No.

Mrs. Blandings – It should be a sort of grayish yellow-green. Now the dining room, I’d like yellow. Not just yellow. A very gay yellow. Something bright and sunshiny. I tell you, if you’ll send one of your workmen to the grocer for a pound of their best butter and match that exactly, you can’t go wrong.

This is the paper we’ll use in the hall. It’s flowered. But I don’t want the ceiling to match any colors of the flowers. There are some little dots in the background, and it’s these dots I want you to match. Not the little greenish dot near the hollyhock leaf, but the little bluish dot between the rosebud and the delphinium blossom. Is that clear? Now, the kitchen’s to be white. Not a cold, antiseptic, hospital white.

Mr. PeDelford – No.

Mrs. Blandings – A little warmer, but still, not to suggest any other color but white. Now, for the powder room in here, I want you to match this thread. And don’t lose it. It’s the only spool I have and I had an awful time finding it. As you can see, it’s practically an apple red. Somewhere between a healthy Winesap and an unripened Jonathan. Oh, excuse me. (leaves to speak to another contractor)

Mr. PeDelford – You got that, Charlie?

Charlie – Red, green, blue, yellow, white.

On every one of the press checks I go to, it’s my job to KNOW color. I have been playing with Color-Aid swatches and Pantone books since I was a toddler. So, when I order a RED dress from eBay and it shows up RUBY, don’t think I won’t say something. When my beautiful, Stealth Gray Pearl car is repainted some custom mix that a lazy painter thought would be close enough… it isn’t. When my Persimmon and Periwinkle tattoo comes out Persimmon and Blue, I’m going to bitch about it. The differences might be subtle to most people, but to me, it’s like night and day. This isn’t to say that I’m GOOD at color. If I don’t have my swatch in front of me, it can be a nightmare for me to match it. Some folks have a real knack for putting a color to memory, but I’m the sort who is STILL trying to find “the right pink” to match a dress I bought a year ago. And while, in many cases, “close enough” is, it isn’t where that dress is concerned. In this case, I’m trying to learn a lesson oft repeated to me by my friend Mary Jo: “It doesn’t have to match, it just has to go.” (Meanwhile, people stop me on the street when I’m “daring” enough to wear yellow shoes with an all black-and-white outfit.)

So, what goes with this lovely new vintage number that I brought home, again at half-price, from the thrift store yesterday? It’s what I’d call a Sky Blue; not as green as a Robin’s Egg…