DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

One of the best things about writing on the web is hearing back from readers. Sure, sometimes I hear from the readers’ lawyers instead, but I’m learning how close I can come to the line without stumbling across it and into the courtroom.

My periodic pokes at Ricardo Montalban and Chrysler’s “Corinthian Leather” ad campaign, the first of which dates back to October, 2001, finally reached the person responsible, more or less anyway. I received this anonymous message via the website’s feedback form:

I was forwarded your site by my sister after a recent lengthy family email conversation about “Fine Corinthian Leather”. My father and a coworker are mainly responsible for the campaign and term “corinthian leather”. I thought you might like to know as ad men working for Young and Rubicam in the 60’s-70’s, they were faced with the age long dilemma of making something look like a must have desirable item… much like everything in America. They needed a tie-in name to go with their “Spanish” Cordoba, and so, Corinthian sounded like a name that would conjure up something exotic, timeless and elegant. It’s hilarious that it has held on as one of the most remembered catch phrases in media history. I don’t see it as being any different than JCrew using names like “light pacific” or “bright butternut” to depict colors such as blue or yellow…and I certainly wouldn’t refer to it as a 25 year old deceit!

I wish the writer had provided some contact information, for I’d love to hear more about the Corinthian Leather campaign.

I’m not sure I agree that inventing a type of leather is the same as inventing a new name for a color; the Corinthian Leather campaign suggested that the leather had qualities differentiating it from lesser, non-Corinthian leathers, when in fact no such qualities existed. Maybe a better comparison is the Folgers “Mountain Grown” campaign, or Claude Hopkins’ famous Schlitz beer campaign. But even there, claiming differentiation where none exists falls short of actually naming the thing.

Monday nights on Maui, the place to be is Mulligan’s on the Blue. A band called Gypsy Pacific has a standing gig, and they’re worth the drive. They play “gypsy jazz,” the music of Django Reinhardt — not a name that appears in my CD collection, but that will change now.

Their website describes them as a string quartet, which is technically true, but if that conjures images of a cello or old white guys with powdered wigs, think again. And pass me another Guinness while you’re at it. The instrumentation is upright bass, rhythm guitar, lead guitar, and violin, 20 strings and 40 fingers in all, and most of them were a blur. These guys have some seriously fast hands.

See some good pictures of the band on Mulligan’s website.

“I need to get a photo of Spam Sushi. Is there any way to do that without actually eating it?”

“Sure, although you’ll have to spend the $1.75 to order it.”

“Oh, well, I hate to waste food.”

“It’s not really food.”

“Good point.”

The Maui Flea Market is a combination street fair and farmer’s market. From handcarved Koa utensils to passionfruit-flavored butter to knockoff Nike swoosh T-shirts to heaps of organic fruit, the 50¢ entry fee covers a lot of ground.

My favorite booth was staffed by an enormous Hawaiian woman and her equally huge machete. Piled on a table to her front, and filling the bed of a pickup to her rear were hundreds of young coconuts. The woman’s partner, an elderly man sacked out in the front seat of the pickup with his flip-flops hanging out the driver’s side window, prepped the nuts by whacking off the green husk with a large carving knife… but only after being bellowed at by the woman, who was running out of stock.

$3 buys a coconut, served with one tip expertly chopped off, and two straws. Most customers simply drank the water and ditched the coconut, but we stuck around to have the nuts split open (no extra charge) so we could scrape out the meat with a sharp piece of shell. If you get a really young one, the insides are still jelly.

Photos from Maui

Most musicians will tell you there are good days for tracking and bad days for tracking. I remember, back in 1994 or so when JAR was in the studio, one of the engineers made a passing comment about “one-take Jake,” the mythical musician who could nail his part on the first pass, with all the energy, magic, and spontaneity that that implies. The concept became a sort of grail, although I’m not sure any of us achieved it. I remember starting one song three times; I couldn’t even nail the first downbeat.

Digital recording has done for music what digital cameras have done for photographers; tape, like film, is free. So the material cost of doing 30 takes is a lot lower, and even if the time consumed is just as long, at least we’re not paying $100/hr.

But still, if you play something 30 times in a row, you won’t want to hear it again. Ever. Nothing robs a melody of its subtlety and passion like playing it badly a bunch of times in a row.

I was thinking about this the other day, at about take #12. My main musical collaborator, Andrew the six-fingered bassist, had pitched me a song we’d recorded rhythm tracks for in 2000. He’d ordered a dulcimer line, momentarily mistaking me for a composer. Despite my relative inexperience, though, I came up with a cool line for the verse. Andrew liked it. I liked it. The only problem was I couldn’t actually play it.

It was a 16th-note pattern that required crossing one hand under the other to hit the low A, blind, about a foot away from the rest of the melody. My success rate was about 50%. The strings on this dulcimer are less than an inch apart; even the pros have to watch their hands.

This provided little consolation, though. I gave up for the day before deciding that the best way to cope with my progress would be by putting a foot through the dulcimer’s soundboard.

The ultimate solution came in two parts. First I swapped right for left, relearning the pattern with opposite hands. Next I realized that the top half of the melody could be played lower on the instrument, physically closer to that hard-to-reach A. With that, and a night off, I was able to track the final version quickly:

Domino, final dulcimer take (verse 2, prechorus, verse 3, prechorus) (Copyright © 2005 matthew mcglynn)