Missed It By That Much!

True story: Back in the mid 60s, my crappy high school rock band used to get a lot of free studio time for demos because our lead guitar player's dad owned a big deal recording complex in Manhattan. The place was called Associated Studios, and it's still there, in the building across from the Ed Sullivan Theater where the Letterman Show is taped. Mostly it was a jingle house, but some hits actually got recorded there, most notoriously They're Coming to Take Me Away (Ha-Ha) by Napoleon XIV. (There's another story about that for another time, but let's move on).

Anyway, one Saturday during the summer of '65, we did another of our crappy demos there (you have no idea how crappy, BTW). In those days there was no such thing as cassettes, however, so if you wanted to take a copy of your latest masterwork home, they would cut what was called an acetate, in most cases a seven inch disc with a big hole in the middle that looked exactly like a commercial 45 rpm single, except it was made out of material much crappier (how appropriate) than vinyl and far more prone to getting scratched up after a few plays. In this case, the acetate they gave us had a flip side of something from another session that had been done at the studio at some point, but whatever it was wasn't identified. When we got it home, however, we were really intrigued. It was a small group playing what sounded like the theme to a hip spy movie, except done for laughs, and we listened to it over and over again all through the summer.

Imagine our surprise, then, when we watched the September 18th NBC premier of a little show called Get Smart and realized that our phantom b-side was Vic Mizzy and his orchestra's now familiar theme for that soon-to-be pop culture classic.



And in case you're wondering if all of that faux nostalgia was merely an excuse for me to post the above silly photo of me and a cardboard Ann Hathaway, the answer is yes.