Erik was a fixture on the Village music scene, deservedly, and is, as they say, a multi-tacular guy; apart from being a great guitarist and terrific singer/sonwriter he's also a wonderful comic actor, and some of you non-Village types will doubtless remember him from his recurring stint on The Colbert Report, where he played the existentially depressed German ambassador to the UN Hans Beinholt.
In any event, for you non-New Yorkers who don't immediately get the joke, the various people Erik celebrates offing in the song were vastly over-exposed celebrities then hawking their wares -- seemingly endlessly -- on late night NYC teevee. My personal favorite (namechecked in the song) was Luba Potamkin, of the local Cadillac dealership that bore her family name.
Hey -- there wasn't a lot else to watch after midnight in the days before everybody had cable.
3 comments:
Didn’t Luba eventually become the host of late night cable’s Midnight Blue?
:-)
Captain Al
Uh. No.
Steve, it's not often that you hit a bases loaded, 4 run walkoff homerun but today you pulled rabbits out of your hat.
Inside joke maybe that Potemkin was not an empty village but a real dealership whose adds we heard in CT.
Funny thing but my Grandfather was an industrialist who bought a new Caddy every year for @ 20. There was a standing customer in Rockland ME. who bought his every year.
rob
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