Show Biz is My Life

From the letters section in the current issue of the New Yorker:

Safe Hands

In Michael Schulman’s account of meeting up with the actor Monica Barbaro, who plays Joan Baez in “A Complete Unknown,” the recent Bob Dylan bio-pic, there is some discussion about the guitar that she uses in the movie, the very same guitar that we, at Lark Street Music, in Teaneck, New Jersey, agreed to rent—it was a 1923, not a 1929, Martin 0-45—when the movie’s props department came knocking (The Talk of the Town, January 13th). We were assured that, when Barbaro was not using the instrument, it would be guarded like a nuclear football. What a shock, then, to read that Edward Norton—who plays Pete Seeger, once the moral conscience of American music—frequently grabbed the guitar from Barbaro on the set, and even intimated that she might just hold on to the Martin after filming, as, he supposedly said, he does with props all the time. We are glad to have the guitar back.

Buzzy Levine
Teaneck, N.J

I love Lark Street Music BTW, and not just because it's on Cedar Lane, i.e. the cruising strip of my long-ago youth.

More pertinently, back in the 'aughts (when I was still living in the Teaneck area) the folks at Lark did a fabulous job setting up the Korean (Rondo Agile) knock-off of my (long departed) genuine 1957 Les Paul goldtop...

...that the living saints in my old '70s band bought for me when they found out I hadn't touched a guitar since 1980. 😎

Anyway, I'm delighted that the store is still there and thriving; if you're ever in Teaneck (AKA the Paris of the suburban Northeast) be sure to check it out.

[h/t Tony Jannelli]