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Gordon
Elliot Story
Summer of ‘90, I was with The Flecktones,
and we were opening shows for Chicago.
It was a strange pairing, but we opened about 30
shows for them and it helped spread the band’s
name. One was at The Jones Beach Ampitheater on
Long Island, around July 4th. After the show, I
went to stay with my folks in Rockaway, which is
pretty close by. We were all exhausted after a very
long hot day and I collapsed into bed. The next
thing I know, my mom is shaking me awake. I look
at the clock- it’s really early, like 7 am.
I
think- “The house is on fire!” or something
like that. But she’s smiling, telling me,
“Quick! Get dressed! They want you on live
TV!”. This was very surreal. I mumbled something
like, “Who? What are you talking about?”.
It
turns out that there was an early morning show that
traveled to different neighborhoods of New York
every morning, looking for interesting and slightly
wacky things to put on the air. That morning they
were in my parents’ neighborhood to do some
barbecueing, but the person slated to cook wasn’t
home, and the host, a very personable Australian
chap named Gordon Elliot, asked the assembled neighbors
if anyone interesting lived nearby. My parents’
neighbor, Faye Levine, piped up, “The world’s
greatest harmonica
player is staying at the Levy’s house on ___St.!”.
So Gordon says, “Well, let’s go wake
him up!”.They walked over, Gordon rang the
bell, my dad, half asleep, stumbled downstairs in
his shorts, opened the door a crack, to be greeted
by a crowd of 30 raucous neighbors and a camera
crew. (This was all being shown live on the New
York Fox station).
So
a few minutes later, there I was, sitting on my
front porch steps half-dressed. Afer a commercial,
they turned on the cameras, interviewed me, made
me play a little, the neighbors clapped, and we
all went back to bed. I have no idea what I said
or played, but it seemed to satisfy Gordon Elliot
and his camera crew. If anyone saw that little segment,
yes, it was me.
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