Fred Seibert's Blog

Steve Tompkins in his Nickelodeon writing office, with The Gashlycrumb Tinies poster

If this gets too complicated, I’m sorry about that…

Last week I was walking by the office of one of Fanboy & Chum Chum’s executive producers, Steve Tomkins*. I noticed his cool poster of Edward Gorey’s The Gashlycrumb Tinies, which he was obviously very proud of and it got me to telling him of my unusual, casual run in with Gorey’s work back in the day.

My soft spot for Gorey comes from a particular circumstance. In 1976, I was working with the composers and musicians Michael Mantler (who I posted about last month) and Carla Bley, when Mike released his LP which used Gorey’s writings as the libretto for his compositions called “The Hapless Child and Other Inscrutable Stories.”

Get your own at Scribd or explore others: Culture Music music poetry

I’d never heard of Gorey (his Amphigorey hadn’t quite crashed into the mainstream), and Mike had always had a taste for interesting authors he liked to compose to (like Harold Pinter or Samuel Beckett.  And Mike’s always unique casting had me quadruply intriqued (Robert Wyatt for the prog-rockers, Mike (on trumpet), Carla, Steve Swallow, & Jack DeJohnette for the jazzbos, and Terje Rypdal all of them). Check out a track, and pick up some MP3s.Michael Mantler > The Sinking Spell

So, while it’s always fun saying hi to Steve*, I got an extra cultural dose of nostalgic inspiration the other day. Thanks bud.

* By the way, in addition to doing a hilarious job on Fanboy & Chum Chum,  I found out about another unsung showbiz story. Who knew that Steve Tompkins created Ari Gold on Entourage?

Anyone who knows me is aware of my music habit, and close readers of this blog will pick up on my affection for cartoon music in particular.
Hanna-Barbera Pic-a-Nic Box

So it was extremely gratifying when my friend, Rhino Records founder Richard Foos, agreed to indulge me in the 1990’s with a (now out-of-print) four CD boxed set of Hanna-Barbera Cartoons themes, underscores, sound effects, and other audio ephemera and artifacts of our historic studio. It was compiled and produced with passion and knowledge by cartoon writer/producer Earl Kress.I’ve posted before about my worship and respect for the under appreciated HB music director and composer Hoyt Curtin but I’ve finally gotten around to scanning the great booklet Earl put together for the set. It not only includes a listing of all the sound in the box, but has great essays by Bill Hanna, Joe Barbera, David Burd, Bill Burnett, and Barry Hansen (Dr. Demento). Plus Marty Pekar conducted an interview about the studio’s unique sound effects library with Joe, Bill, Greg Watson, and Pat Foley. (As we get around to it, you can look at separate transcripts of the essays here.)For a quick preview, here’s a Quick Draw McGraw track from the box set, composed, arranged and conducted by Hoyt:Hoyt Curtain & The Hanna-Barbera Studio Big Band >Quick Draw McGraw (Underscore & Syndicated End Titles)

  
Photograph of Michael Mantler by Tod Papageorge, 1968

I’m luckier than most. My life’s been filled with a lot of folks who’ve shown me the way. Parents, teachers, friends, bosses. Most of them would be horrified to be identified as my “mentor,” but that’s just what they are. An advisor, a counselor, who helped shape my world view.

Composer Michael Mantler was one of them. He was first hand proof that talent, planning, vision, drive, hard work, and sheer force of will could combine to accomplish dreams beyond anyone’s expectations. He didn’t have any particular interest, I think, in showing me much of anything really, but he was an incredible role model, trying to keep his family’s heads above water, struggling against all odds to be viable fringe artists in a highly commercial world. It was a time in my life that would never be repeated, and one that made a huge difference to me.

Mike would probably recoil at the whole idea of mentorship –by now, we’re probably more like friends or something– but I don’t know what else to call it. He was already a young legend in avant-garde jazz  when, as a naive 18 year old, I crashed my first professional recording session he was producing, his then wife Carla Bley’s “Escalator Over the Hill,” He patiently figured I was a friend of one of the superstar orchestra’s if he even noticed my presence. I went on to play their records on college radio, and then he  and Carla trusted me right out of school to work at their innovative artist record distribution service (itself an outgrowth of their incredible, idealistic collective, the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra, JCOA). I wasn’t too impressed with the job I did, but a few years later Mike asked me to be the sound man and assistant roadie on Carla’s first big band tours. It was an unforgetable experience not only for the music, but for the pride with which Mike managed the unruly, artistic bunch they’d gathered. I repayed them after a year by ducking out days before our first European tour (a real loss on my part), but it didn’t stop us from staying friendly for the 30 years since.

Thanks Mike, you made a real difference in my struggle to become a professional adult.
……

It wouldn’t be right to talk about Mike without mentioning some of his stunning work. His music isn’t for everyone (on his website he quotes one reviewer saying “‘Silence‘ is possibly the least listenable record I have ever heard”) and requires a dedicated listener, but the rewards are great. Aside from his playing and composing, Mike was no slouch as a producer either. He always knew to not only get the very best musicians, but that it didn’t hurt if they had name value for sales (check out Robert Wyatt, Jack Bruce, Don Cherry, Jack DeJohnette, Pharoh Sanders, Cecil Taylor, and Don Preston, among many others). A few of my favorites:

And here’s one of my favorite of Mike’s recordings, featuring a jazz avant-garde superstar orchestra, from the 1968 “The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra“:

The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra > Preview
(Composed & conducted by Michael Mantler; Soloist: Pharoah Sanders)

One of our favorite composer’s young sons were at the great screening of Random! Cartoons at ASIFA-East (join!) Tuesday night and we received this picture in the email afterwards (notice the logo print-throughs from our program):

“It’s not that Sammy’s not interested in hearing about pitching, just that he’s interested in the kind of pitching that’s done in pinstripes and can be measured with a radar gun. I’ve attached what he drew to occupy himself during the panel discussion (I particularly like the textual annotations).

“But he loved the toons, and the rest of us (including [his brother] Jacob, who’s going to do two weeks of NY Film Academy this summer) enjoyed the panel as well.”