While we finished shooting some insert shots of the ‘engineer’s shop’ scece I had the chance to shoot the breeze with T.W. At the request of the directors he had brought (delivered actually) an old ‘barrel piano’. I’d never seen one of these things. Sort of like a player piano crossed with a music box. The barrel itself is quite large and, presumably, not interchangable meaning this is a ‘one-tune-instrument’. Unfortunately the barrel had become swollen & cracked from exposure over the years (over 150 of them). It still could be wound up and rotated but it was all catywampus so it played no recognizable tune.
In between takes I struck up a conversation with Tom. I had a compilation called Gravikors, Whirlies & Pyrophones that he had written an introduction to so I asked him if he’d built any instruments lately. He told me that he didn’t really build them (though he had friends that did) but sometimes he said he’d go into a hardware store and bang on stuff. He then mentioned Reed Ghazella, the godfather of cicuit bending, and Harry Partch, the godfather of experimental musical instruments. This opened the door for me to tell him about my own creations (the ‘electroacoustycle’ & circuit bent speak ‘n spell – with an obvious nod to Mr. Ghazella on that one). How cool it was to wrap with him on such familiar subjects.
On the down side, once his scenes were finished he mentioned his impending flight & was scurried off to get de-wardrobed & shuttled to the airport. This meant the sound crew was robbed of the chance to record Tom playing (er, plunking) the hammers of the barrel piano. Instead, we recorded the sound of the wind up motor running and the few disonant plinks & plunks that still made contact with the barrel. Then “boom guy x” (name witheld at his request) manually played the hammers in leu of Tom. Saddest part of all, fair readers, is that somehow I neglected to snap a pic of Tom or even the barrel piano for you all to see. Sad sad sad. I’ll see if I can get on from the set dress guys.
Today’s end wrapped us out of Carizozo (or the ‘zizo’ as we have dubbed it) and sent me back to Santa fe.
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