VERMONT VOICES : JOSIAH GLUCK
Lorne ’ s Technical Supervisor for SNL . Ultimately , it was Stacey , who told me to come in . He said , “ I need some help with this one area of the show .” It was audio tape playback , playing back music cues and voiceovers and things like that , almost akin to doing radio . I said , “ I ’ ve never really done this kind of thing before .” And he said , “ Good . The show is very specific . I ’ d rather you not have a lot of preconceived notions about how this all works .” So , I did that for three seasons , working with the late Hal Willner . He was my direct boss , and he was picking all the music cues , and I was frantically throwing things on carts . Back then , I had 31 rickety mono cart decks , or stereo cart decks , or playback-only cart decks . And you really hoped when you hit that button — because you ’ re the first cue of the night — it better play . These are things like , “ Ladies and Gentlemen , a message from the President of United States ,” kind of things . And then , three years into that , I had the opportunity to move in and work in the music room as the assistant there with Jay Vicari , who ’ s been the main music mixer for 36 or 37 years at this point . That ’ s basically where I ’ ve stayed ever since . Jay and I share the duties . Sometimes he ’ s off doing other things , and I ’ ll mix the show . But I will say , and I tell people this , I waited 10 years . I spent 10 years in there as a rather overly-qualified assistant before I did a show on my own . And I was happy to wait and to take the time , because there ’ s so much to learn and so much to absorb .
JS : We ’ re going to come back to Saturday Night Live and discuss it at length , but before we do , tell me about GRP Records and Dave Grusin .
JG : I had written them a letter , because I was just a huge fanboy of that label . I used to play all their stuff on the air at WJHU 88.1 , “ Far Left Radio ,” as we used to call it — all the way down there at the end of the dial . I knew all of their stuff . And I was a huge fan of Dave Grusin as an arranger and film composer . I ’ d written them in the summer of 1980 and gotten crickets in response . And then one day , one of their artists , a guy named Tom Browne , a trumpet player , who had been a sideman on someone else ’ s record down at Secret Sound , decided he wanted to do his photo : Dwelling Photography
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18 VERMONT MAGAZINE