#223 - Marsha Stern talks about almost 50 years "in the biz"

0:01 Well, hello and thank you for joining me today on Geyses of Gear Episode #223. Today's episode is brought to you by AVL Media Group, a new sponsor to Geyses of Gear, your premier North American distribution partner. AVL Media Group is one of the leading distributors of professional audio, video and lighting equipment in North America. Initially established in 1996 by Founder and CEO Steven Kosters, after seeing an opportunity to inject a sense of genuine passion into the distribution process as an exclusive US distributor for Midas Pro Consoles, Lab Group and Amplifiers, Lake processors, Tanoi Installation speakers, Clark Technic Signal Processing, Turbo Sound Loud speakers and Aston Microphones, AVL are committed to developing long term business relationships with their partners at every level by providing outstanding pre and post sale service and support. AVL Music Group is your premier North American distribution partner and today's podcast is also brought to you by another amazing new sponsor and partner to our show, someone who's been on the podcast recently.

1:16 Yes, I'm talking about the Event Safety Alliance. The ESA focuses on the knowledge, behaviors, and guidances that provide the ability to plan and respond consistently, empowering event professionals of all stripes to identify and mitigate risks. ESA education, training, standards and guidance and the thought leadership is helping to shape safety at live events for this generation and the next. Become a member of the Event Safety Alliance and join thousands of event professionals from around the globe, creating a safer, more prosperous future for our industry.

1:56 Advance your knowledge by becoming a member today at eventsafetyalliance.org. The So I'm super excited to have two new sponsors on today's podcast.

2:43 I don't think I've ever had two brand new sponsors on a podcast. And although ESA is not really a sponsor, we're we're supporting their organization, we're listing them as a sponsor and we're very happy and proud to represent the ESA on this podcast now. So welcome aboard to the ESA and AVL. You know, I've known Steven Kosters a long time. I I come from the music industry and lighting, I guess my earliest sort of introduction to the lighting business in Canada. And I met Steven Kosters, you know, through those connections. And when I started early on at Martin Professional or at Trackman, Martin's distributor, I got to know Steven and but most recently he started this AVL as a different business model and it's a very unique business model, different than most distributors.

3:38 And why you ask, I'll tell you why. So first of all, he works and this isn't a pitch by the way. This is just something I was interested in his model. So I asked him questions about it because it's unique and different, but he works alongside manufacturers, not as a distributor, but really as a partner as part of their channel instead of a replacement for their channel to market. I would compare it maybe to the Amazon FBA model, Fulfillment by Amazon model. So AVL gets involved not only in fulfillment but invoicing. They actually own the accounts receivable, although the way invoicing works, it's interesting. For example, if you buy a Midas console from them, you'll get a an invoice from with the Midas logo on it. And although AVL takes responsibility for that account receivable, you know you're being invoiced by a company that at least appears to be Midas North America or whatever. And so I you know that part of it. The other thing is AVL carries the inventory, but they don't actually own the inventory.

4:46 The manufacturer owns the inventory. AVL will get involved in marketing, but the manufacturer and the brand itself is responsible for the marketing and the cost of the marketing. And AVL handles all the sales, shipping, support, as I said, accounts receivable, warranty service. And and so what's the upside to the manufacturer #1? It's not like a distributed model where you know, your branding gets maybe pushed back a little bit or watered down or the relationship changes between the brand and the customer. It appears to the customer that you're basically dealing directly with the brand and of course they cut their margins. So instead of call it X, it's X -, 10% or whatever. So instead of having to split your margins as a manufacturer with the distributor, the distributor's taking far less because they're taking just basically for those services that they're providing.

5:46 And so, you know, I don't know how it works from a standpoint of dollars and cents as far as you know, is it more successful to the manufacturer? Is it less successful? But when I learned about it from Steven, I I was very intrigued and I thought it was a really cool sort of evolution of the distribution model. And it seems to be something that we'll see more of as we go forward because I think in many industries, not just ours, in the car business, in electronics, in musical instruments, in almost every industry you can imagine, we've gone more to AD, to C model, so direct to consumer model, removing dealers, removing distributors. And I know that all of my friends who are huge, you know equipment dealers or gear dealers don't like when I say this, but I'm not the one creating it. It's it's the market that's creating it. It's Amazon that's creating it.

6:41 It's it's you know we're all moving to a more direct to consumer model and you know it's why one of the reasons Tesla's so successful because they don't put a franchise between them and the customer. They sell directly to the customer and they hear feedback directly from the customer and they're working directly with the customer. So I know some of the large, especially the the American car manufacturers are fighting against this by offering more and more services and trying to to form a better relationship between the the customer and the brand. But I think at the end of the day this is a model that's gonna keep pushing to AD to C model and and we're gonna see that more and more. So I think AVL is an interesting model. I'm not saying it's the best model, I'm not saying it's the worst model.

7:28 I'm just saying it's interesting, it's different. And so again we welcome them as a new sponsor. We welcome the ESA as a new sponsor and we've got a couple more to announce as well. So we're pretty excited. It's a good time right now, early 2024. So today's guest has been a friend of mine for probably 30 years now, maybe even more than 30 years, but about 30 years, we'll call it, and someone who everyone knows. You see her at trade shows, you see her at the bar at trade shows, you see her at events, you see her on jobs. She's been around our industry as much as anyone I can think of and just an amazing person, a very talented person.

8:14 If you've ever been belly up to a bar with her, she's a very passionate person. She loves to have a good chat. So unfortunately today I'm limited by time. Otherwise this would be a four hour podcast, but you know, I'm going to, I'm going to read her bio here for you, just so you know a little bit more. So of course I'm talking about Marcia Stern, who's an award-winning lighting designer, programmer, technician and production manager, whose career began in New York City in the music business and spans the New York City nightclub and special events circuit from the late 70s through the mid 90s when she began to pioneer using automated lighting and entertainment technologies in architectural lighting design. In April of 1999, Marcia Incorporated as Marcia Stern Lighting Design and Consulting, Inc, actively working as an independent designer, programmer and consultant. She's got a lot of stories, so let's go ahead and get going. Well, hello Marcia.

9:14 Hi, Marcel, how are you today? Isn't that weird? We were just talking, and then I just pop in and say hello, but we were just talking. So it's kind of bizarre. Like, are we on some kind of weird, funky psychedelics or something? Given the AI world we live in today, anything's possible, Marcel. Yeah, you know what's funny though, when you speak about psycho psychedelics? Like, you know, it was bad back when we were doing bad things, but nowadays people are doing this for health reasons, like they're taking psilocybin and whatever they call it, psychotropics or whatever. Well, yeah, and it's becoming so casual, it's almost a little scary. But that said, that said, when you talk about back in the day and you know coming from that, that that world of New York City nightlife debauchery that I came from and being now, thank you very much, officially an old geezer, I I remember back when ketamine first came to New York City clubs and the first thought in this, I'm talking like 1981.

10:19 82. And now it is part of a psychological therapy, and rightly so, because I remember my first impression of that drug was it was like truth serum. Yeah, you. Confronted yourself immediately and it was friggin truth serum. And that's what people are using now is therapy and Bravo, It's a good thing. It's the way to get to the bottom of it. That's. Yeah, you know, I listen to, I listen to a lot of podcasts, Joe Rogan being one of them. And Joe Rogan talks about this. What is it? DCTDTCDCP whatever, The one that you go on this wacky trip where you really find yourself and you're in like outer space almost, right. And he, yeah, he talks about that one and there's another one and you know, I'm just like, yeah, you know, that whole thing passed me by.

11:10 You know it, Yeah. I mean, now, you know, a glass, a glass or two of wine. And I'm pretty much in the bag, so I don't need all that extra help to find. My Yeah, I hear you. I miss Billy Joel and the the Grammys last felt loud on Sunday night, 'cause I fell asleep at the end. I pooped out around 10:30 just when we went. On I'm going to a thing in Miami tonight and you know, I'm in Palm Beach, so it's it's like a two hour drive to get to this place. It's at the Perez Art Museum and yeah, and it's it's like 250 tech people and investors and stuff like that. It'll be a cool event and I. I actually heard a buzz about something that was going on down there.

11:53 Bravo to you. It's amazing. I'm speaking at it. I'm speaking at this thing tonight. So, so anyways, so I'm part of the in crowd in this little group who's doing it. It's for a a software product called Rome that is their official launch tonight. And I've been a user all the way through beta. My company has and we love it. And so they invited me to speak. And so then today the CEO of the company said, hey, Marcel, we want you to be part of our core team at a dinner after the event. And I went, oh, OK, what time's that at? And he said we've got reservations. I forget which restaurant but incredible restaurant at 9:30 and I'm going, OK, wait, 930. Finish dinner at 12. I'll be home at like 2215 and I'm like, you know what?

12:37 I I really appreciate that and I would love to do that, but I ain't going. Sorry, I got to skip dinner. So. And traffic down here has gotten whack a do. I mean, we've known each other for a good long while and it was way different when you live out West in Hollywood. No, it's brutal. I honestly, I hate when I got to go down to to Miami, but you know, this is a really, really special event and it's going to be pretty cool. So anyways, we got a lot to discuss so we can't chitchat so much. We got to get into the the meat of this. First I want to tell you that I actually, when I had a snack that I kind of called lunch, but I was in such a hurry I just kind of threw stuff down my throat. I listened to about 1/2 hour of your podcast, Heartbeat of the Dance Floor and episode 12 with Paul Gregory, Ken Billington and Militello. And I forget the other guy's name. I don't know him.

13:29 Yeah I don't. I have no knowledge of him. So. But the other three I know. And you know, one funny thing is that it was the longest introduction of guests that I've ever heard on any podcast in my entire life. Like you know, each guest got like a good five minute introduction of everything and every award. For brief resumes, I mean those guests have some very long resumes. It was very thorough. It was very thorough. I I'm sitting here like shoveling lunch down and looking at my watch and going, come on Marsha, get through the intro. I want to hear the stories. But yeah, they got into, you know, Paul was talking about the Saturday Night Fever dance floor and and yeah, I mean great bunch of people and actually I don't recall, I remember listening to, I think maybe your first or second one that you did, but this one I watched on YouTube and I actually enjoyed it. It was, it was fun.

14:27 I hope you're still doing that. I am. I'm working on one, but you know being A1 girl band between the music stuff that I've been doing. In fact, one of my music productions just dropped today through a colleague that I've been collaborating with, Sound Metaphors out of Berlin. They're a record store and a streaming service and DJ and whatnot. So that just dropped at about 12:30 this afternoon on their SoundCloud platform. And I do have two so. That means, like micro pennies in royalties, perhaps? There's no royalties involved. Just like the rest of the music business. Well, we're not selling anything, so there's no royalties involved.

15:08 That comes about when you're actually exchanging hands financially, which I was at. This point, I was just making a joke really, about how streaming works these days. You know, God forbid there is royalties. You know, it's you get like, well, there are one one billionth of a penny every listen or something. Well, it's it's sad. It's gone with the wind. And you know, when I began my life as an adult with career goals, it was to be a songwriter. Yeah. And producer. And as as a songwriter, those royalties are important. So when I look at what goes on now and what we just went through with the strike and all the AI, there's righteous grounds for why some people are in arms. I personally get pissed off when I hear so much of the new music that is sampling. Other artists work, and I always wonder if those artists are getting acknowledged much less 100th of a penny on each play or whatever.

16:03 And then everybody gets pissed off. When? When? Which streaming service? Was it there recently? I'm not much of A social media person. Tiktok didn't they pull? Didn't Universal pull its catalog recently? I didn't. I I believe Universal pulled its catalog off of Tiktok recently. Everybody was bitching and moaning, but nobody realizes that none of those artists are even getting a thousandth of a penny. Yeah, no, I I know lots and lots different types of artists than you do. Like, I know, I know rock musicians mostly. And the royalties are so small. I mean, like you might get an $8 check every month or a $10 check every.

16:44 Month or something. Royalty is different than a songwriter. No, I mean songwriter royalties. I'm, I'm talking about Songwriter Royal. It's just not so much money unless you're getting Taylor Swift types of plays, you know? Like exactly. And more. You can supplement it with something like a live career or record sales or whatever. And yes, the entire music business is way different from when I worked for record companies and promoters and was a music producer in the 70s. Yeah, you know, then radio pushed your charts. Then everybody was in arms because you had DJs who were playing music in clubs like Studio 54 or like Bonds or or Ice Palace and they were selling. They all of a sudden had a $2 billion in record sales and they didn't know where it came from and it wasn't the radio. Then radio said, oh, let's have a disco radio station. Yeah, yeah.

17:41 No, it's it's it's bizarre like one time my son and I got into this conversation about you know how the music business is different today cuz you know his mother is from the music industry and she complaints to him about it often I guess. But we talked about it one day and and you know he he was just blown away by as kids like he's 19 now but anyone under 30 years old when you talk to them about different things like it's funny last night with with my girlfriend Karen and her family it was one of her son's birthday and we we played Family Feud like a board game. Family Feud. Not not on the TV or anything. And the questions like, you know, you know, name. I forget what the question was, but something about a top sitcom on television or whatever.

18:32 And they were naming like or no shows that you would watch in reruns. And Jeremy is saying How I Met your mother, 'cause that, like for his generation, they watched that over and over and over again. He saw every episode, 10 times or whatever. And you. Know it was a little kid back then too? Yeah. Right. But it's those shows or newer that they're talking about. And it was like all in the family. I Love Lucy. And they're all going, what the hell is that? What is all in the family? And I'm like, oh, you have no idea. And I grew up with Leave It to Beaver and Ozzy and Harry. And if I really go back to some of my first impressions, Burns and Allen and well, you. Know it's funny 'cause that was. TV show The old The Lone Ranger.

19:15 I used to love watching the. Lone, you said leave it to Beaver. But one of the questions was like famous moms, dead or alive, and one of it was whatever Judy Cleaver. Is that what her name was? June. Cleaver. June Cleaver, right. And they're like, who the hell is June Cleaver? And I'm just laughing, right? They have no idea 'cause if you're under 50 or 45, at least, you know, So I mean, it reminds us how old we are. And with a name like that, they probably associate it with a character in a Stephen King novel. Something. Yeah, Cleaver. Right, right. Some kind of a slasher. Yeah. No, it's funny, but so you know, getting into to your life, cuz you know, it's funny.

19:58 I looked at your bio and some of this stuff I didn't even know, like I, you know, I know basically that you got your start, I think, in the clubs, right? Well, I got my start in the music business, which did segue into the clubs and how it did was kind of weird. But one day I ended up with a job doing lights in the clubs because I knew the music and the lighting guy had a summer gig he needed to go to and needed a replacement and said literally, you know the music, if you can figure out the controls, you have a job for the summer. Well on the controls was probably like a two scene. Hit this button then hit this. Button. No, it was light lab.

20:39 It was like 4 light lab, you know. Yeah, yeah. 16 channel controller and a couple of four channel controllers and a mirror ball and this. And you had spinners and rotators. It was at New York NY John Addison and Maurice Brahms Club. It was just before they opened Bonds and I. Then I moved to Bonds and then anyway, that's I started back in 1980. Summer of 79 saw the end of my music production days because the Joel Long sound kind of internally imploded due to a bunch of what's that are not relevant to to today or the story. But that said, you know, all the albums on the top are the albums I produced back in back in 7879. They're not all of them.

21:27 They're just the ones that charted. And the the company kind of disbanded in 79. And in the fall of 79, I started doing lights at a little club in the city. And then in the spring I got this offer to fill in at New York, NY. And there began my lighting career in earnest, which went on until this day. I just kind of, you know, and I've got to compliment you before we go any further because when you started Happy Hour during the pandemic, I would just say I can't thank you enough. It really saved me and I think a whole lot of people out there who all of a sudden found themselves isolated and it was such a wonderful thing. You had something to look forward to. You had friends you could commiserate with. It's a little early in the day for one. I do have a glass of water for my dryness, but it was always a. Wonderful.

22:19 I have dribbles of a cup of coffee called coffee here so. Thank you so very, very much for that. Hey, thank you for filling in all the dead air when nobody wanted to talk about anything. Can always can always count on you to to take over the dead air there, Marsha. No. It was fun. It was it was timely and fun. But I want to go back to so I this is going to show my ignorance of the early stage of nightclubs in New York City. But I think at some point, as I recall, you had some sort of an attachment to Studio 54. Was that just as a customer or did you work? There. No, I did.

23:00 I I had an attachment actually through and this is kind of leading back to the pandemic. A lot of people did a pivot. I think I made a circle because that was in earnest a big turn that's bringing me back to music and what I'm doing now. And the DJ Roy Thode, who I am working earnestly on this legacy site with or for, he's dead. So I guess it's for me and I. Hope it's not with him, because that would be sorry. I hope it's not with him. Well, it is spiritually, right? It's spiritually. I feel Roy and have on right there ever since the day he died. That said, I didn't. Hear So he was the DJ he was the DJ at he was. One of the original DJs at 54.

23:47 There's another person whose podcast is in the editing room still, who preceded Roy as an original hire at Studio 54, who's a dear friend of mine as well, and I have many of his archives. But all this music that I'm regurgitating, for lack of a better term, our old analogue tapes Roy recorded I have over well over 100 of the. Real. So let me ask you something, these DJ. Archives. So back to your question, I'm sorry to be breathy, because you know, no. No, no, it's OK. I want to ask you another question though. The DJs. Let me answer the first one. My Studio 54 had more to do with him and music and my record promotion days. I was recognized back then as a record company Rep, or a publicist, or a producer, or someone who worked with the Village People, or the Ritchie family, or for Ariola Records, or XY and Z, as well as being one of Roy's inner circle and coming in with him early or whatever. And one night I did work there.

24:46 I worked the coat check. Huh. One night it was probably. A1 Night. Probably a memorable night though. Marsha, if you're here, I need help in the coat check. Are you mine? I said no. Why not? Was it memorable? It was, and I made a bundle in tips way more than the paycheck. Who's the most famous person's coat that you grabbed? Do you remember? No, but remember Brian Keith from I think it was was that not All in the family, it was the little kids show, TV show going back to our childhood, I think Brian Keith. I don't. Know was the father or the adoptive father. You know, I've had a few passes made by a couple of actors and that sort of stuff. Liza Minnelli picked her up a couple of times off the staircase, you know, oddball encounters. Actually, a dear friend of mine who I used to dance and party with a lot.

25:44 Esther Comitari at the time she was a very famous model, did a lot of Vogue and Terry Muegler and runway stuff. She is indeed an in earnest now, the queen of Burundi. At that time her parents were alive and she is a born Princess. She is Queen Princess Esther Comitari. Wow. So she might be the most famous person, not that I ever worked with, but that I was friends with. So did you spend a lot of time at 54? Like, were you a regular? Yeah, you could say. You could say so. There was a circuit of clubs that you did on various nights of the week. Paradise Garage typically was a Friday night either depending on the time of year you were in the city or you were on Fire Island.

26:31 So you might have done Studio 54 on a Thursday, Paradise Garage on a Friday, or 12 W on a Friday. You had in the winter time 12 W Flamingo or Paradise Garage of the private clubs to choose from. Early when I first moved to the city there was a place open called the Loft. It preceded Paradise Garage by a guy named David Mancuso and if you go back in some of the disco archives, he is a notable and I was there a few times so clubs were a lot more the drill I. Would say, yeah, but 54, was it like, did you know it was something then?

27:13 Or like did that notoriety happen later? Like, in other words, no. You you knew it. You know. When it was happening, it was like a really big. Deal. When it opened, it was kind of the 1st of its kind in being a mega club. The clubs that I went to prior to that were a lot more mundane, a lot more sedate. La Mouche was very popular. It was a private club, was down in Chelsea, but again, you're talking smaller. 54 went out of its way to garner publicity. Yeah. And that was something that regimes used to do. So I would say when I moved to the city and started going out in 1977, the club for celebrities was Regimes and then 54 opened in April of 77, and I had just moved to New York in September of 76. So yeah, I was right there at the beginning and the thick of it and then boom.

28:12 And then after that Xenon opened and this opened and that opened and then so. To get into these places, did did you have to know somebody to get into these places? Like were you special to be able to get in or were you like held behind velvet ropes or how did that was that? Was there like a hierarchy or something? Hard to answer that because so many of the times I was over there on business or on a list and I still. Knew me? Right. However, I will say this, some clubs imitated 54 that had the stanchions in the list and I could be there on a list and damn, both Steve and Mark knew who I was in some days, hi, Marsha. And other days they would just look right past me. That's funny, you know?

28:56 And it And yeah, and it would, but that was the thing and that was the thing that 54 came known for. So of course, other clubs imitated it. You know. But most places you'd go and there's a guy at the door that they knew you. If you were a regular, yeah. Or if it was a membership club, you know, you had your credentials. Or you'd go there and you'd say I'm on the list. Yeah, you know, when I, when I first moved to the US and was working with Martin at the time or their distributor Trackman, I remember my first trip to New York and one of the dealers in New York, the lighting dealers, not drug dealers, took me out, took me out to a club one night and we had to go to the door guy, you know, the infamous door guy or whatever.

29:39 And here's me, this dumb Canadian. No nothing. Never been exposed to anything weird at all cuz I'm from a little city in Canada and there's this like 7 foot tall tranny dude guy girl. I don't remember how you call it, but it's a male who looks like a very tall very big female And and you know, yes, you know, what do you want? And and like just really like, you know you don't belong here. Mr. Kind of an attitude. Right. And I was just like I was in fear like I didn't know what to do, right. Like Oh my God, I don't know. I went to all of them.

30:20 Like what year this would have been 91 or early 92 maybe? I might have been Sound Factory. I've been to Sound Factory a few times so it wouldn't have been Sound Factory cuz I would have remembered that cuz I went there with Derek Vasquez and. Those guys. Right, Yeah. Yeah, Derek and I have worked together since the old days. Yeah, in fact I have a few funny old Dinosaur Geezer show and tell things here, but what I didn't bring out of the old pin spots I have in the back that are from Derek Custom lighting we did because we did special events together. Yeah, well, I didn't meet most of those guys until because when I was with Martin, we were the dorks.

31:03 Like we weren't the cool people at all at at the big clubs or anything. It was, it was high end at the time. Well, it wasn't even high end yet in the early 90s. High end sort of mid 90s. Got to be the real in thing, right, with the intelibeams and all that stuff, but. They were around the 80s intelibeams. No. Yeah, I surely was. Well, yeah, Intellibeams, I would say early 90s, ninety two, I think. Intellibeam is a mirrored light. We'll have to, we'll have to come back to this. We'll have to come back to this. I think the Intellibeam would be about 92 or maybe even 9394 like it was a bit later. Whatever the fixture was, there were mirrored. Golden scans.

31:46 In the clubs at the time, yeah. And the only and and I know this because I was a barrel light snob, I was a Vera light snob and I stopped working in the clubs in like 9091. It was that that year was the end of my club days and went earnest into special events until the mid 90s and I was a Vera light head. Yeah, well, the. Snobbery. The earliest we had a head that moved and everybody else had mirrored lights, wiggle lights, and that's all that was around. And it was. We couldn't buy them. Yeah, Miami, Martin proliferated the market absolutely, Marcel, right through the mid 90s. Yeah, In the earliest days it was Comar with the robots and Clay Paki with the golden scans and super scans and all of that stuff that were sort of the earliest lights.

32:34 So it was probably Clay Paki stuff. I would guess that you're talking about that. Was so pre day? Yeah, if it had a mirror, I wasn't interested. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't matter. Didn't change my life. I did. OK. No, we met. We met when you were at Martin in Florida, Martin Tracoman way back and it was in the 90s and I think it was in the mid to late 90s because it was around the time that I did the bridge into architectural lighting. I believe that it was when I was at high end and I worked with you on one of the FAO Schwartz jobs, if you.

33:16 Worked on FAO then. It definitely was, which was. Right around that time, it was. 9097 probably. 9697 cause the club debuted. In fact, I was just wearing. Funny you should say that. I was just wearing the T the other day. The T-shirt from the opening, the preview of the the FAO Schwarz. Yeah. Yeah, no, that was a cool job. Those the, you know, honestly, like you probably deserve some credit for being one of the, at least from my knowledge, one of the earliest designers to incorporate automated lighting into like architectural retail environments.

33:59 And you know, I I remember working with you on NBAFAO Schwarz probably. One of the luckiest because for FAO Schwarz I was stupid enough to use a beta version of the high end colors and and nobody uses beta versions in a permanent installation. But somebody who is that naive and I was really lucky and I will commend high end, we had an incredible support system and FAO Schwarz also had an incredible technical team because of all the other automation and technology that was there. So we were able to take their automation guy, send him down to Austin, train him and get him set so that he could handle a lot of the regular maintenance on the high end system and and you know, so it was a great team effort.

34:48 I must say our Yeah, and kudos to high end for taking the gamble with me, because no one else had ever done that before, so. No, I mean, it was. A cool project I. I think I got involved a little later. Like I I think you were already underway when I started with High end and and I kind of got thrown into the loop and it was a really cool project. And I just remember, wow, you know, I've never seen anybody use all these moving lights on a job like this. And when you speak of being crazy to use beta stuff at that time everything was beta stuff. At that time. We were moving so fast and creating things so quickly that almost every light, like you know, I talked to to lighting people now like the kids these days.

35:33 Everything is so good right now. Like even whether it's American DJ or it's, you know, High End or Robe or Ayrton or Chauvet, all of it is really, really good stuff right now. And back then it wasn't, I mean even production, production stuff that we were selling especially at Martin, but high end as well was buggy. And you know, I don't know if you remember the the days at high end when when there was like, I don't remember the exact rule, but I think it was when there was either a problem with a fixture beyond a certain whatever scope or the same problem happened more than a few times or whatever. Richard Bellevue would close the entire production of that fixture.

36:18 He'd shut down production until they found a fix for it. And you've? Got You could be a little obsessive when it came to that and and and you're right it was new, but that was. Cool. He really knew what they were doing. Yeah, yeah, no, it was it, it was it was a fun time. Like, I'm I'm so proud and happy to have been there at the forefront of for sale automated lighting. You know, like I wasn't at the forefront of Vera Light, but the stuff that was actually being sold, I was. I was one of the early guys in involved in that industry with Martin at the time. And it was fun. It was fun. And and I too, share gratitude.

37:01 And I'm grateful that I was lucky enough to be at the right place at the right time and with enough aptitude and talent to make something out of it. Because certainly being thrown in the pot doesn't mean you're going to be able to swim in the water. Yeah, well, you know what though? You're it's funny you say at the right place at the right time. If I was to define your career, you know, to me, you're Marsha at the right place at the right time, Stern, because you've been at the right place at the right time about 100 times in your career. You, you keep falling backwards into these incredible opportunities. And I mean, you're earning your way in. You're like nobody works a trade show like Marsha works a trade show.

37:43 You know, you talk to everybody. You talk to everybody at length. You know you you are out from the morning till the night and and you hit 1000 conversations in between those times. And that's what you got to do to to forge ahead in this industry and to create A to create a life for yourself in this industry. Otherwise, you know you're not employed for very long. Well, and you know, as someone who was, is not at the trade show seeking employment, but rather going there to to be a part of something that's bigger than me, like one of the proudest achievements that I've ever done with you, Mr.

38:25 Fairbairn, I have a little show and tell. Are we make? Sense. I mean, that was amazing. That was a cohesiveness. That was, you know, as spiritual as it was. As it was exuberant, I mean it just gave you an energy and and we all sprang into and it showed me what a community is and was and does and that's so much of entertainment. And I don't say this in a negative way, I just say this as an observer. I spent a good number of years working in the entertainment nightclub world. I transitioned to the architectural world based on the luck I had being one of the few people in 95 that had extensive experience both running, operating, designing and fixing Vera lights because I was trained and I used to do the repair at Palladium also after Dexter left to know that when we met and I was starting in architecture, to be at the cusp of something like that was just amazing and to be vertical and lucid now to be able to talk. About it is pretty cool.

39:32 Too and in some ways it's kind of led into this whole historical path that I'm on, which is recent and it brought about a lot and the pandemic kind of made me re evaluate. So when I look at the historical perspective, when I look at the work, the the projections, now it's more about the contacts, the the the comrade or ship that I have with the various people that I love to see. I'm sorry I missed this, Giselle. The look like a. No, I didn't go either. I didn't go either. My first one in God knows I don't even remember. Yeah, it looked like we missed the good one, kiddo. You know, you know going back again to the sort of beginning of time with with whether it's Studio 54 or any of these other you know, New York, NY or or Bond or whatever The Saint, I know you were there as well. First, females who run lights and be on the marquee. Interesting, cool.

40:30 But going back so one thing it seems to me at least, and you can correct me if I'm way wrong on this, but people who worked either in sound or lighting or design at those early clubs went on to incredible careers in our industry. And I'm guessing DJs probably went on to become producers of of incredible, you know, hit albums or something, you know, but even like Paul Gregory and and Billington and Zay Moore and some of these guys who were involved in some of those early projects. Well, Billington already had a very successful Broadway career and was hired by Jimmy Mary, who opened The Red Parrot to do a Broadway lighting set up.

41:14 We had we were the first disco, if you will, in Manhattan in anywhere in the world that I know of that had a computerized lighting system. We who it opened, we the Red Parrot. Oh, so you were there as? Well, I worked there as well, but when it opened in I think New Year's Eve of 1980, if I'm not mistaken, it, it opened with a live sound stage. And they also had a swing band orchestra, the Red Parrot Orchestra. And so they would have two show, two or three shows with the Red Parrot orchestra doing swing music in between, the disco DJ playing the hits of the day. And we had video screens.

41:57 It was a Kliegel Brothers, Kliegel Gold Performer 2. That was our lighting console. We had full sound, audio, soundstage. It was amazing. And Ken came in, Ken and Jason excuse me, Cantro is came in as Broadway designers and put a completely new twist on it. Paul Gregory, on the other hand, designed and fabricated through his company at the Time Light Lab, the dance floor for the movie Saturday Night Fever, which was 77. So that was three years prior. And if if people want to hear about that, they can go to your heartbeat of the dance or podcast episode 12 that I was just listening to.

42:38 He was just starting to talk about it. But it was funny because he said I I fabricated this thing and put it on the roof of my station wagon and drove from Chicago to New York. I mean, I was like, what? You know, that's insane. You know, one of the most iconic nightclub movies ever? Probably or. Dance. I can mention a DJ who has an incredible career. Today, two shows on SiriusXM. Many of your listeners may know. Robbie Leslie, He has a show on Friday nights. Robbie Leslie presents. He does a show on Andy Cohen station, Kiki Radio. It's on Thursday nights. He stems from those early days. Very sadly, we lost many of the artists who just aren't with us and aren't around anymore that were an integral force in the 70s. It was a hard lifestyle.

43:25 I mean, it's, you know, it's not an easy lifestyle to live through into your 80s or 90s or whatever, you know? We're not that old, Marcel. No, no. But I'm saying, I'm saying like. 80S or 90s is pushing it. However, sadly, AIDS, AIDS incredible chunk aids. Was a big one. Population in the mid to late 80s and of that you lost many artists of all ilks, whether they were. Musicians magic. Designers or shows or whatever. And so that's where a lot went and a lot went to drug overdoses and a lot went to XY's and Z's, you know, And he kind of wonder what music would Larry Levan be playing today? I mean, he was the heart and soul of Paradise Garage, probably one of the most infamous clubs to ever come out of New York City.

44:13 And a place where I did my first installation. I learned not only how to put an Edison plug on a park in, but what an Edison plug was that day, my first day on the job. And you know who my crew chief was? A lighting designer? Joe Zamor. Oh. Funny. That's where Joe and I met back in 1980. Oh. That's wild. And and a lighting designer whose award is on the wall. It was given to me when the Red Parrot closed. It's a Lumen award that is, you know, is an architectural lighting design award. But it was awarded to the Ice Palace 57 and the owner, Jimmy Murray, who was the same owner as the Red Parrot and the lighting designer was a guy by the name of Chris Harms and that was a light Lab installation, which was a Paul Gregory installation among many others.

45:00 So, you know, sadly, so many of those people, yes, I wonder where they would be, what their music would be. Artists DJ is like a Jim Burgess who had an opera background. I mean, we used to hang out. He'd freaking sing opera Arias. I mean, it was amazing, amazing. You wonder what they would be doing now, given all the creative tools that people have at their disposal that they didn't have back then, you know? So let me ask you this though, did your like when? So you came from South Florida, right? Born and raised, Sir. So you you had a pretty normal upbringing, you know, normal parents, normal family and everything else, right? I.

45:41 I I guess they were right. I came from a very loving home. I had as normal a childhood as I suppose anyone could want. We lived in a lovely suburban neighborhood that at the time I was born was brand new in North Miami. I went to North Miami Junior High and Senior High and had a prom and was involved and and went to our our Junior and senior prom. We're at the Fountain Blue Hotel. That's wild. What I'm getting at though. Marsha is where did it all go wrong? You know, how the hell did you end up on this? I. Moved to New York. Club scene in New York. What? Do you think? No, but did your parents think, What the heck are you doing, Marsha? You're in these nightclubs, working all hours of the night in these crazy places I am.

46:28 Quite certain that my mother was not pleased, but I was grateful that they both gave me the grace to live my life and they accepted it even though they may not have understood it. I I remember and and I also look leaving Florida when I had a really good job at the age of you know, 920 years old. I was making in 1975 like 20 to 30 grand a year and on the pace to double it annually. That was not that was stay 2-3 more years and move to New York with 100 grand in your pocket was what the smart person would have done.

47:11 But Marcia didn't do that. Marcia needed to do what she needed to do and follow her heart. And, you know, my parents are Holocaust survivors. And so they had to leave their home in Vienna at the ages of 18 and 19 respectively. And I presented it to my mother in a way that I thought she would understand. And that was that she didn't have the opportunity to make the choice on how she was going to become an adult. I was fortunate enough to have a choice to make, and this was the choice I was going to do. And I did it knowing I had a safety net to come back to. And I don't think that I would have moved to New York at the ripe old age of not quite 22 if I didn't have a safe home environment to come to.

48:00 And I think that was a huge part of what gave me the confidence to do things that I probably shouldn't have done and go places I probably shouldn't have gone and explore things that maybe I shouldn't have gone. But I think now that I look back on it, I'm glad I had the balls. Yeah, well, here's. The thing though, like I, you know, it's going to sound sexist. It's not. You know, I did AI took a similar route in that I went out on the road as a musician much younger than 22. I was, I think I was 16 or 17 with a fake ID because you had to be 18 in Canada to play in the bars and stuff. And you know, my mom, just my dad was dead when I was four and my stepdad was already out of the picture by then.

48:47 So my mom just said, hey, look, you know, that's what you want to do. I support you, you know, whatever you want. And but I was a guy and so, you know, I I always think it's different for a daughter. And you were an only child too, weren't you? I yeah, up to this day, I'm still an only child. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and I, you know, before I got the cojones to stop everything and do what I wanted to do and then move to New York, you know, I did the things you were supposed to do. I went to college, you know, they transferred to a nice dental hygiene school. And I had nice jobs and medical offices were a nice young woman at the age of 19 or 20 could earn a good living in yada, yada and yada, yada. And you know, and then it was like one day I just said I don't think I could do this anymore.

49:38 Yeah, yeah. You know, it's funny. When I was looking at your, your info that you sent over, I saw, you know, went to college for dental hygiene and you know, then my first job, you know, whatever, not first job. But yeah, now I'm now I'm now I'm in a nightclub in New York. And I'm like, so you went to school for dental hygiene so that you could be a tech in a nightclub, you know? I mean, these are just the paths we take sometimes, right? Well, not for nothing. When I moved to New York, one of my early jobs that supported me while I was looking for a job in the music business was as an assistant in a dentist office. An endodontist office, to be particular.

50:20 Interesting. And they knew I was looking for work. And as soon as I secured the job as a publicist with the Howard Bloom organization, which was like in Jed, right after the New Year in 77, that that was it, It was a goodbye and Be friends and Barry Moosie Kant the Dent, the endodontist, performed a couple of my root canals and my dentist for 40 years. I met through that building. And you know, it's funny where life takes you. And and lucky that I had enough of a skill set in that arena. Yeah. The earn a living when I had just moved to New York. The only other dental person I knew in the nightclub business was Tim.

51:01 What's his last name? Tim, who owned Tantra in Miami Beach and some other places as well. He owns some clubs and restaurants and stuff. Tim. I can't remember his damn last name, but he was a dentist during the day and like at night you'd see, you know, him and his wife doing crazy things on poles in his restaurants and or in his nightclubs or whatever, right? It's like what is going on here? But a really cool guy. But, you know, seeing him in the nightclub at night made me never want to be under, you know, a light with him with knives and stuff in my mouth in the morning, you know, No, thank you. Yeah.

51:44 Maybe just give me some of that stuff you took last night and I won't feel a thing. Yeah. Well, you know, yeah. And you have to kind of have your wits about you if you're on the other end of, you know, even what we do. I mean, working in a nightclub and being the person who is responsible for making the party is a little bit different than being the rigor on the job that does the sets and the staging the day before. Yeah, yeah. So how did you, how, and maybe even why? Like what made you decide or whatever? But was it like a really natural sort of transition from being a club lighting person to being more of an architectural or architectainment or architectural retail or whatever you want to call it, but a a more sophisticated lighting person?

52:32 Or like were you following the path of maybe a Paul Gregory or or someone along those lines? I was not following anyone else's path, but again, it was luck and circumstances that led me where I needed to be. At the time in the 90s, post Palladium, I was working with Robert Isabelle Incorporated. We were doing massive special events again. I was continuing as a Vera Light head. Van Coe was our supplier in New York, Teddy van Brahmel's company, and we were the largest renter of Vera lights in the Northeast, if that gives you any idea beyond tours, beyond all kinds of stuff. And you couldn't buy a Vera light in 1990 or 91 or 95. And that was where I got my bread and butter doing doing these mega mega events and working on my own special events.

53:34 I did a lot of my own special events where I did a lot of work as I mentioned with Derek Vasquez and his company Custom Lighting. And I had a ski accident and I blew my knee out. And when I blew my knee out, that kind of put the kibosh on climbing ladders and running around like a lunatic and doing all these events and post during not long rehab, but post initial rehab as I'm ready now to go back to work. And what the blank am I doing? Because now what I was doing, it doesn't really make sense right now since I'm still on the on the mend was an ad in the Times from an architectural lighting design firm called Johnson Schwinghamer. And I happened to answer it and Johnson Schwinghamer was looking for a designer they were interviewing. Turned out they had a new project, which is why they wanted a designer.

54:27 That was FAO Schwarz in Las Vegas. I presented the idea of doing this all with automated lighting, something that had never been done before. Both Clark Johnson and Bill Schwinghammer loved it. It was more of a bill project than well, the two of them worked together on that, but FAO ended up being a little more of a bill client. But be that as it may, that was how I segwayed into architecture. Lucky. Interesting. Fucking lucky. No, but why, what, what made you think that going all automated on a job like that in retail, your first basically foray into architectural lighting.

55:09 I mean, if you look back, that was pretty friggin brave, you know, it was pretty. Palsy There were 3-4 aspects of the store that I was involved with, with my special lighting segment and it had its own heading and its own section in the contract and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, you know, in its own drawings and whatnot. And one aspect, the main aspect was the Trojan horse, which was this like 65 foot animated Trojan horse that was at the entrance. It was the FAO Schwarz shops at Caesars Forum Shops in Las Vegas, and that was an animated attraction and they had a soundtrack and a show that was going to be repeated like every 15 or 20 minutes throughout with the animation and a whole thingama do. And they needed an intermission, if you will. And I thought that was a great opportunity to introduce moving light whether the fixtures and the the lights themselves moved as they did in the animation or if it was a stagnant with color very slowly.

56:16 And actually the in between looks that I did my program was Brad Schiller. And we spent an entire night in the store programming the in between sections so that we had maybe a four hour uninterrupted loop that would run, that would pause every time there was an animated show that was a pre recorded segment that would repeat so that our show didn't repeat so it didn't look like every time the ceiling turned blue. Then boom, the animation starts. I didn't want that. I wanted something that really was different in. Me. Yes, and and they gave me FAO Shores, they gave me Dick Glass was the VPO at the time and he gave me a clean pallet, the design team of Johnson Schwinghammer that I worked with those guys, they were great and they really just let me run with it. I worked with Joanne Newbold, who was the creative designer for the store, and we did a thing for, I don't remember what, but there was a tree.

57:19 It was one of the bears things and they did a tree and they wanted twinkle lights for the tree. And so that was a segment that I was involved in. And then there was a Star Wars area where, you know, at the cafe, the Cantina in Star Wars where they animated fixtures come out and they do that well. They had a show and they had animatronics doing that and that was a light show that I was involved with. So I had a lot of different arenas. There was a huge long vault that led down to the FAO Schweese, which was their new candy line and that was, I don't know, maybe a 60 foot long arc that was just rainbow neon back and forth.

58:02 So there was lots of wonderful. You know, it's it's funny though, because you talk about it now and of course now nothing about that is too edgy or cutting edge or. Or out. There or anything, right? But at the time really nothing like that had been done. I remember, I, I just remember being involved in that project and just going, wow, this is like the coolest thing ever in a retail store. Like. And then the NBA job that you did was similar to and it was just really cool to be a part of, you know? And again, now everybody does that stuff now and and times 10, you know, 'cause there's so, so many cool products out there now. It's so easy to do stuff like that. But back then it was unheard of.

58:43 It was pretty cool. It did. It did break ground. Thank you. Thank you very much. And there were a handful of people who were on that cutting room floor, cutting edge floor if you will, Paul being one of them, his company Focus Lighting. I mean, I knew Paul back from the Light Lab days and actually worked at Light Lab for a stint back in like 80 or 81 or something. But he had founded Focus Lighting, which again put that that entertainment technology that we knew. I put it to work in a changing world so that now you had Times Square that was getting involved. It wasn't just the neon we had now moved.

59:25 You had video that was a little more accessible putting up screens, this and that. You know, I had again. Look, I'm Marshall. Lucky Stern. And that's really OK by. Me. Yeah, no, but you know what again, you made your luck cuz you talked to 1000 people and at the end of the day, our industry, more than any other that I know of is built on network. Who do you know? It's really, it's not what do you know? It's not how great is your skill set necessarily. It's not that you don't have skills. I'm just saying that, you know, because I don't have any special skills. I've just always been a good networker and I know a lot of the right people and stuff right it. Is your skill set, Marcel, exactly. Your job was at the time when we met, was to be a networker and cast your net and bring into the company People like me who took the product and then did something with it so that the public knew.

1:00:18 And before you knew it, you know, by the time I had been doing this for four or five years of the architectural world, all of a sudden I remember doing a light fair manufacturer's showcase thing because I used to open up light fair when they do the manufacturer's showcase and I didn't intentionally do it as a blowout, but at that time, high end, ETC. Martin and Vera Light all had architectural fixtures. Yeah. And I used all of them in different parts and different aspects. And I didn't mean it to be a shootout at any kind. I just meant to illustrate to the architectural community that what you're seeing has been mod, has is is taking your theater experience and it's modified it for your use, ETC. Did the high did the HID version of the Source 4. I wouldn't say that I was the only reason, but certainly the fact that I had specs.

1:01:20 Source 4 is in NASDAQ Amex Marketplace and the maintenance people were not happy. Going 6070 feet in the air every 50 hours to change a lamp was inspiration. And that was what was happening around 2000, 2001, which was when. You know, again, it's another fun part about being old is that you and I remember a lot of the same things like, you know, the very first architectural wash lights that were coming out, things like the high end, what was it called, the EC1 and Martin had the Mac exterior and and then you know, everybody was coming out with those things at that point. Before that there was nothing.

1:02:01 There was these big, you know, discharge fixtures of some sort or whatever, exactly a lot. Of Hidi remember being on the balcony over on the 9th Ave. building of the Verolite offices when they were at the Chelsea Piers. And I'm going back to when the Palladium was open and I remember being there with Gary Delansky and the and their Iridian architectural line. It just been launched, it was pre ETC. It was part of the Verolite family and Gary Delansky was the Rep and I remember the first fixture that came out was their AR5 and they.

1:02:43 The little moving light thing, The little moving head thing, right? Is that the one? I'm sorry. No, it was the AR500. It was. It wasn't the little one. Yes, the little one I use in FAO Schwarz, but a year, two years before that, it was the big monster, I guess it was an AR500. And they were doing a demo for the Empire State Building. Now at that time, the Empire State Building was exactly what you're saying, huge HI DS and the union guys would come out and when they chat a holiday and you wanted red, white and blue, they'd come out and they'd change the filters and they'd come back. And this was a Union gig, right? And I remember seeing the mock up on the Balcon out on the rooftop of the bit, the office building, and then setting it up.

1:03:25 It's that Empire State Building and blah, blah, blah. And I was told the reason at the time that they couldn't go automated was because of the union contract, Because if it was just one guy and there was a lot of rebuttal on Broadway as well, until the lighting people got trained in automation and got trained in the new technology. There was a lot of this head butting that went on because guys were afraid of losing their jobs. All of a sudden the moving companies, the automated companies. And that coincided a lot with the patent ending on verilite 25 year patent that I think began in 79 or 80. When that ended, now you could have Martin and High End and Clay Paki and every other company had access to the moving head, the yoke.

1:04:18 Yeah. Well, yeah, we. Have the mirror, which also limited how it could be used in an installation. So maybe you think it was 95 or 96 when the patent ran out? Well, it was actually. Challenged. It was challenged in in some big fights with Martin and and high end and. Yeah. But those studio colors came out mid 90s, yeah. And they were all among the first of the competitors. Yeah, moving heads, yeah, because that was the technology. It was the moving head. Not the light that was moving, but the head that was moving it. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, it was a. It was a. Cool to be an old geezer, and I think it's great to be vertical and lucid and and to know where we've came from and how much we've changed.

1:05:06 Maybe that's why I've turned into this historical nut. Yeah, no, there's nothing wrong with that, you know. I mean it's I think it's really cool like I it's one of the reasons I do this podcast is I love hearing stories. Like, I think it was Paul Dexter who told me that when he was doing his earliest, and I forget what band it it was, but when he was doing his earliest lighting designs for whatever band, it was in the 70s and there maybe yeah, it was the 70s. And you know, he had no park hands or anything. So he took old pineapple cans and you know mounted lamps in them and and he created these square park hands out of these pineapple cans. And you know it, it worked right. And the same thing with sound systems. Everybody just built their own sound systems and Bob over there built this one.

1:05:58 I'm going to build one louder. My speakers are going to be bigger, you know, and. I remember my friend Wendy and I scrounging for old pizza cans in Chinatown because she needed lights for a dance company show and we made park hands out of pizza cans. Very Paul Dexter story. That's funny. Yeah, and that's what we did. We Jerry rigged it. I mean my buddy Martin and I, who I worked with, the Palladium, we used to come up with the craziest ideas of things to do that would just make something out of nothing, even if it was just for the day, you know? And for that, and for that matter, my friend Roy tho, the DJ. Yeah, his home was out on Fire Island at the Ice Palace, and I can't tell you how many Saturdays were spent literally Jerry rigging silly things so that it looked cool.

1:06:45 For that Saturday night crowd, we would do stuff like take the fire hose and run it through the pool and make it into a fountain for the night. Huh. Just stupid crap. But that's you know, that's creative too. And. And. I love that kind of stuff. It doesn't have to be a $20,000 light to to be cool, you know? So do you know a designer out of Chicago, Rob Jepsen? Yeah, so well. But I do know we. Yeah, Rob was on my podcast and he told a story of when he was, you know, first getting into lighting and stuff. He saw ACLS and he went whoa and you know, he just thought they were car headlights. And so he, he went to the auto wrecker and stole some car headlights and and, you know, put four of them together on a bar or whatever.

1:07:39 And he kept blowing fuses or popping circuits or whatever he was doing. And he was like, what the hell? How come people can do this and I can't do this? It's not working. And so he finally went to somebody else and he goes, you're an idiot, you know, you need to run six of them in series. And he goes, so I went and stole two more. I'm like, you know, this is how you built a lighting rig back in the day I guess, right? That's funny. Well, you know what the ACL stands for. Yeah, of course. Aircraft landing lights. That's why they're zeroed in. The 1st place I became familiar with that was really in Palladium, because Palladium was a true theatre. The Saint was a true theatre, but it wasn't run as a theatre. So and that was post, that was post. Studio 54 Studio 54 also was a theater, but it but I wasn't. I wasn't Privy as much to the lighting as I said. I was more involved in my music career at that time. The only time I would punch lights is when Bobby Da Silva, the lighting guy, would run off and go on one of his long and involved breaks and something needed to happen because the music required it.

1:08:55 So that I, you know, knew enough to punch a light or two. But but other than that, I was not a lighting person per SE at the time. I was a music person, but, you know, and and I learned what an ACL was in my Palladium tenure because that was really when I became, you know, a true techie in theater and did a lot of Off Broadway, off off Off Broadway and proper theater gigs. And then I recognized how different theater was from disco, from clubs, from the way they were built, from what you could use fly rail systems, high ceilings, all that sort of thing. It really did make a difference. Yeah, you know one of the clubs, one of the things you were able to another one of your sort of what you would call a lucky moment or whatever, I think probably for 10 years or maybe more before before it I think kind of ended with COVID. But you got into a pretty good run with working with manufacturers.

1:09:52 You got into a couple of different manufacturers where you were in pretty good positions where you were either a consultant or a Rep or whatever it was called. But that I enjoyed that, did you I? Enjoyed that very much. I did. I enjoyed that very much. In fact. COVID and Trans kind of put the halt on our lives and in my personal moment in time, I was in the middle of making a transition from being primarily and solely working with Acclaim product. I had just learned Matthias's new control system over italation. I had just been trained on it. I came to New York for the opening of the Brooklyn Museum Studio 54 Night Magic exhibit that actually I had some of my artifacts in the museum exhibit and when I was in New York, COVID hit and I ran to Florida and that was the end of that. On the 13th of March I flew from New York to Florida and the world shut down and and and you know that ended any possible forward motion and and you know I say we all pivoted during the pandemic.

1:11:00 I think I made a circle because my pivot was to go back to my musical roots, to pick up all of these legacy projects that were in music that had been lying dormant, that I have been otherwise too busy working full time for a claim or for whatever design or this, that or the other thing, you know. And now I had the time and the interest to do something with it instead of just letting it sit there. And it's turned into a real passion project. Marcel, I can't tell you the enthusiasm and the joy that I get from reconstructing these old musical files, from putting them out, from presenting them, the feedback I've gotten from the Roy Thode website, which is all music, to the heartbeat of the dance floor, which relives the stories with people that are still here to tell them. And I constantly.

1:11:58 I constantly shed a tear over the dear friend who didn't want to do an interview and now it's too late, or we couldn't schedule it because of XYZ. And now it's too late. And I hate the it's too late. So we've had too many, It's too late. And I think that also. Yeah. And I think that also spurns us. I mean I can only so you and I have been friends a very long time and surely we have a lot of commonalities that has let that friendship endure. And and I think we're both inspired by spreading joy and by we. Like a good time, Marsha. Yeah, we like to have a good time. We've had some fun.

1:12:43 I remember a few fun nights. Oh, maybe more than a few fun nights. More than a few, I know. God, I think I I think back to golf course days and going out on the boat when I for when we first met. Way back. I remember when my dad drove me to your house so that we could go out. Oh my God, yeah, that was funny. So I forget what I was just going to say. I don't even remember what I was just going to say. That's crazy, because you got me on the boat thing, by the way. Now that everyone from New York is selling their expensive apartments and driving up the price of houses in Miami and South Florida, when are you going to sell your house for a gazillion dollars and move back to New York and buy a cheap condo?

1:13:30 I got news for you. If the price of housing in New York City went down, I would wholly consider it. You know, like you, I have a wonderful, wonderful respite in the mountains. That is but my heart's desire, but not the most practical pace in the world to roam your life around. However, anybody out there listening a nice pet of terror in New York City is right up my alley. And real estate values are really good in Florida now. Yeah, they are. It's crazy. I mean, unless you're buying, you know, it's like where we live now, we live in a pretty small house. And I've been looking at this place right next door, not right next door to our house, but an area very close to where we're at here in Wellington.

1:14:14 And you know, a few years ago when I was starting to think about it, it was a reasonable price. You know, I won't get into the prices, but now it's literally four times as much, literally four times as much money. I have seen the prices of homes on my block go from the benign to the oh, I can't believe it, to the absolutely, astronomically ridiculous over the past. It's not. It it really is crazy. And if you had told me that this neighborhood was going to have homes that were valuing where they are now, where they're jumping at now, I would have said you're nuts.

1:14:57 But then again, there's only a gazillion people coming to South Florida. Housing is at a premium, and if you were fortunate enough to have a nice single family home in a good neighborhood, it's going to be worth a chunk of change. Yeah, no, it's it's gone nuts. It really has gone nuts. So what are, what are you doing? You keep talking about this music thing that I'm doing now, and so tell me specifically. Like, you know, I know you're doing a lot of historical stuff and blah blah blah, but what is it really that you're focused on? Well, I have a website, roytho.com, and Roy Thode is the DJ who I inherited much of his archives and things.

1:15:38 And when you put together his historical archives, like for example, the gold record that you see behind me that was given to him, it's for Sylvester's album. OK. There's an award there that was the ice, but given the Ice Palace, the owner of the Ice Palace, you know there's an award for me. But my history has brought me into this historical moment. It got me involved with the Brooklyn Museum. It got me involved with the Studio 54 movie and that is based more, especially the 54 stuff that revisits my own musical world as a producer and as a musician. And what I'm doing is taking these old analog tapes that are digitized and present RE and presenting them through Roy's website. So that's a lot of technical prowess in editing. That is a whole new skill set that I'm learning and really enjoying the heck out of.

1:16:34 You know, For me editing was a tape and a razor blade and an editing block. Back in the day, it's totally true. It's all different now. It's cut and paste. Yeah. And it's and it's mixing and it's recording and it's working in digital recording which is really interesting, I mean so, so that's a bit of a learning curve in that which kind of keeps me out of trouble. But then the idea with this Roy Foed website is is to sell music or to just give access to music or at. This juncture it is to give access. Selling music, you get into the legalities and the copyright issues, right? However, what I'm doing is reviving his artistry and presenting it. Democratizing access to his.

1:17:22 That and and he as a dead person who's been dead 42 years. Oh, wow. Had he died in 1980? Died. Died in 1982? I've had all this stuff since 82. It's just. Oh my goodness. You look, I haven't had this stuff for 20 years before you had the technology to digitize it. Yeah, that's wild. Think about it and and for some reason I have this. And if I can spread the joy by taking the music and putting it out there, it's through his website that I publicize it through the front page on the website ofroytho.com, you can access all of the platforms, the Mixcloud, the SoundCloud. We just did a release in tandem with sound Metaphors on their SoundCloud platform.

1:18:07 He's got a Facebook page. He's got an Instagram account. He's got more social. And there's an audience for this. Yes, there's a very big audience and and it's not just new and I do get a lot of new followers and new audience, but it's a lot of other people who were there and some of the comments that come back really do touch me and it gives me inspiration because I'm bringing joy to these people. Some have never heard it before. This guy I'm working with in Germany who has this record store sound metaphors, and he, I don't even think he was alive when Roy died. But he's so interested. There's a lot of of music that Roy did that back in the 70s.

1:18:51 He was in trouble with. He was very, very important and he died and no one remembers him. And I guess that's maybe my job, to make sure that what he did doesn't go unappreciated because it was so damn good and it holds its own in today's world. 40 years later, it stands alone. Look, SiriusXM had me do a 10 hour New Year's Eve broadcast this year, welcoming in the new year on their Studio 54 radio station. I don't. I don't think I would have had the opportunity to do all of this stuff if not for the work with Roy combined with my own musical background gives me the ability to do this and not to take away from my lighting career.

1:19:37 And I did recently design a streaming TV studio in New York for a friend of mine. It just hasn't quite come to fruition yet. As you well know, we're waiting for the funding, but but you know, it just seems that following my nose has taken me back to my music and I'm enjoying it. So that's. Wow, that's so fun though, huh? Yeah, yeah, maybe That's what my purpose is. May. You know, you get to this ripe old age. You like to know that you have a purpose. That's appreciated. And maybe this is? You know the beginning of fulfilling that? You know, and the The thing is, I mean, as much as it's nice to get a a big fat paycheck or whatever, sometimes it's so much better to be like following a passion and following something that gives you joy and and like you said, a purpose, you know, that to me is so much more fun than running around as a sales Rep for a lighting company or something.

1:20:33 And again, as as much as it's nice to get a fat paycheck from somebody for doing something, that's rather easy, you know, I I love that stuff. At at at some point, I have every intention of selling much of the memorabilia that I have. How that's going to happen, I'm not sure. I also believe that I've got enough that already has qualified for an actual historical museum exhibit. And I would like to see a lot of that combined with a lot of other things that I've accrued or other friends of mine have and have accrued from that era and put it into a proper collection because that should be recognized.

1:21:17 I mean, my personal beef with the world of today is that the music did not stop with our acid rock of the 60s and all of a sudden jump into rap and hip hop. You had an entire era of Motown, Detroit, Memphis, rhythm and Blues dance music, the kind of stuff that Roberta Flack described in this way. You be in the basement and someone to put a 45 on the record player. You throw a towel over the light and you dance on a space no bigger than a dime. That's cool. I like that. That was really cool. Marsha. You know what? We could we could talk for three more hours.

1:21:58 We're gonna have to do another one. Unfortunately, I have to go today. But I appreciate you getting this going. Another one. I know. So would I. Tell silly stuff, fun stuff. I'd love to do it. We'll. We'll definitely do it. Always a delight. We'll definitely do it again. No, I I love talking with you. I love listening to you and you know, I feel like we've just gotten started. But unfortunately today is one of those days where I have time limits and I've got places that I've got to be. So thank you so much for doing it. And Sarah probably already told you it'll air next week, but we'll send you the links and stuff and. Yeah, sounds good.

1:22:40 And I thank you. And I'm very proud to now be officially an old geezer of gear. You are a geezer. Easy for. You I look forward to Part 2, Marcel, and thank you again for having me as a guest. This has been a lot of fun. All right, Marcia. Take care the.