mcudahy
11-08-2006, 03:06 PM
Any commuter knows what it's like to sit in traffic, staring idly at the back of the car in front of you, pointlessly reading the letters of the license plate or the make and model of the car.
This morning I was stuck at an 8-way signal at El Camino and Page Mill in Palo Alto behind a Lincoln Mark VIII. A dumb thought came into my mind: for the sax players among their customers (with their vast buying power), the Lincoln people would have made a better impression by stopping their naming scheme at Mark VI.
Then I started thinking about the Mark VII. Who did that? Not to pick on anyone, but it would be interesting to read the story of the engineering mistake known as the Selmer Mark VII saxophone. In fact, it would be most interesting if it were told with fairness, and with sympathy for the decision-makers involved. I'm sure they just wanted to make a better sax. Has this story been told in detail somewhere?
I think it would make a great novel, focusing on the personal trials of the guy who, all alone, had to bear the weight of the generations of sax players who snort and scoff at Mark VIIs, or accept them as "the best I can afford right now." You have imagine you hear the angry voice of the president of Selmer booming out, when he's seen the sales figures, invoking Macbeth's outcry when he saw Banquo's ghost at the banquet table: "Which of you have done this?!?" But the guy who was responsible has to be heroic, in my idea of the story, having the grace to deal with what must have been seen within the company as a huge failure (and has been seen that way everywhere else for decades, harped on by sax players again and again, as on this forum), but making that failure into a kind of blessing. Or did the guy jump off a bridge?
Maybe I've been stuck in traffic too long.
This morning I was stuck at an 8-way signal at El Camino and Page Mill in Palo Alto behind a Lincoln Mark VIII. A dumb thought came into my mind: for the sax players among their customers (with their vast buying power), the Lincoln people would have made a better impression by stopping their naming scheme at Mark VI.
Then I started thinking about the Mark VII. Who did that? Not to pick on anyone, but it would be interesting to read the story of the engineering mistake known as the Selmer Mark VII saxophone. In fact, it would be most interesting if it were told with fairness, and with sympathy for the decision-makers involved. I'm sure they just wanted to make a better sax. Has this story been told in detail somewhere?
I think it would make a great novel, focusing on the personal trials of the guy who, all alone, had to bear the weight of the generations of sax players who snort and scoff at Mark VIIs, or accept them as "the best I can afford right now." You have imagine you hear the angry voice of the president of Selmer booming out, when he's seen the sales figures, invoking Macbeth's outcry when he saw Banquo's ghost at the banquet table: "Which of you have done this?!?" But the guy who was responsible has to be heroic, in my idea of the story, having the grace to deal with what must have been seen within the company as a huge failure (and has been seen that way everywhere else for decades, harped on by sax players again and again, as on this forum), but making that failure into a kind of blessing. Or did the guy jump off a bridge?
Maybe I've been stuck in traffic too long.