Twenty five years goes by quickly.
25 years ago I was producing John Gambling and we were working on a montage for the 50th anniversary of D-Day. This was back in the days before digital editing so if you made a montage you sat at the board and did it in real time while recording it on a reel to reel
John wasn’t happy with the mix I was doing and told me to get up. What? He was going to mix it himself? What? NYC radio host John Gambling is going to mix it himself?
John sits down and damn he’s smooth on a board. Like really smooth. And nails the mix.
I was quite surprised. John educated me that (despite his famous father) he had spent time in the trenches and knew how to do these things, and if I remember correctly also knew a little engineering.
Seven years later I’d have a similar but flipped experience on 9/11. I was the APD at WOR and a few years past running a board, and the newer staff only knew me in my then-current role. I forget the particulars but I know there were some moves I wanted to make (the PD had gotten stuck on the other side of the Hudson, so I was calling the plays) and it was just going to be easier to do it myself than to explain it.
So I told him to get up and I sat down at the very same board from the D-Day story. I think I ran the board for about twenty minutes that morning. Those are stories for another post.
Anyway, those 25 years ago went by quickly. I’m not sure it feels like yesterday but when I heard it was the 75th anniversary I felt like we’d just had the 50th.