Whatever Became of Tiffany?

Free Association

I listen to Psychedelicized 'Radio,' which is anything but. I heard a version of "Let's Get Together" which I didn't recognize and looked at the playlist to identify the artist.

It was by The Tiffany System. Alphabetically preceding that in my collection was a band called The Tiffany Shade*, which has nothing to do, beyond the asterisk, with this blogitem. Also having little to do with it is my musical woolgathering, in which I now comment that The Youngbloods wrote and performed Get Together, and that my favorite version of this much-covered song was by the We Five. We Five also had a single "There Stands the Door" which I liked so much that I somehow mended and de-clicked the 45RPM version, which was a bit of a challenge.

All of which is free association occasioned by my seeing the word Tiffany. (There's a band called Free Association, and two very famous bands, one called Free, and the other called The Association, whose initial hit** was "Along Comes Mary." I memorized the lyrics, not much of a challenge for one who can sing The Element Song, but it took a while to figure them out since the song didn't come with a table.)

But Whatever Became of Tiffany?

That's a real question about a real person. One who would be about 70 nowadays if, of course, she remains extant. I met her in the '70s in some sort of musical context, after she had acquired one of our early products, the H910 Harmonizer special effects processor. While I am guilty, or at least complicit, in touting our products, Tiffany, as I subsequently discovered, probably needed one less than any singer. She was what one might have called avant-garde, with a voice that would break glass if it didn't first run away and try to escape. I only heard her perform once in some long-forgotten New York City venue. I had no idea! In most respects, red-streaked hair aside, she seemed to be a standard person who had one other odd quirk: She declined to disclose her surname! This after years of acquaintance. Many years after I had moved to New Jersey, someone called my attention to a small article in a "newspaper" that could only have been about her, and gave her name as Tiffany Prescotti. No photo, no follow-up. No further information. I barely remember what the article was about but it wasn't flattering. Thanks to the Tiffany System, with which this Tiffany surely had no connection, my alleged brain exhumed her from the past and led me to wonder, at least until this blogitem is "published," whatever became of Tiffany? Is she alive? Dead? Hiding? Or possibly shrieking her way through an obscure musical career that is a sidelight of an otherwise productive and unremarkable existence on earth.

UPDATE 01 August 2022: I Found and scanned an ad for her 1985 appearance at CBGG's.

Speaking of Musical Woolgathering

I was listening to Genesis while on a galumph, and the song Driving the Last Spike started playing. Which reminded me that one of my other favorite songs about the challenges of building transcontinental railroads is Gordon Lightfoot's The Canadian Railroad Trilogy. I read the Ambrose history about the United States version and remember being stunned by the privation of, as Lightfoot called them, the navvies—often Chinese or Irish—who built the railroads. The songs are much shorter than the book, and leave more to the imagination. I recommend them all.

This Page is Not Mobile Friendly

I think Google reminded me of this. No, I suppose it isn't. But it's pretty much words and pictures, I'm not sure it needs to be.

And it may be insecure, too. When you fill out the many forms on my blog demanding your bank information, put in a few random digits just to tease me.

Valuable Chocolate Chip Cookie Safety Tip

I know that "yesterday" was a Safety Blogitem, but here's a bonus for today: Do not pack an everything bagel in the same bag as a large chocolate chip cookie without wrapping one or the other in chemically impermeable wrapping. At least, not if you want to avoid having the chocolate chip cookie taste like an everything bagel.

* An unfortunate name if it applies to the real Tiffany in a Shakespearian way.

** The Association's follow-up hit was Cherish, of which I was reminded one day over five decades ago when I saw a truck burdened with hundreds of chairs in the back traveling on the New York Throughway. Please make me stop!

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