Tag: #friends

  • Earworm Wednesday: Friends Make You Funky

    So, the part of this song that gets stuck in my head is the refrain of “Most of All” at 1:22. Don’t know what it is, but it just plays in a loop in my head. Not a complaint because I love this song.

    “Flash Light” is the song I think of when someone says Parliament or George Clinton, or Bootsy Collins (even though Bootys doesn’t play in this song,) or funk music in general.

    See, I made a friend, a best friend, in 9th grade and as all best friends do, he introduced me to the wonderful world of funk. I think I had seen Parliament an SNL rerun, but I knew nothing about them. That’s when my friend stepped in and filled that gap I didn’t know I had. He helped me understand what the “Great Rock n’ Roll Swindle” was, how funk influenced hip hop and rap, and the importance of “on the one.”

  • Losing a Best Friend

    Yesterday, my Uncle Arnie passed away. He was my godfather, and he was goofy, silly, and had a very original midwestern accent that I have never been able to replicate. He was a good uncle, a great father, a dedicated husband, and he was my dad’s best friend. They grew up together, and in a funny twist of fate, they ended up marrying sisters, which meant they legally became family to each other. They liked martinis, and in family gatherings, sometimes they had to be separated at the table, because they could be a little rowdy and obnoxious. You know, just like best friends do. My heart just breaks for my Aunt Margaret, who lost her best friend, too. He was a good man, and he will be missed greatly.

    Then the other day, a friend from high school posted that another classmate of ours had died. My friend wrote a very moving post in Facebook, talking about how close they were in school, and even when they followed different paths and lived in different places, they stayed in contact, and stayed close. You could feel through her words how devastated she was in his passing, that there was a hole in her heart now.

    So, best friends, old friends, have been on my mind this weekend. We all make friends, and then those friends end up becoming family. And I miss my friends. I think what I miss most is just listening to them tell me about their lives. Their loves and adventures and experiences. To make them laugh, and vice versa. It is a motley crew of people we choose to share our lives with. Some for a short while, some forever. A friendship really is one of the greatest gifts you can give to someone.

  • Drinking on a Tuesday Night

    Last night, an old friend of mine took me out for dinner and drinks. Turns out it was more drinks than dinner. In the West Village, we sat outside in one of those sidewalk shanties that have a heater in it. We were the only two idiots out there, and I say idiots because it was like 38 degrees last night. But the alternative was that we would have been inside a very tiny restaurant/bar where no one had a mask on, and we both have kids that aren’t vaccinated, so not wanting to take any risks, outside we sat.

    The pretense of this dinner was to get together and talk about The BEATLES: Get Back doc, as we both are rather huge BEATLES fans. But in all honesty, it was just an excuse to hang out with an old friend and catch up. And we talked very loudly in that shanty. So loud that someone yelled at us to shut up at 11pm, and then the restaurant manager came out and politely told us to lower our voices. Then at midnight, she threw our drunk asses out. They were closing, and  we apologized, while my friend tipped a large amount. Hopefully, we’ll be welcomed back.

    I walked my friend back to their apartment building, as they were a bit more drunk than me, and I wanted to make sure they got home safe. Old friends walking down a very quiet street of Federal styled townhomes, being a bit obnoxious, and laughing too much. My friend made it home, and we promised each other to do this again, and soon.

    And then I did something that I hadn’t done in a long time, I just wandered around the West Village. Cutting back and forth on streets, looking at buildings, and blinking Christmas lights in windows. More and more storefronts are closed, and there weren’t many people out, so a high-end ghost town feel was clinging on the neighborhood. And as I made my way to the White Horse Tavern to see if the literary specters were out and howling; but that bar closed at midnight.

    So, I hailed a cab, and told the driver my cross streets in Harlem, which he accepted without complaint. I expected a fast ride up the West Side Highway, but at 14th street he headed up 10th Avenue, and we rolled quickly up the length of Manhattan. From 23rd Street, we ran non-stop, hitting every green light – it felt like a Christmas Miracle, but it could be due to no traffic at 1am. Finally, we were felled by the intersection at 123rd of all places, where our luck ran out, and we were held by a red.

    It has been very hard living in the City for the past two years, pretty much stuck in our neighborhood. Sometimes I forget how much I like it here. A place that can fill you with excited energy one moment, and try to break you down the next. But it is still a place I love living in.

  • Personal Review, The BEATLES: Get Back (Part 1)

    There were many things I was looking forward to this Thanksgiving, and one of the biggest was watching, The BEATLES: Get Back. As a stupidly huge BEATLES fan, I had known for some time about Peter Jackson’s documentary about the LET IT BE documentary. I had been waiting and waiting, and then I got very excited when it changed from a single movie to a three-part series that would be on Disney+. And yes, I made my family watch it on Thanksgiving night…

    Or at least tried to…

    When I pulled up the first episode, and saw that it was two and a half hours long, I knew my wife and daughter weren’t going to make it. I was right. About thirty minutes in, they were like, maybe this is something dad should watch alone. And they weren’t wrong.

    Even though other critics have been saying that this eight-hour mini-series is for serious and casual fans, I have to disagree. This is a deep dive for huge fans, and there is no shame in that. Making an album is kind’a boring. They play the song over and over, and then spend a lot of time talking about what they should do, and then they play the song over and over. Boom! That’s how albums are made, and it is long, hard work.

    Now, for us stupidly obsessive fans… This thing is like heaven. Watching them work, and try out ideas, and then fart around for a while, and then try the song again. John, Paul and George had been playing together over ten years, and with Ringo for at least seven, so the ease in which they could just pick up a song, shout out chord changes and go, was stupefying. They are only in their late 20’s, and they are that good. I think the other aspect I really enjoyed having confirmed was seeing that they were an actual good band. Not just recording artists, but a band that could play.

    As for the arch of the episodes, the first one is a bit tough to get through. Even though Jackson and the PR for this show had spun the story that footage of The BEATLES shows that they weren’t actually on the verge of breaking up, and there was so much fun and love between them. I respectfully have to disagree. The first part shows that they all weren’t hip on being in this band anymore. I mean, George walked out. What I will agree with is that when they are playing music together, they do look like they are having a blast. But once they stop and start talking about managers and anything other than songs, the tension starts to show.

    In the second episode, when George brought Billy Preston in, it changed everything for the better. Preston had an ease and cool confidence, so when joined them at the Apple Recording Studio, man, he just brought an energy to the band that they all feed off of. People start showing up on time, and happy. The songs start clicking, and it is really exciting to watch all of them work.

    When we get to the final episode, and the rooftop concert, it’s a blast, and so heartbreaking. It’s great because once they get going, you can just see that the four of them love it. Love the songs, playing together, being out there, just being together. It’s heartbreaking because, the band only has about a year left, and if they could have got their shit together, they could have toured for Abbey Road, but in the end, it’s the last time they played together as a band.

    There are so many deep dives I could do on these three parts, especially how awesome and great Mal Evans was. (Seriously, is there a bio on Mal, or a movie or anything on that guy? He is the greatest behind the scenes guy of all time.) For that, Peter Jackson did a great job. I have a feeling in a year or two a “Director’s Cut” of this will come out which will be like fifteen hours long with more songs and outtakes. And yes, I will line up to see that as well.

    For me, I got what I wanted. What I wanted to see was that four friends, who really did love and care for each other, would get together and do something really cool, and have a lot of fun doing it. I was not disappointed.

  • That Song Triggers That Memory

    I went grocery shopping this morning. It is one of the rare moments in my week where I can listen to music uninterrupted. I take the subway down to the Trader Joe’s on 93rd, and there is a little bit of a walk. Early in the morning, after the kids are in school, and people have left for work, there aren’t many folks on the street, so I can jam out to my music; I can get it.

    And as I was riding the subway home with my bags, my playlist randomly gave me “Bye Bye Love,” by The Cars. I have heard this song since forever, and its hints of unrequited love made it such a wonderful juxtaposition of a song, contrasting with its upbeat rock tempo.

    Not sure why, but I added it to a playlist in mid 2018, and listened to it quite heavily. In September 2018, I was visiting a friend from college and her husband in a rather cool Brooklyn apartment that was in a walkup building, and they had access to a rooftop garden. That kind’a cool apartment, you know? We were drinking, a lot, and started playing a game of finding videos and concerts on YouTube of songs we loved. I picked “Bye Bye Love,” from a club concerts The Cars played in 1979. I liked it, but not sure if it played well in the room.

    But the memory of what I was feeling in that moment is still attached with that song. I felt lonely, because my wife and daughter were 3,000 miles away in California. I felt paralyzed as I was supposed to be packing up our apartment for our move to California, but I couldn’t get myself to do it. I was about to start rehearsals for what would be the last show I worked on, which had me excited to see my friends who I love and I am amazed by. And I couldn’t shake the feeling of doom, as my mother had cancer, and I knew she wouldn’t recover.

    My college friend lost her father when she was younger, and I knew if there was a friend who could understand what I was feeling, it would be her. And I think of her as one of my close friends, but I couldn’t talk about it. I just lied. I said it was looking better, and we have to believe in hope, and all that stuff. But I didn’t mean it. I said the thing I thought was expected. I didn’t tell the truth.

    I don’t hate listening to “Bye Bye Love,” or The Cars. Sometimes that memory and feeling doesn’t settle over me when I hear it. Some days, I’m okay when I think of my mother’s passing. And then one day, I hear a song, and it all comes back to me while on a B train, heading uptown.