In My Life
Rubber Soul
All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I’ve loved them all
On the door of my mother’s refrigerator is the story of my life.
We sat on the tarmac for two and a half hours. At first it was only supposed to be forty five minutes. Which seemed tolerable until parked on the far reaches of LAX, they shut off the a/c. And when half an hour later they announced we were going to sit still for another hour and fifty minutes, there was a revolt.
Fearing American would get a reputation as the new Jet Blue, the captain announced we were going back to the gate. But when we got there he said if we got off we had to STAY off. And that our bags would go to New York anyway. Those more worried about pets than people carried their dogs off the plane. A couple of young women with children exited too. And then ten minutes later, they pushed us back out.
You see there were thunderstorms on the east coast. And the landing was far from easy, but computers fly these planes, don’t they?
And when we reached Bridgeport’s Park Avenue, it was after midnight, even the rodents were in for the night. And when we entered my mother’s building and I turned on the lights in her apartment, I was confronted with the photo of my father, with his best friend, Al, the appliance king, buddies in the seventies.
Only one problem, they were younger then than I am now.
And my nephews, in these pictures they were far from puberty.
I could trace myself from high school to today on my mother’s fridge. It was positively freaky. I felt like I was living in a Harry Chapin song. While I was focusing on what was right in front of me, my whole life had slipped by. And, if I didn’t grab hold, soon it would expire.
Pepe’s Pizza
Perusing "Esquire" in the eighties I read that the best pizza in America was made twenty minutes from where I grew up, at Pepe’s, in New Haven, Connecticut. On the phone with my father, I asked him about it. He started waxing rhapsodic, it was like he had a whole ‘nother life, separate from mine… How come he’d never taken me there?
Pizza in Bridgeport is exceptional. It’s got a thin crust. Well, thin under the tomato sauce and the cheese. It’s gigantic on the end rim. And on top of the whole pie is an oil slick. The pizza would come from the oven and we’d burn the roof of our mouths, not being able to wait for it to cool down.
This was what I knew as pizza until I moved to California.
You don’t want to eat Mexican in Connecticut, and you don’t want to consume pizza in L.A. It’s just not the SAME THING! It’s bread. Whereas real pizza is unique, a delicacy unto itself.
So the next time I was in Connecticut, I went to New Haven and lined up with the Yalies at Pepe’s. It was exceptional. Especially the house specialty, the white clam pizza.
I haven’t been to New Haven in years. But my mother told me they opened a Pepe’s in Fairfield. The Roadfood website said it was just as good, but that we had to be prepared for the line.
There was no line on Thursday afternoon, we walked right in. We ordered a ‘za with sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms and onions. And when our waitress Dawn served our pizza sans the crying vegetable, she brought out a whole new pie, just tomato sauce, cheese and onions.
With just a hit of pepper, the pizza was life itself. I don’t know what’s more primal, sex or eating. But either one done well gets you in touch with your humanity, your identity as a physical being on the planet. Every slice hit the spot, I couldn’t stop, eating pizza was my raison d’etre.
And Dawn noticed Felice’s crutch and started testifying about her tummy tuck, she even showed us her scar. That’s the east coast, where everybody truly is a star, where their story is all that matters.
Carolina Day
I don’t think I’ve even been to Carolina, North or South. But I played James Taylor’s "Carolina In My Mind" incessantly when I got his Apple debut in the spring of ’70. I loved it and its successor "Sweet Baby James" so much that I bought his brother Livingston’s album, with "Carolina Day". Just before I went to college I babysat for Eric Weiner, whose house backed up to ours. And I played that album on the stereo.
My mother left that Fairfield abode just over three years ago. Felice wanted to see it. Again. And just as we pulled up a woman in a Subaru turned into the driveway. And when she opened the front door I saw changes. They’d replaced the door to Wendy’s room, they’d repainted. It bizarred me. I guess I wanted that house to stay the same forever.
But that’s the way of the world. Time marches on. It’s our house no longer.
Driving through the old neighborhood I was suddenly in touch with who I used to be. Living in a land where where you went to college and who your parents were was so important. I like living in L.A., where the most important thing is what kind of car you drive. That’s just phony enough for me. No one gives a shit about me. And I like it that way.
Yet you can’t deny where you come from. But how do you put all of the pieces of the puzzle together? The victories and the losses? The marriages and the divorces? The longer we live, the more our imperfection reveals itself. We’re a complicated species. We’re unpredictable, we often don’t make sense. Sometimes we don’t even make sense to ourselves.
Digital Photography
Suddenly, record sales have dried up. Nobody wants discs, and you can’t survive on the sale of digital singles.
We’ve been told this day has been imminent for seven years. It’s finally here. Sales have dropped by twenty percent from last year. And last year was a shitty year.
Do people no longer want music?
Just open your eyes, and your ears. Those white headphone cords are everywhere. And music kept tonight’s wedding together. That’s what music is, the glue, the special sauce, that adds the flavor.
You’d think it would be best if everybody had access to that flavor, if everybody could enjoy it. That’s what technology affords, that’s what the old white men decry.
The record business is Kodak. We’ve been hearing for eons that digital was going to kill film. It finally has. And who’s lamenting the death of the old format? Nobody I know. Maybe just the Rochester giant, which is now hoping printers will save its bottom line.
Not everybody used to have a camera, and those who had one didn’t always use it. Photography was frustrating. Half the pictures were useless. And printing them was not cheap. Photography wasn’t exactly a luxury, but it wasn’t the hobby of seemingly everybody.
Now we’ve even got CELL PHONES with cameras. At the wedding this evening digital cameras were in abundance. Used to be that only the hired photographer shot pictures. But now everybody wants a personal record of the event, everybody wants to play.
Is this bad?
I don’t see how. The laughs, the happiness the resultant photos engender, they bring us together. In the same way music does, but now can even more, utilizing the same digital tools.
You can take your music with you, with your iPod. You can not only listen on headphones, you can plug your device into a tiny speaker, and turn a hotel room into a party. Suddenly everybody has access to music. At least in theory. However the old white men want to keep the sound from the people. Rather than spread the wealth and charge for the privilege, the old white men have imported the CD model to the Net.
Obviously they don’t use music in the new way. If they did, they’d know that people don’t want one or two tracks, but ALL the tracks. And that copy protection is a red herring. And that a buck a track is too much. Who’s gonna pay thousands to fill their iPod?
But if everybody has an iPod, and everybody pays a little bit…
That’s the world we live in. The old white men are in denial. They reminisce about a day when they had control, when radio and MTV drove people into retail stores to buy ten million copies of an album.
Those days are through. MTV plays no music, and radio’s a joke. As for retail…there’s more excitement in the flat screen section than there is in the ever-shrinking music department. The people control the music now. The only option is to serve them, in the way they want.
A prediction?
In the future, many people will own a lot of music. And they’ll be happier for it.
Not that’s it’s hard to foresee this coming reality, for it already exists. All that needs to be done is to bring it above ground, for the purveyors to charge for it.
Don’t tell me that photos are different from music. I’ll just say the new bands are going to give the music away, and you won’t be able to charge for ANYTHING if you don’t get with the program.
For My Wedding
To want what I have
To take what I’m given with grace
For this I pray
On my wedding day
In 2000 Don Henley released a stiff album.
Well, stiff if you consider a million copies of the work of an Eagle a disappointment. Then again, in today’s marketplace, that number would evidence a hit.
Contained on "Inside Job" is a cover song, "For My Wedding".
And this number was going through my mind today, as I watched the Reverend perform the ceremony, as I saw two young people start their lives together.
I was married once. It didn’t take.
But it’s best to share your life with someone. This world is not about achievement, but companionship.
And to spend years with another human being is tough. They come from a different background, sometimes they piss you off. But if you’ve got a good one, they know who you are, the connection is maintained, because we all want to be known.
We used to want to know the musicians, back before they became tools of the corporations. We won’t care again until they realize their responsibility is to us, not the man.
But the man is everywhere. He owns the media. He tells us what to like, how to feel. Even though he’s got no idea who we are. The musicians used to know who we were. They no longer do. Whether it be the oldsters all about the payday or the rappers all about the Benjamins. We live in a money-oriented society.
But I’ve got to ask you, did money ever keep you warm at night?
If money were the answer, Christina Onassis would still be with us today.
We want love. We want touch.
And until we get there, and even after we do, what will hold us together is music.
Music doesn’t belong to the record companies, it doesn’t even belong to those who make it, it belongs to us.
And that’s the way it should be.
