It’s cold here!

I could feel it in the gap between the jetway and the plane, the blast of not quite frigid air that told me I was not in California anymore.

What’s interesting about the new connected world is that you can live anywhere. Once upon a time, if you weren’t in L.A. or New York you were off the grid. The outskirts were a good place to raise children, but chances were you were never going to be anything more than a big fish in a small pond.

But those days are history. The Internet works everywhere. As does cable TV. You can be hip anywhere. As well as completely out of it in the metropolis. With the onslaught of information chances are some kid in his basement in the midwest is much more savvy than you are on the coast. Which is why Spotify can be started in Stockholm, where the broadband speeds dwarfed those in the United States. That’s what we all desire these days, a fast connection. That’s why you must upgrade from your iPhone 4 or 4s to a 5, for the LTE. It’s like surfing at home. Well, a U.S. home.

And there are rich people everywhere. We’re driving along the banks of the Mississippi (I know how to spell it because of the song!) and on the St. Paul side are manses so big and beautiful, that you contemplate moving.

Not that Minneapolis was ever backward. It was always hip.

But always cold.

But the one thing they don’t tell you is that just as cold as it is in the winter, that’s how hot it is in the summer!

And since the advent of global warming, it’s not as cold as it used to be, but everything’s relative.

And where did I learn about Minnesota?

College! Going to school with Dodd Cosgrove, whose father ran Jolly Green Giant, and the kids from Wayzata, they taught me how to pronounce it!

And “The Heartbreak Kid.” Forget the remake, the initial Charles Grodin flick is incredible. The final scene is priceless, when he’s in Minnesota, giving his spiel to the blue bloods, this Jewish sporting goods retailer… But the highlight is the beach scene, where Grodin lays his towel down amidst endless sand and suddenly feels a shadow… And he looks up and it’s Cybill Shepherd saying “You’re lying in my spot!” That’s what all males are looking for, a female to say we’re lying in their spot. For all the machismo, most men are weak. If you’re waiting for the man to move first, you’re gonna wait a very long time, if not forever. Want a date with a guy? CALL HIM!

Or text him or e-mail him or…

Wendy, that’s my sister, is a Facebook addict. I asked how the population was over there. She said in the last year so many have dropped out. I’m about done with Twitter, because I post and get no reaction, it’s too frustrating. As for Facebook, I only play with a fake name, looking up those I used to know.

And the colors! We don’t get them in Los Angeles. Even Colorado is not the same thing. But Minneapolis is like the east coast, and I’ve hit it perfectly, at its peak, when the trees are blazing and the leaves are still on.

And we’re driving across the bridge and Wendy laments that winter is coming. How does she know? The clouds! They’re flat, not puffy. The long tunnel is beginning.

And we drove under the new Guthrie, with its cantilever over the roadway.

And we saw the bridge that fell… In a cannot do nation, it was inspiring to see the replacement. It’s lit up at night. Thoroughfare as celebration. And there’s a memorial to the fallen. I got out and looked at the blue columns, with a short bio for each of the deceased.

And I know David Byrne is railing about the Internet. And Thom Yorke has doubled down on his hatred of Spotify. And track sales are dropping, because of YouTube streaming, if nothing else. And once upon a time we bought records, then tapes, then CDs, then MP3s and now…everything is available at our fingertips. It used to be important to get an iPhone, now a Samsung Galaxy is good enough. The tech comes and goes.

But the people, the culture, the society, remain.

They know that in Minneapolis.

The I-35W Bridge On Memorial Day

35W Bridge Memorial

SUENO

You buy these records and you never hear your favorites live, especially today, when bands are afraid to play their deep cuts, for fear of boring their audience, especially if aged.

Yes, that’s what we are, we baby boomers. Old. We try to deny it. Act like hipsters. But it’s the aches and pains and the cancer and looming funerals that tells us otherwise. The most amazing thing about the Rascals in concert is that they’re all there, all these years later, nearly fifty.

To say they were huge would be an understatement. They were the biggest band on the east coast, and that’s what they were, a band. And this is the revelation when you see them live, that they’re playing all the instruments, it reminds you of nothing so much as your own history in the basement, playing your own instrument you were driven to pick up after seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan in newly-formed bands that played all the hits but rarely played live, not that you were unhappy about this.

Yes, instead of tweeting, instead of writing apps, we played music. And sure, some people dreamed of becoming famous, but most of us knew it was not in the cards, we were thrilled just to participate, to pick out the notes, to be as close to the music as possible.

And those of us who were truly bitten by the bug gave up on singles early, we were album people, and that’s how I know “Sueno,” it’s on the “Groovin'” album.

The intro was played by Gene, on an acoustic, with no help from hard drives, the band fell into the groove and Felix began singing this Spanish-styled number and I truly started to tingle, just like the line in the song.

Here I am, decades later, but I’m jetted right back to 1967, playing these records over and over again because that’s all we had. No YouTube, no Spotify, no satellite radio and only a handful of TV stations. We were all addicted. It was not like today. The hits were not everything, it was about the bands. And they didn’t come and go in a weekend, but lasted for years. Like the Rascals.

DINO DANELLI

He was Ginger Baker before Ginger Baker. He twirled the sticks around his ears and we tried to replicate it and never could but it was more than artifice, Dino could PLAY!

And on the big screen he tells the story of pursuing his craft in the city, otherwise known as New York. Not only the rockers, but the jazzers too, he loved Miles Davis and Buddy Rich back when you didn’t only like one kind of music.

And he was just as good last night. Sure, he was wearing a headscarf, but he was still lean and active, in touch with the other players, driving the music forward. It was worth the price of the admission just to watch him.

GENE CORNISH

I saw him on 48th Street, where you went to buy musical instruments at a discount. The most famous place was Manny’s, which was completely unlike Guitar Center. There was no warmth, no ability to take your time and play, certainly if you were not gonna buy. Did you want it? They called back to bring it up to the front of the store and you were on the sidewalk with your purchase before you knew what happened.

But it was next door, maybe at Sam Ash, where you walked a few steps down. Gene was there with his hair curling up at the back, standing by his Acoustic amp. That’s what he used. We knew. Every model Fender amp. If you played something else, we paid attention.

And not long after the Rascals broke, it was the era of the guitar hero. And today we’ve got people who can play real fast but sans soul and style. But this was not and is not Gene. A nearly seventy year old is supposed to mug, take attention away from his playing, but Gene delivered.

Yup, just Gene, Dino and Felix, that’s what the band was. With Felix playing the bass notes on the organ pedals. And there wasn’t much more last night, oh, a trio of backup singers, and a bass player and another keyboard player, but most of the old bands go out with a plethora of players, it’s all fake, they’re trying to be who they once were even though we’re all older, it’s creepy. But the Rascals were still a band. You could envision the Barge, a small space overwhelmed with this sound, forcing you to get up and dance.

That’s what we did. Spun our records. And then went to dark spaces where we bumped into each other as live music pounded our ears and bodies, we were left with an exuberant feeling every boomer knows by heart.

I AIN’T GONNA EAT OUT MY HEART ANYMORE

Eddie was the frontman, the cute one, the ones playing the home game wanted to be.

And it all started with this track.

So I’m skiing at Stratton on the last day of the season 1967, it’s the second weekend of April and it dumped nine inches the night before and me and my buddy Keith are glomming through the Maypo and suddenly I hear…

“You ski at Bromley, right?”

I looked up. There were only two people on the chairlift. Girls. Our age.

They couldn’t be talking to us…but there was nobody else on the slope!

So I said YES!

And they said…”We’ll wait at the top!”

So we’re skiing together all weekend, my older sister’s male buds are agog, and while we’re riding up the lift, we’re singing songs to each other.

And the following Christmas, when Steph and I reunited at Bromley, we’re riding the J-bar and about a hundred fifty feet up she looks over her shoulder at me and says, REMEMBER THIS?

And she starts singing “I Ain’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore.”

COLLECTIONS

I’m possessive of my records. Don’t touch ’em, don’t put on any fingerprints.

So I was absolutely mortified to come home after my older sister’s eighth grade graduation party to find the basement strewn with my albums.

But before I could express my displeasure, Jill’s face lit up and she said I DIDN’T KNOW YOU HAD COLLECTIONS!

GOOD LOVIN’

The follow-up to “I Ain’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore” and a sixties staple.

And unlike their children, boomers prefer to sit, but once they heard the count-off, everybody in the joint jumped to their feet and started boogieing.

That’s the power of music.

TIME PEACE

Quite possibly the biggest greatest hits album of the sixties. If a house didn’t have it, the inhabitants already owned every Rascals album. There was nowhere I went where I didn’t find it. Like at Colleen’s house. The first girl I felt up.

You never forget it.

YOU BETTER RUN

Most people think it’s a Pat Benatar record.

What do they say, all the money’s in publishing?

I’VE BEEN LONELY TOO LONG

Sometimes you’re too young to get it, it wasn’t until after my wife moved out that this record truly made sense. A Felix Cavaliere tour-de-force, the horn accent in the verse is so unexpected yet so right the only thing I can compare it to is the harp in the Beach Boys’ “Catch A Wave.”

HOW CAN I BE SURE

How can I be sure
In a world that’s constantly changing
How can I be sure
…I’ll be sure with you

The question of the ages. And it’s not only about love. It’s about all commitments from which you cannot turn back. What are you gonna do?

Put on a record and wait for the answer to reveal itself.

GROOVIN’

The sixties were different. Despite all the protests and assassinations, it was an era of optimism. The Beatles implored us to love one another and we listened. Income inequality was something unheard of, no one we knew was rich, we were all in it together, waiting to get our driver’s license so we could tool around in our dad’s station wagon.

“Groovin'” and Sly’s “Hot Fun In The Summertime.” Listen to them if you want to know what it was like. There was no underbelly of angst, as there is in the recordings of the rappers. There’s just sheer unmitigated joy.

And that’s what we felt, listening to the music emanating from the dashboard speaker with the windows down back before everybody had air conditioning.

FIND SOMEBODY

That’s what we were all trying to do. And until we did, the bands were placeholders, we invested all our hopes, dreams and love in them.

Another album track I felt I’d never hear live again in my lifetime that Gene pulled the stinging guitar part out of like it was still 1968.

PEOPLE GOT TO BE FREE

To practice their religion.

To be gay.

To play their music loud.

To dress how they like.

This is what we were fighting so hard for in the sixties. We believed when we finally got power, the world would be a better place. But in the eighties every baby boomer stopped loving his brother and only worried about himself. And now we’ve got the governor of the Rascals’ home state of New Jersey professing to love the Boss, but unlike his mentor, not putting the people first.

Speaking of the Boss… Credit Steve Van Zandt for making this show happen. He not only reunited the Rascals, he raised money on Kickstarter for production, which is brilliantly executed by Marc Brickman.

But it really comes down to the music.

Once upon a time you needed to know how to both play and sing. The Rascals had this nailed.

But if you wanted to be a superstar, you had to write.

And that’s where Felix Cavaliere comes in. He loved covers, but he implored the band to write its own material. Who knew he and Eddie Brigati could write standards!

That’s what the songs of the Rascals are. Whether sung soulfully by Felix or mellifluously by Eddie, they were truly the soundtrack of our life. Back when you played music for the joy more than the money, when everybody knew the Top Ten, when everybody grew their hair long and let their freak flag fly. The Rascals cast aside their schoolboy outfits and grew beards, wore their street clothes on stage, it was the opposite of today, when as soon as you make it you hire a stylist and a choreographer.

But back then dancing was something we did involuntarily, inspired by the music.

It was wonderful.

What do you do when everybody is watching?

He wrote songs for Gary Lewis, made an album with Marc Benno, but no one knew who Leon Russell was until he went on the road with a conglomeration of thirty-odd people entitled “Mad Dogs and Englishmen,” a legendary tour from which Joe Cocker emerged drunk, broke and depressed, and Leon Russell emerged a star.

How did this happen?

Well, it began with the rapid rise of “Delta Lady,” the exuberant number from Cocker’s second album. Inveterate readers of credits saw it was written by Leon Russell, and were led to the solo album by same released by Shelter Records which was dead as a doornail until this time. And once there, they discovered a sense of humor, and the effort of a man who believed he could will himself to stardom via what was in the grooves. Furthermore, Russell’s take on his Cocker composition had a soulfulness, a groove, absent from the famous rendition. And this just burnished Leon’s image.

But then came the Cocker tour.

Joe was a star. The Woodstock movie had made him one. And now he was on the road with the biggest band anybody in rock and roll had ever seen. And the leader of this conglomeration was…

Leon Russell.

In a top hat and basketball jersey Leon Russell was the star of the show, more than Joe, more than Rita Coolidge, more than anybody else who sang or played. Talk about a scene stealer…

Leon’s reign on top was very brief. The first solo album burned brightly, Helen Reddy even had a hit with a cover of “A Song For You,” the third album was solid, and then the supposed victory lap, 1973’s three album package “Leon Live,” killed his career. It was just too much way too soon. Leon went from cult item to self-satisfied wanker so fast people abandoned him, even if you purchased the package you found it unlistenable. And then Leon went country with “Hank Wilson’s Back” and truly put a stake in his career, and even Elton John was not able to bring him back, because to sustain people must like you, and when it comes to Leon Russell they no longer do.

Now it wasn’t only Cocker, when the Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour finished, Leon went on to be a key element of the Concert for Bangladesh, he went from zero to hero in a year, and we were all waiting for his second album, now credited to the group “Leon Russell and the Shelter People.”

A disappointment it was.

I’m not saying it was bad. But Al Kooper and his brethren did a better cover of Dylan’s “It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry,” and did we really need a cover of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” in the seventies, no less? And “Crystal Closet Queen” was good, just not as good as “Pisces Apple Lady” on the previous LP, ditto “Sweet Emily” and “Home Sweet Oklahoma.”

But opening up the album was a veritable killer that you could not help but play again and again and again.

“Stranger In A Strange Land.”

Oh, the title was a rip-off of the famous science fiction novel.

But…

You’d expect Russell to start with another in-your-face number like “Delta Lady,” or something slow, like “A Song For You,” but “Stranger In A Strange Land” was different. It was an artist climbing up his own personal mountain and delivering something unexpected and better, different.

The track starts slowly, with an infectious piano figure which leads to Leon exclaiming and then locking into a swampy groove instantly. And as the track soldiers on it keeps adding elements and becoming more powerful, especially during the chorus, when there are so many backup singers you believe everybody within ten blocks of the studio is singing.

And after some ethereal sounds, Leon lays back into the verse, the band’s in full swing and so are you, the listener. The track is hypnotic, everything, including the kitchen sink comes in, but it’s not too much, it’s a joyful experience that enraptures you, draws you in and has you testifying yourself.

And that’s what Leon ultimately does, testify…

Well I don’t exactly know what’s going on in the world today
Don’t know what there is to say
About the way the people are treating each other
Not like brothers
Leaders take us far away
From ecology
With mythology
And astrology has got some words to say about the way we live today
Why can’t we learn to love each other
It’s time to turn a new face
To the whole world wide human race
Stop the money chase
Lay back
Relax
Get back on the human track
Stop racing toward oblivion
Oh such a sad sad state we’re in
And that’s a thing
Do you recognize the bells of truth when you hear them ring
Won’t you stop and listen to the children sing
Won’t you sing it children
Won’t you come on and sing it children

He’s a stranger in a strange land
Just a stranger in a strange land
He’s a stranger in a strange land
Just a stranger in a strange land

He’s almost rapping!

It’s 1971. We’ve seen the war, we’ve seen Richard Nixon get elected, we’re out of gas and disillusioned and the only ones with insight are our heroes, the musicians. Leon Russell’s saying it’s all right, I get you, I understand you, we can move on, together.

“Stranger In A Strange Land” is almost an anthem. Not a Bon Jovi track where everybody’s perfectly coiffed and imploring you to look at them, but a record you can rally around, that makes you feel better without requiring you to leave your mind at the gate.

That’s how good Leon Russell was, that’s how powerful “Stranger In A Strange Land” was and still is. You could never burn out on it, it was not quite like anything else but it was just perfect the way it was. Leon upped his game. And we responded. Suddenly, Leon Russell was a first tier superstar.

Rhinofy-Stranger In A Strange Land

The weather changed in a day.

Tuesday I was adjusting the air conditioning. Wednesday I had to turn on the heat.

I’m not sure I could live on the east coast again. There’s so much I miss, the intellectual curiosity, the camaraderie, but those gray days…after living in SoCal so long I don’t think I could tolerate them.

Once upon a time I knew no better. Unlike today, in the sixties and seventies we didn’t board a plane on a whim. Jet-setters were rich and famous, and you didn’t fire up your browser to plot your trip, but had to call your travel agent, you barely dreamed about going anywhere. You were stuck where you grew up.

And I grew up in Connecticut. Not far from Long Island Sound. Amidst the greenery and the rolling hills only an hour from the excitement of New York City, back when the metropolis was still scary, when you had to be aware at all times, like in Bogota.

And I’d wake up in the dark and walk down to the bus stop and the weather was always the same, gray.

I went to college in Vermont, where it appeared the sky was made of slate. A blue sky day was like Christmas, everybody jumped for joy.

But the big day at college was the advent of spring. It would be warm and sunny towards the end of April, hovering in the high fifties, maybe squeaking into the sixties, and you’d put on your shorts and go swimming. Jumping into the quarry was like immersing yourself in ice cubes, but not only was it invigorating, but inspiring, you’d made it through another winter, the good weather was coming.

And in Vermont, fall is short. It’s warm and then it gets cold and by Halloween it’s bitter at night and November is positively miserable, with that rain that could almost be snow that chills you to the bone.

It rarely rains in Southern California. But when it does, it either mists or pours.

Yesterday it did both.

It saw it Monday on the widget, that’s where I get my weather, no one turns on the TV to get the prediction anymore. I was shocked, it was positively summer, unlike the east coast September is the hottest month of the year, oftentimes eking into October, when the Santa Ana winds rage and fan the flames of brush fires.

But when I woke up yesterday, it was gray, precipitation was descending, I refused to put on long pants, but I did need a fleece vest.

And later in the day I was forced to turn on the heat in my house. I hadn’t had time to clean the vents, the dust swirled in an acrid smell. It always happens sometime in October, but usually when the days are in double digits.

And then I had to remember how to put on the heat in the car. I couldn’t have the sunroof open. It was snowing in Mammoth and the distant ski season suddenly seemed imminent.

The downhill slide had begun, from hot to cold, from beach to slope.

And I love the winter. In the old days, we’d play in the snow, come inside for hot chocolate and play board games. Did you know Jimi Hendrix was a whiz at Risk? I don’t think they even sell that game in L.A., the weather’s never bad enough to finish it. But we’d play it all night in college, I remember those days.

But they’re fading in the rearview mirror. Occasionally I go on the alumni site and not only can I no longer put a face to the names, I can’t recognize the names either.

As for high school, it’s even worse.

So Congress dilly-dallies with the budget and debt ceiling yet nature does not get the memo, it keeps plowing on.

Goodbye to the long days. Hello to depression.

But I’m not gonna stop wearing my shorts for another month, I’m holding on to the warm weather, in my mind if nowhere else.