“H” Is For Home. “H” Is For Harlem.

The Robinsons—Sara And Evan, Came To Town Ten Days Ago.
Dinner, Drinks And Hours Of Conversation Later In Harlem With Jen, We All Left.
But My Soul Remained—As It Always Does.

What is my earliest memory of this place, Harlem?
Where I grew up, and The Big Fella grew up?
No, we didn't “meet cute” young, like old friends do in the movies..
I never met The Big Fella until two-thousand-and five.
But he was a child of Harlem, just as surely as I was.
Me: West Side. Him? East Side.
A hundred hills, cobblestones, and brick-strewn yards between us.

My first memory is of a brick-strewn yard—
And an angry dog
Who chased my just-stopped-being-bow-legged ass through it.
Me stumbling and falling in that flesh-tearing expanse of nothing
But sharp and rough.
My knee gouting blood as I hoarsely screamed “Daddy! Daddy!”...
And him coming from the other side of the car—
A peach and white Rambler.
“Oh Lord. Honey! Put some iodine in a towel and throw it down!”
He yelled up to the fourth floor.
“I can't bring him all the way back up those steps now!”
“We got someplace to be!”
That's the first memory.
Next is Daddy-done haircuts with a Salem dangling
cooly from his mouth as Sam Cooke's “Live At The Copa!” blared
From the little mono record player on the table.
“Sun, moon and stars belong to everyone...
The best things in life are freeeee...”
There was the Piggly Wiggly on the corner
Which I was told never to go past...
But who wanted to—as their CreamSicles™
Were perfect on a hot summer's day.

Nights on the fire escape, beating the heat in the house,
Sprawled next to Mama on a plush blanket.
Listening to The Fifth Dimension on 77 WABC...
“Would you like to ride in my beautiful balloon...”
Someone tosses play money off a rooftop across the street,
And in the wild scrum of poor folks
In the street below, one doesn't get up,
As a sickly pool of night's burgundy mercury
Expands under his still body in the middle of 115th Sreet.

It's 1968 now, and every other week as the spring smears into summer,
Something's happening.
There and here. What's going on isn't exactly clear.
Oh Lord...Who got shot now? Plumes of desperation-fueled smoke rise
From the courtyards nearby and hang
Like dull, ugly streamers in the air—topped off with a grey haze
Just above the tenement rooftops...
For what seems like months.
One night, I can hear windows breaking and shrieks. I still don't know
What the cause of it was, but I remember looking out from the fire escape...
And a carting truck hauling garbage from in front of a store.
Panicky driver, I guess. Hit reverse instead of drive
And backed into the facade
Of the liquor store next to Deacon Jones Fish & Chips.
Caved in the front and then
Fearfully peeled away.
And the angry people in the street staring providence
In its spirits-flushed face...
As they carried off
Case after wooden, excelsiored case of “The Good Shit”.
And not the bottom shelf rotgut.

Ecstasy and agony all in one minute.
Saw my first pair of breasts on a Lenox Avenue corner.
As a woman ran east on 116th. Mocha. Beautiful. Shirtless and wild-eyed.
She looked like a crazed “Thelma” from “Good Times”
Flashing by in her bell-bottomed jeans
And little else.
And then I saw her back—bubbling like an egg cracked in a hot skillet?
A heroin dealer had thrown lye on her
For welshing on a poppy-swollen IOU.
The hot dog man tackled her before she ran into traffic on Lenox,
Dumping ice
From his soda bucket onto her boiling back.
And then her nerves-ablaze scream.
Me thinking “What kind of pain must that be?”

Cousin “W” and his wife “J” were worse off. The heroin killed them both.
Cuz—a year out of Vietnam, and poor, desperate “J”
Escaping the agony of his death a mere year later.
Heroin Alley. West 115th Street. My block.
Watched a junkie nod out for twenty minutes straight—
Pardon the pun.
Swimming, Undulating like a twisted beam of light on an oscilloscope.
He could NOT fall. But my God, he could drool. A strand five feet long,
From a drooped mouth mouth to the ground.
Viscous. Scary.
Made up my mind right there, that I would not touch drugs, and I have not,
Thank you for that, rubber-bodied junkie-man.

The apartment was too small and there were too many of us.
Six kids. Two adults.
And one frighteningly huge rat....so big he should have been a dependent.
Chewed through a wall and looked at me like I was the Goddamned visitor.
Daddy caught the beast in the kitchen one day and crime-scened the room
With a well-swung dinette chair.
And with that, we were out of Harlem in two weeks.

But we came back every week.
Daddy to do business, and to get the things
That Queens didn't have.
Things that we still loved.
Deacon Jones Fish n' Chips, Steak n' Takes
And the frosty-cold watermelon slices
From the brother's shack over on 129th and Seventh.
Barricini and Breyers ice cream from Daitch Shopwell on 116th.
Toys from Darling Toys down St. Nicholas Avenue.
Tools and conversation at Moskeyee Hardware on Lenox proper.
To see The Delfonics at The Rockland Palace or the 369th Armory
A ways up and west...
“Ready or not, here I come...you can't hiiiiiiide...”

I stayed in school in Harlem, and got the school bus there every day.
A cop bit the big one nearby and Five-O raided the school
Busting up everything—looking for the “perp”.
Snuck in to see Pam Grier flicks
At The Loews Victotria down from the Apollo.
My God. Pam Grier!
And when I would drift towards getting “out of pocket”,
Daddy would take me with him
Where he rolled.
With his friends. Grown-ass men.
And they'd debate everything, Sports. News.
Politics—national and international.
There I'd be—eight, nine, ten years old—In a circle of men in their thirties,
Forties, and Ffties, hashing through the issues of the day.
On the steps of a storefront in West Harlem.
And one day I got off a good one,
Straightening out a fella's conflating Kenya's Kwame Nkrumah
With the Congo's Patrice Lumumba.
A silence fell, and the owner of the store said to the mistaken man,
While slapping me on the back...
“You need to go get the professor a bottle of Yoo-Hoo, brother!”
And a gale of laughter rose from all.

It was a place of wide sidewalks.
Maybe the widest sidewalks in all of Manhattan.
You could play box-ball three abreast,
Two sets of three kids facing each other, easy.
Lots of space to walk,
And maybe stop to look down the wide-open avenues downtown.
Lots of space too for a man to set up a rostrum, or a step-ladder,
Or an empty plaster bucket
To stand at a corner and speak, preach, break it down, run it down,
Expose while being verbose, for all to hear.
Ellison wrote on it, I saw it happen. On 110th, 125th and 135th—
Which was the official “Speaker's Corner”.
You couldn't go to 135th and run the jackleg game. You had to have skills.
Malcolm X was the “Don” of Speaker's Corner.
I was too little to remember seeing him there,
But my Daddy and Mama did—
And they noted that no one was better, save for maybe...
Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
When he would descend from the mountains of the floor of the House...
Or the pulpit at Abyssinnian Baptist.
Harlem's streets—the ultimate open-air/open mic/open forum.
Long gone now.

I moved back as an adult.
To Columbia U's grabbing all available land west of Seventh
And north of 110th.
Morningside Heights was the name for the expanding, new neighborhood
That was a few small blocks in my youth.
I was on W. 137th, past the geological dip the West Side takes at 125th...
Uptown's bottom falling out as the subway becomes an El for a hot minute.
Took an icy spill down the steep, steep hill of 137th one winter's morn,
Spinning nearly half a block on my back like a down-clad, upended turtle—
Til' I grabbed a parking signpost twenty feet from the intersection. Whew!

Saw a rat one night on the walk home from the subway.
Saw him cornered against two garbage cans by a young, overconfident cat,
Who wailed and thrashed when Mickey suddenly pounced on his head,
Biting ears, and neck and all the shit a cat never expected a rat would attack.
That cat screeched and bumped the cans...and I couldn't watch anymore.
Hunter is hunted. Man bites dog. Rat whips cat.
Maybe kills him from the sound of things.

Moved away, and came back again.
165th opposite the Audubon Ballroom where Malcolm X preached his last,
And breathed his last.
Washington Heights some call it.
Still all Harlem to me before you get to the bridge.
Caught Robin Givens in the Wendy's on the corner,
Ragging the counterpeople
As she walked out with her Mama
And two huge bags of conditioning-killing grub
For Iron Mike, laid up a block away at Columbia Pres Hospital
After wrecking his whip 'cross the river in Jersey.
Caught a cop beating the shit out of a dealer
At the dark end of the 168th St. Station Mezzanine.
Ducked behind a thick, riveted pillar.
Witnesses get billy-clubs In the mouth too, you know.
Cop grabbed a wad of bills thick enough to choke Godzilla off the dude,
And told him to walk away.
Then for good measure as homeboy did,
He cracked him with the side of his piece—back of the head,
Behind the ear, as dude tried to tough it out, but lost his equilibrium
And fell in sections it seemed.
“Please don't come back this way...” my heart beat out in morse code.
Five-O didn't, unlocking an iron gate at that darkened end
And disappearing Into the night. Like a thief. Man!

Came out of the subway one night at 155th to stop at Wilson's for take-out...
Straight-up stumbled into a prime-time drug bust to end 'em all.
Helicopter hovering, shining lights into fourth floor apartments
In the middle of Amsterdam Avenue.
Po-po buses lined up on the street with news trucks, and behind that?
About a hundred dudes lined up against the building fronts themselves.
Arm to arm like sneakered, track-suited paper dolls.
Headed downtown on a Friday night for a weekend
Of rotten bologna sandwiches,
And holding pens
That smelled of piss in the big hoosegow “downtown”.
Had to play it cool, and not run back in the subway...
Didn't wanna be pegged as a man runnin' away from somethin'.
I hate rotten bologna sandwiches, and pissy-smelling jail cells.
So, I chilled and walked all calm and shit, into the cuchifrito store,
Bought a bag
To give myself purpose to be in the vicinity,
Got my change and went back into the subway all natural-like.
“Enjoy!” I said to the homeless guy near the gate,
As I tossed him the greasy bag.
That was my cover. “Wow!” he said. “Thanks, brother!”

“Might wanna eat those down here, man.” I said
As he shuffled towards the steps.
“Five-O's vampin' hard upstairs.”
“Ohhhhhhhhh...”

Moved away and came back one last time.
Lived with a Diva. A real, live one. Sang opera for a living.
Lived in a building full of Black opera singers. Men and women.
Comin' up Madison Avenue, cross 125th to the sounds of operatic
Vocal warm-ups echoing
Off the buildings at night.
“Ne-nay-nah-no-nu...Neeeeee!”
Then a piano note to set the next octave and again—higher this time...
“Ne-nay-nah-no-nu...Neeeeee!”
Two Baritones, a Tenor and a Mezzo.
Not downtown.
But in Harlem. Living. Loving. Singing 'round the corner,
And down a block from Sylvia's.
“Ne-nay-nah-no-nu...Neeeeee!”
And in between the two? Mt, Moriah Baptist Church
Where the choir's band could break it down
Like the Stax studio rippers.
Not just Sunday—but even on Thursday night rehearsal
When you walked on by.
Oh, the old Renaissance ghosts must've smiled every time they heard it.
In our Harlem.

Where Daddy sang at the Apollo...
As did James, and Marvin, and Dinah, and Ella
And every first-name-only needed star
To light the indigo firmament.
It's where Castro booked rooms
At the Theresa Hotel instead of The Waldorf
When he came to town.
“The Lindy” was born here, and this was where Chick Webb's band
Vamped the swingin' shit
Out of Benny Goodman's crew in a play-off.
Made Gene Krupa sweat through shirts
Hangin' in his closet downtown, it was so damn bad.
The seat of power of the GREATEST politician
African Americans have ever known,
And who did more for poor folk in general than anybody then or since...
The Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Jr,

High-art central for Black folks in the whole wide world in the twenties.
Dancers, poets, writers, musicians, painters and historians.
Langston on E. 127th—middle of the block.
The blowin' and box-bustin' hepcats
In the high ceiling-ed palaces up on Sugar Hill.
Tito Puente and crew on the Spanish East end.
Near La Marqueta again—stretching for blocks
Under the old ConRail tracks.
Guayabera shirts and lacy communion dresses hanging by the dozens
In front of a hundred teeny, tiny stores.
Saltfish, Cod. Bacalao. The aroma wafting from the open stalls.
The “piragua” man at the corner of 116th & Park...
Shaving ice into a cup and pouring cold, cold sweet syrup
Over a blazing summer day.

Maybe twenty different hills that crest
With a hidden world below on the other side.
St. Nick Park near Convent Avenue
Where a craggy baby mountain busts the neighborhood in two.
Go to go down and around it to get to the other side, baby.
Manhattan Valley, and Coogan's Bluff where Willie Mays
Was an orange and black clad undertaker in center field...
Where sure extra base hits went to die as mere fly balls.
The Polo Grounds is gone now. Along with Small's Paradise.
The old Rockand and The Audubon—where I climbed a dumpster
And filched an “A” off the marquee
When I feared it's total destruction.
Piggly Wiggly's but a memory and Deacon Jones
Is maybe someone at a church
These days, but the fish n' chips are gone.
My building on W. 115th is history too.
New projects or some such complex sits there.
Steak n' Take, The Salaam and most of La Marqueta too.
The shell of Peter's Hardware, next to Daddy's old restaurant,
There for forty years.
Now becoming something else.
All the old “Bucket o' Bloods” are gone, just about.
Nikki's. The Seaman's Net.
At least they landmarked The Lenox Lounge.
And the infamous “Zebra Room” in back
Where the real Players hung tough.

There's a Starbucks on the corner of 125 and Lenox.
Magic Johnson owns it.
Big Wilt's (Of 20,000 conquest's fame) Small's Paradise it ain't.
But you can sit and nibble.
There's an H&M on the main drag.
A Movieplex nabs the crowds that walk past
The now-shuttered, Pam Grier-less Loews.
The Apollo marquee is computer controlled, now. Big-ass LCD.
I stood atop that marquee one Sunday night
With folks as the ladder-man changed
The coming attractions by hanging huge enameled letters.
Too many “M's” in the copy and you'd see a “W” turned upside down
And you had to laugh.
Now, somebody on a computer taps in words,
Hammers “Enter”, and poof!
Folks on the street can see it. “Blink!” “Swoosh!” “Blink!”
The “American Gangsters”
Have been replaced by the “American Hipsters”.
Scruffy Abercrombie and Fitchies dragging themselves
Through the Lenox and 125th
Negro Black
African American streets
Looking for the perfect...Macaroni and Cheese these days.

But it's still Harlem. My Harlem. Steve's Harlem.
Jen and Sara and Evan and me rode up last weekend.
Grubbed hard at Sylvia's.
Cornbread and Beef Ribs and Chicken Livers.
Banana Pudding and Red Velvet Cake.
Then, down the block to The Lenox Lounge for drinks.
Still an Art Deco wonder. Tall half-obliqued sconces
And plush booths.
The long bar and buffed walnut and steel bathroom doors.
A Jr. Walker lookalike toting his sax in the back
To blow the stripes off the walls in the Zebra Room.
Place still looks like Bumpy Johnson
Could walk in any minute
In ankle-length camel hair —
And a coterie of gabardined and spats-di-fed button-men
Flanking him.
But instead, a large group of Japanese tourists file in.
Agog at this bit of Old Harlem tucked into the rapidly expanding “new”.
And we see Sylvia herself—of the restaurant's fame.
Near the parking lot / cutaway
She bought between the restaurant proper and its annex fifty feet away.
“Hey Ms. Woods” I say,
As she seems a little bit befuddled while looking around.
“You looking for your ride?”

“Oh...yes.” she sighs.
“But I don't know where my daughter is with the car.”
The night air has the lightest breeze on it, and yellow cabs abound.(!) (!)
We bid Sylvia adieu and walk down Lenox a little ways.
I look back and see her again.
A smallish woman In the middle of the impossibly wide sidewalks
I can never forget.
My Harlem. The big fella's Harlem.
Everybody's Harlem now, it seems.

Cabs are hopped. Jen's to points east. The rest of us back downtown.
I roll the window down and let its air hit me. Harlem's.
I smile for a second.
And know I'll be back sooner than I even think.
Because you know what?
I'm never really ever gone.

There's more...

Why I Write

My Customized Red “Mogul” Apple PowerBook—Steve Wanted To Bop Me In The Head For This Thing...

I often wonder when you, the reader opt to point your web browser Group News Blog-ward, what goes through your mind. What are you expecting to find? It's a hard thing to consider as a contributor here, so I often find myself in those moments when I'm not writing clicking my way here just to check up on things, you know? Not so much monitoring, but mainly to live outside of my skin as a writer here and try to see the place as you see it.

I work hard to put myself in your shoes as a reader and outsider, kind of in the DeToqueville mode. Were I the stranger in a strange land coming here, what would go through my mind?

And when I do that, the question that keeps rushing to the forefront is this one...

Why do they do it?

Why do they write this stuff?

Why do they write?

It's the question I find myself asking as I stumble about Blogtopia as areader and not a writer. Not so much the “why” about agendas, but more to the point, “What is it about 'the word' that drives them to expend the effort to express themselves?”. I understand that leaves out the shills and de-facto party operatives like an Instapundit or PowerLine, who expend little or no effort to educate or engage. These are “bots”. Unthinking advocates for the usual crimson-necked, stogie-chomping, snickering masters who paragraph re-arrange or dumb-down to 10 word posts official GOP talking points. It also leaves out those for whom raw hatred is the “Good N' Plenty” candy that makes their evil train go—The Little Green Footballs and Malkins of the dark side of our world.

No. I'm talking about places like this one. We make it a point NOT to do what those folks do. Nobody's bought and paid for 'round here, and there is no “blast fax” we consult for the “talk of the day”.

Why do we write?

It's a damned good question to be honest.

When I first discovered “blogs” per se in late 2003 / early 2004 I came across a few good ones, and a lot...and I mean A LOT of awful ones. The bad ones colored my view unfortunately and I assumed the driving force behind the phenomenon was mainly overweening ego. But then I found myself falling in love with the good ones I'd unearthed via my web-skipping and it became evident to me that there was something more here. Something drove folks to so boldly speak. And then I started commenting at these blogs every now and then—much the way I did in my earlier web incarnations on sports message boards, and in so doing, something struck me like a bolt from the blue. That lightning strike hit while reading two blogs in particular—Tony Pierce's Busblog, and Steve Gilliard's News Blog.

They were writers of the highest order, and they were fully exploiting the new arena—the blogoverse—as a means to get their words out there. I was a writer too, and reading their work—particularly Steve's—it restored something in me. Something that had been dying a slow death for several years. When you work as a professional writer, there is the elation of the word firing in your mind, that trigger of the nervous system down the arm to the pen or keyboard and then the thing in black letters on a white background before you, making perfect sense and expressing your feelings explicitly. And then...there is the sick, storm cloud colored heartbreak of knowing the pitfalls of getting your creations out there for the world to see. The reality of writing as we knew it up until the web democratized things....could beat your soul into the concrete like a hot nail through butter. I would not be exaggerating to say that many writers like myself were in a state of disillusionment and in many cases—outright depression until this world opened up.

The News Blog did that for me. I can truly say that it inspired me. Energized me. I'll thank Steve for that till my dying day. The daily checking in to see what he'd written about—and how—was a thrill for me, and the ability to join the conversation in comments made my heart leap. I could expand, and explain. Compare and contrast. Snappily snark or be heartfelt. In real-time and reach people. You have to understand what a rush that can be—to reach people with the word. But then, words had always reached out to me for as long as I could remember.

I fell in love with writing as a small child. My father taking me to the park every day as he convalesced from ulcer surgery—Mount Morris Park in Harlem to be precise, and reading The New York Times to me. I was two years old. I learned to read about a year later. It wasn't long after that when I entered school—just before my fourth birthday, and my father's implanting of that love for reading grew in me to where by the time I was five and half, I was familiar with journalists like R.W. Apple and Tom Wicker. I was a news addict by that time as well, what with my dad's having that addiction too. Cronkite, Huntley, Brinkley, and my then personal favorite, CBS' essayist / editorialist Eric Sevareid.

I read everything I could get my hands on. Newspapers. Dictionaries. Every magazine i could find. Look, Life, Ebony, Jet, Time. I read books on history supplied by a family friend who worked for Time-Life. Ancient Egypt. India. Rome. World War 2. 18th Century America. Then on to science. Diseases. Biology. Physics. I remember a book on jet engines that I read and re-read at least ten times trying to understand how those massive rockets Walter Cronkite was describing with a catch in his voice on lift-off managed to get off the ground. I read Mama's copies of Vogue and Bazaar (It was in an issue of Bazaar where I learned who Germaine Greer was). And when there were no new books or magazines or papers...I read food cartons.

“BHA & BHT added to preserve freshness.”

“Products may have settled somewhat during shipping.”

“Serving Suggestion”.

Xanthan Gum, Lecithin, and the oh-so-tasty sounding Whey Solids.

I remember the day I got my first library card at the Langston Hughes Library in Corona, Queens, and I remember what my first two books were that I checked out. J.A. Rogers 100 Amazing Facts About The Negro, and the two-Sci-Fi books-in-one “When Worlds Collide” and “After Worlds Collide” by Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer.

I was seven years old.

A thing happens when you read all that stuff. It starts to stick in your head. The words themselves, and oddly—the styles they're used in. It colors your every day vocabulary. I called one kid's stating that Marvel Comics' Hawkeye could somehow fight off the Hulk “ludicrous” in an argument. I'd picked the word up from a NY Times Editorial on the Ohio National Guard's excuses for their deeds in the Kent State massacre, and I grabbed the word infinitesimal from a “Dr. Strange” comic describing his journey through a mystic Microvese. So, see? You can learn from comic books!

Yes, I fell in love with words. Hard and true.

And what I found before long through all of that reading was that I could use those words I'd absorbed. I could use them any way I wanted. i could mimic a news story, or pen my own “Sevareid”-style editorial. I could even ape Shakespeare with some effort. (Those damned pronouns!) And I could take all of those styles and run 'em through the way I felt about things, and combine 'em into one person's style. Namely, my own. I found that through repetitive watching and now having a writerly ear and brain, I had also inadvertently broken the code of writing for television. You watch every first-run episode of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” from episode one through one sixty-eight as a diagnosed autodidactic, polymathic sponge and there's no way something doesn't rub off on you.

It wasn't long after that when I grasped that I could sort of do this stuff that I realized that beyond the fun aspect of messing about with words that they had power. With these strings of letters into sentences, and sentences into paragraphs, and paragraphs into chapters, books, scripts, articles, poems, songs, haikus and sonnets, I could do just about anything. I filled blank books with stories and reportage of my own making. I could, with the use of a bit of brain-power, create worlds of my own making, and look at the world I lived in and analyze it openly so that I, and maybe others could better understand it.

Is there anything in the world more fun than that?

Flash forward thirty years.

College has gone by, and more than a few years plying that “fun” craft as a livelihood in radio, television and theatre. I'd hit an ebb. A low point. The “fun” was draining out of the practice. Oh yes, I could still do it—but not with the zip and vigor I once did.

And then I stumble onto Steve's News Blog.

You may find this hard to believe, but within three weeks of my reading Steve, I knew he was an African American. How? As Louis Armstrong once said to a questioner asking “What is Jazz?”, “If you've gotta ask, you'll never know.” Here was a kindred spirit, a fellow child of Harlem who'd managed to do it.The wit. The bold, informative style. Passion. Professionalism. An almost explosive penchant for justice. Mix in an ability to tie in all of the disciplines he'd acquired into that blog of his. And when I started commenting there, I found that I could do the same thing. What a release that was! In time, a few of my comments were brought up onto the front page, and I wrote frequently enough to where a few people asked to see more. “You should get a blog of your own!”

But I didn't have the time. To write as frequently as Steve did or as well as often, or to do the management things involved in running a blog. So kept up commenting.

And then the big guy got sick last year.

Me, Jen, Jesse, Hubris, Jim, Sara and a host of wonderful folks stepped into the breech to do the best we could in Steve's absence—see-sawing emotionally all the while as his health rose and ebbed. Until he was truly, and sadly gone.

I don't think I can tell you the depth of my despair that Saturday morning when I read the e-mail noting his passing. I ached for the loss of the man. And in days, I ached for the loss of his work.. Most mornings, I'd boot the Mac up and had The News Blog as my home page. I couldn't bear looking at it in that black backdropped post-passing version. Instead, I went back to old e-mails he'd sent me, particularly one around Christmas that still moves me. In it he thanked me for my commentary on his blog, and complimented me on the quality of them as well. He was effusive and heartfelt—something a lot of folks didn't grasp he could be if they'd only read the blog. I missed him even more and basically weaned myself away from the blogoverse (beyond brief sympathy messages in a couple of spots.) and mourned. His funeral came, and I met his family, and Markos, Jane Hamsher, Lindsay at Majikthise, Zuzu, Maha and Liza at CultureKitchen (a place you really should visit often). We eulogized, we talked and we cried. Then cried some more.

And shortly after that, a few of us began talking and figured we'd try to keep a bit of Steve's reader community together...by doing on a permanent basis what we'd been doing since he'd fallen ill in February. A name was chosen, some art created, the techier minds between us built the powerful frame on which the writers would hang the muscle and sinew of writing on, and then, some thirty days later...The Group News Blog was born.

It's been a blur since then, but I will tell you this: Loss is a remarkable thing. I readily admit to the fact that I am an abysmal handler of loss of people I care about. I am hopelessly immature about it. It devastates me...and I know from whence that comes.

When I was eight years old, my best friend “E.” and I were hanging around my dad's restaurant playing after school. It was a Wednesday afternoon, sunny and bright. As my dad ran the place, there were perks, like knowing the secret switch on the jukebox to get free plays. “E” loved Charles Wright and the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band's jam “Express Yourself” and I played it for him maybe seven times in a row until I got a dirty look from Daddy's No. 1 waitress that said “Enough.” “E” and I laughed about that. Laughed long and hard that day. He left a little while later with his dad...and that was the last time I saw him alive.

He fell early that evening in the driveway at his dad's meat-packing plant and broke his arm. He just broke his arm. The next day, he went in to have the break reset. He was given anesthesia and evidently got too much of it (This was the early seventies and anesthesiology was nowhere near the science that it is now), and lapsed into a coma which he never awoke from. “E” died that Sunday morning and I. Just. Could. Not. Understand. It.

We were playing the hell out of a jukebox. Firing straws weighted with paper clips into the air—our own ghetto-ass Apollo rockets, and wolfing down cookies fresh off the racked sheets in the restaurant's basement bakery. And now, he was gone.

I went to “E's” funeral the following Wednesday along with a couple hundred classmates. This was before grief counselors, so there was no real prep for what we would see...which was an amazingly placid “E”, looking to all the world as if he were merely asleep. I filed past his casket and stopped for a long while staring at my seemingly somnambulant friend, hoping he would maybe wink, or sneeze—anything that would give me proof of life. Of course, he didn't. And I went home that day and I don't think I spoke to anyone until I was ready for bed and my mother asked me if I'd laid my clothes out for the next day's school. Oh, they tried to talk to me, but...there was nothing I could say.

My friend who I truly loved...was gone and I would never be able to speak to him again.

The finality of that has scarred me ever since. I've lost my father, the man I respected more than anyone on God's green earth when I was twenty-eight years old and a father myself. And while I did not totally, and externally break down for the sake of my family—inside, I was a basket case. I'm in tears writing this about it. Friends, other relatives, a woman I nearly married—all of them gone , and me a wreck every time. I am a Goddamned baby when it comes to loss, here a a few years shy of a half-century's living.

Steve's loss was devastating, too. Because I felt such a bond with him through all the zeroes and ones, and the electrons and bits of cyber this and that. He and I barely had a chance to meet each other, but thank you God, we did, and I'm so glad I got to see him healthy and hearty. I showed him my crazy red “Mogul” custom Mac PowerBook, which he joked about bopping me over the head and filching from me. But our main bond is through the words we shared, tossing them up onto the blank canvas of the blog's front page and the little Haloscan windows. He challenged me mentally every day, and he also challenged my sense of moral justice too with his taking up verbal arms against those who so thoroughly deserved it. But again, he was now gone.

This group of us decided to do something, though. Not necessarily a continuance of “The News Blog”, but a step into a new future for those of us who loved what that place was. And so it began. I didn't really have the time for it that I thought I should have to get anywhere near to the level of or quantity of work Steve was doing back in the day, but I plodded along. Consuming news, and keeping an eye and ear out in the world as I always have, but now with the mindset of bringing that world to readers in an entertaining and informative written form.

It was impossible. Un-doable. Scary. A nightmare. And then...

It wasn't so much.

I couldn't come close to what Steve was doing, but I could at least, even if half-assedly blog a little. That terribly daunting thing I had no time for and not enough focus to devote to, I found that I somehow did. I could sort of do this thing. And Steve's loss is what in effect enabled me to discover that. Oh, I'd seriously considered doing it while he was still with us, and I remember all the well-meaning calls to do my own thing and get the hell out of the comments section. I even nabbed a couple of blog names via Blogger for “that day I would do the damn thing”. But I never did, until Steve got sick and eventually left us.

Loss is a remarkable thing.

For the first time in my life, instead of a loss addling me for an eternity, it was moving me to take a positive action and move forward. That something, is creating what I create here at Group News Blog. And the person I thank for being able to do it, after reading him for the years I did is Steve Gilliard. I soaked it up. From “I'm A Fighting Liberal”, to his historical pieces that described the war in Iraq using the past as prologue and pattern, to his take-no-prisoners local reportage on things like the NY transit strike. He taught me and he didn't even know it. I called myself simply enjoying reading his stuff and I didn't even know I was learning. But learn I did, and what I learned is manifested here today. God-almighty I miss the hell out of him (What he would do with Saturday's Harriet Christian tape—“Harriet Christian's Soldiers” perhaps?) every day, while sometimes checking back to the old mint and buff version of The News Blog first thing in the morning some melancholy mornings, but I'll be damned if his passing on hasn't finally matured me a bit in terms of dealing with loss. There are other people who've moved on whose places I'd gladly switch with him so we could still have him around every day doing his Steve-a-licious thang, but I can't. Fate is what it is. Leave it to Steve to book on up to that great pitch in the sky and in his passing, end up make me a better person. But there's that bugaboo again that haunts me. I can't talk to my friend any more. I can't tell him...“Thank you.”

Well...I can actually. By doing what I do here as many days as I can. This place has unlocked in me a lot of long-blocked potential. I can write every day on politics, sports, food, history, film, television or any damn thing I like that's affecting somebody out here in the world. I can be funny or profane. Mean or caring. Professorial or ghetto-ass grimy. I can do videos, or grind out short scripts, and oh yes...those fun and funky photoshops that accompany the pieces, or are sometimes the pieces themselves. The main thing is to create, dammit. Create and change. Be an artist and be involved—which absolutely played to my family's sense of activism to make the world a bit better. I write here for all these reasons, and these two mentioned before mainly:

“To create a better world, and to better understand the one in which we live

I do it for you. I do it for me. I do it because I'm the kid who read The Times at four, loved Eric Sevareid and Jimmy Breslin at seven, and thrilled when I found out what infinitesimal meant in the dictionary. I do it because I came to love it and because I love the guy who got me to learn to love it all over again—Steve Gilliard.

And I love this country and this world too damn much to not do the things I do relatively well that could possibly make it better.

Thank you, Steve. For bringing me here. For bringing us all here...and kicking us in the ass to do something we never thought we could. That's what truly living life life is all about, isn't it?

There's more...

The White Night Riot, 21 May 1979, and Lesbians Against Police Violence

(Flyer created and distributed by Lesbians Against Police Violence and The Stonewall Coalition [mixed-gender lesbian/gay organization allied with LAPV] in Summer 1979 in the aftermath of the White Night Riots; Maggie is pretty sure the graphic was drawn by Emily Siegel.)

Today is the 29th Anniversary of the
Most Important Lesbian and Gay Riot Ever

My close friend Maggie Jochild (and good friend of GNB) was there.

The police estimate was there were at least 3,000 lesbian and gays in the rioting. As we all know, police estimates traditionally undercount actual numbers.

The numbers were HUGE.

The rally was lesbian led, Maggie being one of the leaders. The eruption into violence was led by white gay men, Harvey Milk having been their pioneer.

Yet most of those injured were women and or people of color.

The riot began after a jury returned only a verdict of manslaughter in the trial of Dan White (thus the White Night Riot) whose defense team originated the infamous “Twinkie” defense. (Details at the link.)

White, a former police officer and San Francisco City Supervisor, had been charged with first-degree murder for the assassinations of San Francisco City Mayor George Moscone and San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk.

A note about the so-called “Twinkie” defense. While it was played in court, literally, as that White had been eating so much junk-food that it diminished his capacity, thus being one of the reasons he “lost it”, what really was going on in court was emphasis on the double-meaning of the word “Twinkie.” White's defense team rammed home for the jury how Milk smirked at him, while refusing to hire him back. The faggot, “smirked.”

Obviously, no former cop such as White, could take a faggot besmirching his honor and masculinity by not just refusing to hire him back, but “smirking” at him. Had White only killed Mayor Moscone (a true progressive) White would no doubt have been convicted of first-degree murder. But kill that faggot Milk, the “Twinkie” for smirking... Shit-fire boy, that faggot had it coming.

Thus... the White Night Riot.

Meta Watershed

Today is the 29th anniversary of the largest lesbian and gay riot in the history of the world. Not only was I there, I was one of the women in Lesbians Against Police Violence responsible for the rally from which it arose.

I've written about LAPV in other posts, such as Tania: 33 Years Later. In one, Dianne Feinstein, Opportunist, I give a good brief history of the events leading up to Dan White's cold-blooded assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk. I refer you to that for background.

Another excellent source is an article by LAPV members and women I worked closely with, Pam David and Lois Helmbold, in Radical America, Vol 13, no.4 July- August 1979, found online at Sexuality and the State: The Defeat of the Briggs Initiative and Beyond (scroll down about 2/5 of the document to find the pertinent Radical America extract).

LAPV stood in radical opposition to police harassment of minority communities. We saw Dan White's assassination as a rage reprisal by a former cop against progressive forces (not just gay) and linked it to the larger picture of male and white domination. I think it's critical to remember that the riot which came from our agitation was the result of revolutionary lesbians speaking out against the ultimate forces of power in our society, not a bunch of "gays" upset about a verdict.

Several years ago I wrote my own memoir of the event. I'm going to include that below. Not long afterward, I was interviewed by Christina B. Hanhardt, who was writing a doctoral thesis in American Studies at New York University on "Butterflies, Whistles, and Fists: Safe Streets Patrols and the ‘New’ Gay Ghetto". Her interview with me and other LAPVers, as well as review of primary source documents (mostly from the papers I donated to the Meg Barnett Papers in the Queer Nation Collection at the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual Transgender Historical Society in San Francisco) formed Chapter Two of her thesis, "Safe Space: Sexual Minorities, Uneven Urban Development, and the Politics of Violence". At a later date, I will include this chapter in a post covering LAPV in more historical depth.


(March to City Hall just beginning, near 18th and Castro; perhaps an hour before all-out White Night Riot in San Francisco, 21 May 1979. Mount Sutro tower visible in background; buses are already being stopped.)

THE WHITE NIGHT RIOT

© 2008 by Maggie Jochild

The day after the riot, my feelings about it began to change. I was driving a morning route then, delivering something called Veggie Rolls to natural foods store in San Francisco. There were dozens of such stores in 1979. I had arranged my route to go through the Mission, Noe Valley, Bernal and Potrero Hill neighborhoods first, hit SoMa and downtown during the mid morning lull, then head out to the Haight and the Avenues, ending up at Ocean Beach in the afternoon, where I fed the day-old rolls to a keening flock of gulls. On the morning of May 22, however, I began my day by driving past City Hall on the way to Polk Gulch.

I approached it from an indirect route so I could look across the square first and see if cops were there. There were scorched places near curbs here and there, but the burned-out police cars had already been towed away. There was a knot of 20-30 people standing on the sidewalk across from City Hall, standing with their arms at their sides, staring, not talking to each other. Every window on the front facade of the block-long building was covered with plywood, raw and bright in the morning light. There were no parking meters left on that block. I stopped and watched the people for a minute. They seemed to be in shock. I felt a thrill go through me.

While I chatted daily with the managers of the stores where I delivered, and with a few of them I actually conversed (mostly the dykes in the Coop system), the majority of the stores were owned by either white boy hippies or what would soon be called yuppies, and my interest in what they had to say was limited. I knew I was identified as a lesbian by them because one of them had refused to let me help distribute his products, saying I was too “rough looking” for his clientele. I surely hated that man from then on.

On this day, however, there was something new. It mostly took the form of a second look, after the initial glance of recognition. It was as if a new dimension had suddenly been added to my identity as queer, as if they had overnight found out it also meant I could fly, or was immortal. They looked at me in such a speculative way, I wanted to say to every one of them, “Yeah, I was there. Next time we might come for YOU.” I could smell the fear on them, and I liked it. It was as close to respect as I had ever gotten from the straight world.

There's more...

As you'll read, Maggie was one of the primary people behind the rally from which the White Night Riot happened.

This essay is amazing, must-read material.

When it came to the second wave of feminism which came of age with the dykes of the late 60s through early 80s, there was the East Coast group with folks such as Liza Cowan and Alix Dobkin, and the West Coast crowd. Maggie was one of the women at the heart of the West Coast crowd.

Want to know what really happened to feminism from the inside?

Read Maggie's essays at Meta Watershed.

There's more...

Her Earth Laid Open, Appalachia Reveals Her Soul

More Than A Simple Issue Of Black And White

It was a week ago when the heated “discussion” over Appalachia's Democratic primary voting patterns went from orange ember to white-hot flame. The decidedly revealing exit polling from the West Virginia primary set things off in a huge way, sending MSNBC's Pat Buchanan into paroxysms of red-faced keening that made more than a few viewers (like my stunned kids who were watching) actually fear for his health.

But it was his crazed words about what the West Virginia results “meant” that gave many pause. If you looked past the “guy-on-meth-from-an-episode-of-Cops” yelling, the point he was desperately trying to hammer home was one about Obama being in deep trouble with “hard-working, White” Americans because of the state's demographic breakdown post-the vote. The breakdown went nearly 70%/30% in a 95% White state, going against the prevailing trends—numbers that should indeed concern Obama, but can not be forced into the general election template Buchanan nearly stroked-out trying to cram it into.

It also doesn't help when allegedly more cosmopolitan states try to cast that primary in dumb, lowest-common denominator bolierplate, as shown in the following day's New York Daily News front page and main spread.


But that is the world we live in, where the three-word tag is king. The sound-bite, the five-second run-down...with no consideration of history or a desire to actually look with a discerning eye at why some things are the way they are. Consider this: West Virginia and Kentucky, and virtually everyplace else in that chain of states that form Appalalchia proper are not simply the short-hand, Cliff Notes™ snapshots we're force-fed the appearance of. Not the hard-core bastion of retrograde hate and susceptibility to the worst impulses of jingo-tastic, faux-American disregard for forward-thinking we are led to believe they are. I could see how that mask is mistaken for the region's face, thanks to people like Buchanan...

...but even cursory look at the region and what it has gone through tells the real story of why things are.

There is the very nature of the land itself. Rugged in its raw form, and rougher still through what has been done to it by man and moguls, this is a place where large corporations make mega-fortunes on ripping the very heart out of the earth and cleaving off its scalp. The coal mining industry, while not employing the huge numbers it once did, is still a major economic force in the area. With upwards of 600 open and active mines in the region, pulling out close to 300 million tons of coal every year, pitting and scarring the land as the dark manna is hauled out on the cheap, the region's workers average a paltry $25,000 per year in pay for this back-breaking hollowing out of the earth beneath them. You add in the mills that have taken up the slack, where every fiber-filled, right-to-work breath steals a little bit of a person every day, and then stir in the “legacy” economy that pays to keep alive the people who gave of their bodies for decades—pensions and stratospheric late-in-life health care costs, and you have a population dangling by its economic short and curlies. And the moguls who own and ioperate these cash-cow companies have a vested interest in keeping the area's population ill-educated (which lessens the opportunity to gain work beyond home), financially on eggshells and “American Dream”-starved. Were these folks to in large numbers move beyond the necessity to work in these life-stealing industiries, where-oh-where would the cheap labor come from? There simply isn't enough of an incentive for “illegals” to descend upon the mountains and snatch these jobs up. For that low level of pay (and it'd be lowered still for brown-skinned folks) and body-busting work, there would have to be more of a secondary, benign payoff than Appalachia-as-it-stands can provide. Things that many take for granted, like ease of inexpensive travel and access to the culturally familiar would work against a replacement, outsider workforce. So you have in effect, a group almost permanently chained to the corporations that call the shots in the area. That is what is called “a captive workforce”.

This is the main reason why the young leave there in droves—the limited opportunities for success compared to the rest of America. Sadly, Appalachia is not a place you think of when thoughts of making the most of the “American Dream” come to mind. And that's the way the region's controlling interests want it. Born poor, keep them poor, and said poverty keeps enough there to be used as fuel for the money machine. It's also why the voting populace skews so heavily older. These are the folks tied to home—be it by duty to family who needs them, or an inability to escape. They will be born there, live there, work there, and yes—die there.

Now, this is not to say that they are terminally morose, or constantly unhappy...or dare I say it—bitter. They most certainly are those things when times are at their hardest, as would anyone who feel the weight of clouds limiting their sight of prosperity's sky. But they get by. It doesn't consume them. They live their lives as fully as things allow. And they no doubt know that the country outside of where they are experiences life differently—maybe with the odds stacked in a less-high pile against them. It's only human for there to be some envy, and even some antagonism.

Here's where race creeps into the picture. When you take into account the relative scarcity of Black folk in the region, racism's spectre seems odd in that it would appear hard to hate people who aren't there to be hated. Racism though, is a chameleon, changing pattern and texture depending on environment and situational catalysts. It manifests itself in Appalachia as an outgrowth in large part from socio-economic pressures and good, old self-esteem issues. This is also in the interests of the “bosses” whose businesses so dominate the region, and further, the local politicians in their pockets. As a distracting straw man, they unsubtly perpetuate the dusky, but actualy unseen “other” as a factor in their doing so poorly. And since time immemorial, no group wants to be regarded as the low man on the totem pole (The irony of using a Native American metaphor should give us all pause.), and in America, regardless of social station, African Americans can never truly escape that position.

You may be bad off. You may be under-educated, or ill-housed...but as long as you ARE NOT a n*gg*r, you ARE NOT at the bottom.

For some people—for a LOT of people, that's more than enough to make them feel a little bit better about themselves. And anything that enables that is hunky dory when you're effectively parked in what America deems its sweaty regional armpit.

This is why plays to race as a subtle “feel-good” mechanism work in Appalachia—never mind that the person cast as the “one you should consider below you and thus unworthy of your trust” might actually help them. It's that gut play to emotion and self-esteem that is fertile ground for the evil's seed to take root. It clouds reason and common sense. It allows people to instantly believe the worst of Black folks—never mind the ridiculousness of a specific claim. Someone must be at the bottom and as long as it's a n*gg*r and not them, a sigh of relief can be breathed. It is much more of a tool than a belief system in a place where the overwhelmingly White population is so hopelessly beaten down, ironically worse off than a lot of their African American comrades in poverty.

It is why a Harvard educated Black man scans there as an other to be rejected out-of-hand as a potential leader...or more simply, a boss. (And “the boss” already doesn't play well in their circles, understandably) The “Harvard” hurts, but the color of his skin is the true dividing line here, and the one that ultimately wounded him in his primary battle against the equally well-educated, but demographically different in other unmistakable ways, Senator Hillary Clinton. On the whole, these people are not garden-variety racist in the practice of their day-to-day lives. In fact, considering their isolation from Black folks, racism is probably quite the non-factor in everyday life. Fighting to survive in the face of a constant economic strangulation is. There is the chance that in a general election that these folk could be swayed by strong economic revival messaging should Obama win what seems like a near-certain nomination. Their issue isn't so much about hatred of people like him as it is a desperate boosting of the wounded self-esteem of folks like themselves.

And there is the nub of it—a wounding. Wounding the vast bulk of the country America never sees when it thinks of those of us in dire straits. A wounding with the mocking “Soooooey!” calls and barbs on incest being a norm instead of a taboo. The day-in/day-out wounding that is the direct result of the social, cultural and economic armpit-ization of a mountainous swath of 21st century America encompassing some 25 million people. Starved of opportunity and resources to make better not by chance, but by design, because somebody more powerful wants it that way. When you back a bunch of folks into a corner and kick them about like trapped rats, you really can't be surprised at what they'll do to make a point. Silly, spiteful and self-defeating as it may seem.

Looking down our noses at Appalachia is what's at the root of this. Looking askance at them as the Daily News and other opinion-makers did is what perpetuates it. But it's going to take looking at them eye-to-eye as fellow human beings the way a Bobby Kennedy did in 1968 and trying to understand their problems, to finally help these people, and remove the stigmas that have been put in place to specifically keep them where they are—physically and socio-economically. It means actually doing things to fix their situations—not cheap pandering and playing to the short-term “gains” brought by emotions and dog-whistles. It's easy to hate on them, and even easier to simply dismiss. Greater America has been utterly guilty of this in its treatment of Appalachia to this very day, simultaneously ignoring and faux-courting them, and in the end giving them nothing.

What we saw there wasn't quite your boilerplate systemic racism—there is endemic prejudice involved in the voting pattern, but looking at the facts—and the true demographics, it's also a lot of conditioned response. Conditioned negative response—to their own very real oppression. It doesn't make it right or fair. But it is what it is.

“Writing these people off” isn't the thing to do, though. as it only continues the status quo that keeps them reacting as they do. Appalachia's race problem is more of a symptom than a disease. It can be fixed. But it is going to take an honest effort to make America “work” better for them. Effort. Care. Pressure. And time.

It's almost miraculous what those things can do. And if you don't think so, hell...just ask a former lump of coal.

There's more...

Musical Moments That Change Your Life—The Remix

The Days Of Vinyl and Roses...

As I fire the boilers up for what looks like a fearsome, fright-fraught, and in the case of John McCain's Arizona brother-in-less-than-ethical behavior—flat-out felonious week's worth of doings, I find myself using music to keep me from walking the streets looking for creeps to slap down. That's how silly the “Silly Season's” getting lately with talk of Manchurian Candidates and other candidates being deemed one minute as a GOP enabler, and the next as a bereted, leather-jacketed second coming of Bobby Seale and Fred Hampton.

Great Balls O' Stupid!

But music is a saving grace for me. It gets me through. Takes the edge off—and in a sensory way, simply transports me. My ears tune in closely and my brain itself opens up. I “hear” the music in an enjoyable as well as an analytical manner. My nervous system is primed to a high sensitivity. There are chills and shudders. The hair will stand on end on note trills, and certain bass lines sock you in the gut and waggle your pelvis against your will.

And oftentimes—the music will key in emotionally. It can support or provoke a moment. Our dear and talented littlest gator wrote about this beautifully about two weeks ago. It was a popular post and a thought-provoking one. From it, I got an e-mail from one of my oldest friends—an artist, teacher and writer who read the piece and got him to thinking about his musical moments.

And maaaaaaan, has he got some. As I've known him for over 25 years. I've been a witness to some of 'em—so I figured I'd share them with you, as he's just a damned fine writer himself, funny,and as much a music “head” as I am. You'll be hearing more from him in the future as he's also a wonderful military historian capable of tying in classic tales of Spanish armadas into modern-day doings. And be on the lookout for some special music posts I'm whipping up with the help of a few friends who boast impeccable Rock, Pop and Funk chops. Trust me...you'll love it!

Thus without any further ado, my pal—who shall go by the moniker “The King Of Pain” for now, and his musical moments, followed by my own “Ten”.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Music.

When it’s good, music can be uplifting. Energizing. Unforgettable. Timeless.

And when it’s REALLY good, music can inspire a timid soul to plan, and do, magnificent feats, to express feelings of great joy, or to be a balm in time of sorrow. Oh yes, that is the power that music, good, nitty-gritty, down-to-the-bone, make you wanna slap your mama music has, regardless of genre, or race or culture of it’s creator. GOOD music is all that, and more:

It can be Magical.

My best bud in the world's post prompted me to list the ten most magical memorable songs I know. Songs that, for whatever reason, have left their mark on my psyche. As an avid music man, this was no small task, and the list here is no way fully inclusive, but these ten are the first I always think about. And since this list involves going down “Memory Lane”, because I’ve been in enough trouble lately, the names of the innocent have been changed, but the songs remain the same.


10.) “Sweet Love”—Anita Baker, (1986)

From the dramatic and powerful first eight chords, you get the sense that something new was dawning. And when the instrumental intro subsides and Anita’s dusky alto takes over, the new sound is complete. A different strain of torch love song had been unleashed, one that would become a staple of—and one of the only actually enduring examples of what would soon be known as “Cool Jazz.” For me, this song also ushered in the dawn of a new and unfamiliar era for me personally: the Era of (finally!) Getting Laid.


9.) “Sideshow”—Blue Magic, (1974)

70’s R&B melancholy at its best. “Sideshow” always evokes a far more innocent time, of being in 5th Grade at PS 335 in Brooklyn, of a young, skinny lad with big glasses and bad teeth trying to dredge up the nerve to ask the school Goddess, one *Felicia Packer, to be his girl, hanging around her block on Park Place and Utica Ave. for hours every Saturday, hoping to get a glimpse of her magnificence (today, this would be known...as stalking). “Sideshow”, along with The Stylistics’ “You Make Me Feel Brand New” was the soundtrack of that time, forever blaring from someone’s apartment or car radio as I maintained my weekly vigil. And though I did intercept her several times, I ultimately gave up the ghost, figuring a geek like me never would have a shot, only to realize twenty years later, when events would play back in my mind, I belatedly, and heartbreakingly realize that every time I did Intercept The Goddess, she was always, ALWAYS happy to see me.

Idiot.


8.) Pop Pop Pop (Goes My Mind)—Levert (1986)

You fucked up. Be a man. Admit it. You. Fucked. Up. You had a diamond, and you traded her in for rusty, shedding Brillo pads. Could’ve had a Lexus, but you went for the Le Car instead. Friends call me “The King of Pain”, due to all the sad love stories that I’ve had the misfortune to live. But not all of them are those that cast myself as the victim of a wily woman. No…some are self-inflicted pain, the result of bad choices (or in some cases, no choices made at all). “Pop Pop Pop” is a signature song for those times that I blew it, when I gummed up the works, when I did bad. A haunting song coolly delivered by the late, great Gerald Levert and company, it’s what I always played when all I could do was mope and wallow in self-pity. Good times. Gooooooooood times.


7.) “If Loving You is Wrong, (I Don’t Want to Be Right)—Luther Ingram (1972)

And speaking of haunting, this tune is as good as it gets. As a child I loved this song (I was eight when it came out). But it wasn’t until I became an adult —a married adult, that this song’s power and pain was fully understood. And what pain there is!

“Am I wrong to fall, so deeply in love with you?
Knowing I got a wife and two little children depending on me too.
And am I wrong to hunger for the gentleness of your touch,
Knowing I got someone else at home who need me just as much.”

“OOOOHHHH!!!! ” As Dr. Smith (from Lost in Space) would say— “The pain, the PAIN!” ”

What grabs me about this song is its simplicity in lyrics. It goes right to the point, without trying to be clever or cute. It’s raw, it aches, and Mr. Ingram (who wrote the song) delivers with a smoky, down-home chit'lin-style that tells me this ain’t no make believe shit; this is the real deal, this motherfucker lived this mess, and he is oh-so-torn. And it's made even more evident to me as a married man who has felt…well…um...let’s just move on, shall we?


6.) “Sucker MCs” (Krush Groove One)—Run-DMC (1983)

Much acclaim has been heaped upon Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” as the first mainstream rap record, and “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five for giving rap a social conscience, and it is all deserved. But in my estimation, there is a third nascent rap song that completes the holy trinity, and that is Run-DMC's “Sucker MCs”. After “The Message, which came out in ’82, rap really was just meandering along, still a novelty waiting to expand its beachhead. Then came the Spring of ’83 when “Sucker MCs” burst upon a sleeping population, bringing the oomph back in to the Hip-Hop Nation. Simple and sparse, with only an addictive, repetitive percussion beat mixed with mad skill by the late Jam Master Jay, Sucker MCs harkens back to a time when you could actually play a rap song that wasn’t angry, or filled with hate, self-hate, misogyny or abounding with words that sane parents try desperately to shield their little ones from. It’s a flat-out fun record, with a funky little beat that 25 years later, is still a crowd pleaser in the clubs.


5.) “I Feel Good All Over”—Stephanie Mills (1987)

Are you into doing acts of evil? Not EVIL on the scale of Hitler, Stalin, Dahmer, or bin Laden, but rather, lower-case evil, Reggie Miller giggling and throwing up “dagger” three-pointers in the final seconds sort of wickedness? Then play this song, or if you’re at a party that I’m present for, get the DJ to play this song. For then you will see a man, a steady, secure, confident man be reduced to a glob of goo—struck catatonic by the first five bars of this love anthem. It never fails; that is always the reaction I have when I hear this song. I could have Beyonce sitting on my lap, with Gabrielle Union caressing my shoulders while Catherine Zeta-Jones is pleading with me to free her from the hell that is her craggy grandfather of a husband, and it would still be the same; instant transportation to a time gone by, when I still had “The One That Got Away”, in my grasp. The One with whom I shared the most glorious kiss, during an August sunset, in the life-guard tower at Coney Island, as this song played softly in the background, echoing from the lit-up amusement park behind us. I hear this song and I become a glassy-eyed mute, an arrow shot through my heart, because through my stupidity, that magical time ended far too soon (cue that damn “Pop Pop Pop Goes My Mind”). So go ahead, you evil little bitches, do the deed—play that song. I’ve long accepted it’s the penance I must pay for being a greedy bastard, for trying to make “The Seinfeld Switch” when I should have loved the one I was with.

Kleenex, please.

4.) “Tempted”—Squeeze (1981)

In December,1981, as a college freshman, me and my buddies went to a college party at F.I.T.—The Fashion Institute of Technology. This was still the time period when I was painfully shy, and probably only the third real party I'd ever ventured out to. Got to the party in the cleared out, darkened Student Lounge, and it was jumping, filled with hot babes of every stripe. Like barracudas sweeping through a school of tuna, my boys went to work, scoring dance, after dance, after dance. At first I held back, unsteady, unsure. But then after awhile, I reasoned, “What’s the problem? You’re handsome, looking sharp in your black slacks, black turtleneck and beige blazer, how hard could it be to ask a girl to dance?” And so I entered the fray. Asked a girl for a dance. She said “No”. Asked another. Again, “No”. Tried again.

And again.
And again.
And again.
And again.

By the seventh time—I was shot down in flames. I finally raised the white flag, and as the party kicked into high gear, I sauntered off to the TV room, my ego shattered, and head hung low. There I stayed for the rest of the party, looking at something called Cable TV, that had some program called MTV that was showing something called music videos. One of the songs played was “Tempted” by the British pop group Squeeze. A song about being tempted by the fruit of another, it instantly became my default song for every time I was tempted to give up in my pursuit of the “Fairer Sex”. Later, when I’d meet similar bad nights at the clubs or a horrible date, I’d loop this song, playing it over and over and over again, much like my rejections that cold December night in ’81. And I still love the song.

“King of Pain”...that's me.

3.) Red Light Special—TLC (1994)

In the waning days of my bachelor life (July ,1996) I found myself at a Manhattan club. There that night was a beautiful young lady whose name is lost to me in the mists of time, but not the image of her beauty. Model tall, with shapely long legs and the look and build of Garcelle Beauvais, the girl was but a casual acquaintance; someone I’d love to target, but she was a bit young, (maybe ten years my junior) and a tad too beautiful and popular with the fellas who were hawking her like mad that night. So I harbored no illusions. Well this night, as the joint was about to close down, I asked her for a Last Dance. She accepted and we danced thru a couple of songs. Then “Red Light Special” came on. Seeing it was a slow jam, I was ready to back off. To my surprise, however, “Garcelle” drew close to me and we started to dance. Really close. And in my head, cheering erupted, slowly at first but gaining in strength the longer the song blared thru the emptying club, and the closer that sweet, lean body was up on mine. Oh, shit! Could it be? Am I on the verge of a miracle? I wondered. As T-Boz crooned her tune, I switched gears, from passive to aggressive. I said something about “Garcelle” being beautiful. She buried her head in my chest. I looked over towards my wingman, LM who stared at me with wide-eyed wonder. Getting bolder, I tossed another line as we slowly danced in sync. No response. Launched another get over-line salvo. No response. I reared back a little to check on my silent, clinging partner, and in doing so, I got a whiff of reality.

The girl was drunk. Damn near out cold on her feet. And as a result, she had fallen asleep in my arms. That’s why she was all up on me—I'd been practically holding her body upright. The cheers quickly turned to groans, and as “Red Light Special” ended, I had the task of trying to wake my dance partner up, bitter that my dream had already ended. As usual.

2) “Over Like a Fat Rat”—Fonda Rae (1982)

Of all the songs on this list, this is the only one I don’t have great affection for. Yet it makes this list solely on the strength of something that happened that some folks believe I made up, but alas, it did happen.

Saturday, May 7th 1988, I was at a graduation party of an acquaintance up in the Boogie Down Bronx. I'd just broken up with “I Feel Good All Over” girl, and was out looking...for a replacement. Shallow? Yes…but I was young. At this party were three prospects, one of whom I’d met sometime before.

The party…was as we said then, wack,, and the three young ladies were bored. I suggested that we’d go to my crib to get some up-to-date records to liven the party up. The three agreed, and we drove to my apartment in the Murphy Houses off Crotona to grab some albums.

When we got there, the three were amazed at my album collection, which numbered over 1,000 discs at that time. So much in fact, that they seemed to not want to leave, but rather—stay at my pad. “How long can we stay?”, asked the cutest of the three.

“As long as you like.”, was my reply, and the three girls shrieked in delight.

So as they giddily became familiar with my record collection, I was in the kitchen making some snacks, trying to decide which of the three I was going to concentrate my efforts on. It was there, in the kitchen, where I heard it; a slight shuffling, crinkling noise, behind the refrigerator. Thought I was hearing things, but a minute later, heard the same noise again, and my heart froze, because I knew exactly what that rustling noise signaled.

A mouse
.
No Lord, not here not now! I remembered praying, already knowing the answer. My crib had regular flare-ups regarding mice infestations, and that night one decided to make a visit. But I didn’t have time to combat the bastard, I had guests to entertain; three seriously sweet female guests whom I was trying to impress. All I could hope was that “Mickey” would stay his ass in the kitchen, while action unfolded in the living room. Or perhaps …beyond?

With snacks in hand I gamely returned to the living room where the girls were playing jams by Salt & Pepa, Eric B, and Sybil, laughing and dancing and swapping club stories. I sat on the couch, trying to relax, but my ears were cocked, waiting to hear that noise again. The cutest girl then went to my pile of records and picked out, you guessed it, the NY club classic, “Over Like a Fat Rat”. Excitedly she put the needle to the record, telling us how she loved this song—a thumpy, bass-heavy, ass-shaker of a jam.

And that’s, I swear on my mother’s ashes, when the trouble began.

Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, I heard the same rustling noise over “Fat Rat”, but the girls didn’t catch it. I started talking really loud, desperately trying to drown out the sound. Then I heard a squeak. And one of the girls heard that squeak above the record. I tried to play it off like “I ain’t heard nothing!” But then...the motherfucker did it again, this time letting out a big squeak.

“Was that a mouse?”

As if to answer the girl’s question, there was a sudden flash of grey lightning, darting quickly from behind the sofa to behind the piano. And all three girls saw it.

“EEEEE! A MOUSE!!”
“A MOUSE?! Oh, FUCK no! FUCK no!”
“SHIT! A MOUSE!! I’M GETTING THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!!”

And in a matter of seconds, as Fonda Rae was still singing about getting over like a fat rat—all three honies grabbed their jackets and cleared out of my crib with the quickness, leaving me with Fonda, and that mother-fucking, cock-blocking rodent.

It would be another TWENTY-EIGHT MONTHS (!) before I came CLOSE to getting some like I might’ve been close that night.

And in twenty years I’ve never played this song again. Ever.

1.) “We Must Be In Love” (The Wedding Song) —Pure Soul (1996)

In my opinion, one of the best wedding songs of all time, and to this day I am surprised this was not a bigger hit. Beautifully sung by women (and not little girly-girls) singers that could give a vintage EnVogue a run for their money, “We Must Be In Love” was me and my bride, “L.A.'s” first dance at our wedding reception nigh ten years ago, which more than made up for all the suffering and angst I went thru during my single days. If you don’t know this song, do yourself a favor and download it. Maybe it’ll be magic for you as well.

Peace.

From the King of Pain.

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Now, here are mine—pulled from the comments in TLG's original post, but here now to show some counter-balance and to give you a bit of insight into li'l ol' me.

My ten (LM's) moments:

1.) Hearing Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers “Moanin” at my dad's friend Lewis' home in Englewood, New Jersey. Lewis had a full-blown, high-end stereophile room in his basement. Big Quad channel stereo. Everything was perfectly balanced. I could pick out where each instrument was and the quality was simply magical. That dark, paneled audio womb was amazing to hear music in, and hearing that majestic Jazz classic—those thundering drums, Bobby Timmons' loping piano, and Lee Morgan's serpentine horn just transported me. I fell in love with Jazz that day. Lewis would give us one more treat that day. We were in his yard and he pointed down the block and said the song was recorded about three blocks away at the legendary recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder's house. Wow.

2.) Marvin Gaye's “What's Happenin' Brother” from the “What's Goin' On” album. When we got our first stereo—a huge, Sylvania console, one of the first things we ever played on it was that album. I lay on the floor underneath the speakers, entranced by the panoramic sound and when “What's Happenin' Brother” came on, I swear I got high from it. It was the bass line. James Jamerson's bass line to be precise. I'd heard his bass before, but not stereo separated like that. It was an almost organic thing, pounding like a pulse—almost alive. I lay there, eyes closed as I repeated the song four times or so. It was THAT song that got me listening to music closely—picking out the individual sidemen and training my ear. But every time I hear that song to this very day—I trance out. I'm 8 years old again, life is simple, and music is...transformative.

3.) Stevie Wonder's “My Cherie Amour”. I had a crush on a waitress at my father's restaurant. Her name was Eleanora—she was a beautiful. mocha-colored sister whose skin fairly glowed and she had the most magnificent legs. One day, I watched her loading cups into the take-out dispenser for what seemed like several minutes when someone put Stevie Wonder's “My Cherie Amour” on the juke box. Time seemed to slow. The jangling guitars and singing strings, coupled with Stevie's longing voice while looking at the beautiful Eleanora melted my very soul. It didn't help that a huge blast of sunshine broke through the window and illuminated her in almost golden light. Shit. I'm choking up writing this. Every time I hear that song, I feel an impossibly sunny day and I'm drunk with thoughts of dewy-eyed love.

4.) It was an unnaturally warm Spring day in '73 when I sat in school in Harlem. The windows were open and Lenox Avenue was quiet that day. And then I could hear coming 'round the corner a sound. Drums first—“Bum-ba-ba-bum”, then a trilling vibraphone with a piano. It was the opening of The Spinners “Could It Be I'm Falling In Love”. It sounded so beautiful, so pristine. Then the strings washed in and I was lifted on a cloud of happy. That song is so damned perfect that I can't describe it. I was so taken away that I leaned over at my desk to look out the window for where it was coming from. It was a pimped-out, copper-colored Buick Riviera slowly tooling down Lenox Avenue, and as that monster slowed behind other cars that song blared from the 8-Track. So perfect. So beautiful. The teacher saw me distracted and gave me demerits. I didn't care. I still don't. That song's sound just moves me something fierce and always will.

5.) Jimi Hendrix' cover of and subsequent claiming of Dylan's “All Along The Watchtower”. I heard this loopy, psychedelic, apocalyptic number during a terrible hailstorm while I was still living in Harlem. I was six years old. The song was petrifying enough—Hendrix's trippy, keening guitar lines and slurry voice fed through the heavy reverb. But the fearsome sound and dystopian imagery will always be punctuated by a visual that took place at that moment. I was looking out the window during his backwards-sounding solo when a huge, bloody, dead pigeon plopped onto the sill in a thud of feathers and ice-ripped wounds. Yikes. That song still scares the living shit out of me, but I can't stop listening to it. It's a sense memory of my youth I'll never forget. It just has that cool, spooky “end of the world” vibe. Brrrrrrrr!


6.) “How Deep Is Your Love” by the Bee Gees. Say what you want about the Brothers Gibb, but those S.O.Bs can turn out a ear-sticking pop song like very few in the modern era. Tuneful, catchy stuff that you can't shake. In the three year span of '76 to '79, you could not avoid them. I was at a sweet sixteen party for a classmate and in attendance was the most beautiful girl in our grade-Ann Marie. A statuesque, doe-eyed, elegant girl with a huge mop of dark brown hair. She was smart, beautiful, classy and I think at least thirty boys in our class were in love with her. I was among them. We were friends Ann Marie and I, and as a bunch of us lingered about holding up the walls at the party, The D.J. put on “How Deep Is Your Love” and the floor cleared except for the longstanding, and just hooked-up couples. I saw Ann Marie standing there off to the side and I impulsively made my move. The assembled fellas saw me making my way towards her and mouths fell open. I was gonna get shot down. NOT. Ann Marie said yes. We clinched on the floor in a soulful slow-dance and that song was magical. The warm Fender Rhodes, languid bass, and trilling guitars swept me away. The lyrics took on meaning and the sighing vocals finished the job. I was in heaven. I swear, when I hear that song nowadays, I can still smell the “Charlie” perfume on Ann's neck and feel myself getting dizzy from our little circle of dirty dancing there on that living room floor. I close my eyes when I hear that song, the same way I closed my eyes while dancing with the impossibly perfect Ann Marie. Maaaaaaan....

7.) First Choice's “Doctor Love”. I was still a teenager but it was my first time at a big-time Disco. It was Studio 54—early summer of 1978. A bunch of us had gotten in and found ourselves nervously standing near the shiny bar under the balcony when the man at the wheels of steel—D.J. Nicky segued from “Don't Leave Me This Way” into “Doctor Love”, disco music's magnum opus. I'd heard the song before, but never in a “club” atmosphere with the huge speakers everywhere and with a chance to dance. The bass was blasting through my mid-section as Rochelle Fleming's singing swooped and dipped like a wild bird on the wing. And then, a beautiful girl spun before me, stopped and then cocked her head, asking me onto the floor. For the next six minutes we danced—a bit of the Hustle, The Spank and The Freak mixed in. I was...for those brief minutes, an adult. Out for a night on the town, dancing my ass off with grown-ups. I can still feel every spin, every shoulder-swagger. My hands about this woman's waist, trailing off to her back, the toe-steps and shimmies. It was my coming-out party hang-out wise and that amazing, propulsive jam is what I think of when partying comes to mind. Sung by the mother of all Disco Divas—the amazing Rochelle fleming, NO song moves my feet more than that one does.

8.) Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach's Painted From Memory”. I was in the process of getting over my first post-divorce relationship's coming to an end, and I was an absolute mess. I couldn't think, I couldn't cope. My friend and trainer at my job's gym I guess had noticed my odd distance and depression and knew I needed a catharsis. I came out of the shower one day to find she'd left me a CD on my gym bag with the note “Just Listen”. So, as I left the gym (unable to find her), I headed home and put the CD in my Discman and listened to it. The whole thing was amazing, but that one song had me blinking back tears on the train. I couldn't blink them back any more, so I got off many stops before my intended one and walked home, with that song on repeat and tears flowing down. It is...one of the most heart-breaking songs about lost love you will ever hear. The combination of Bacharach's melody, and Costello's lyrics and gut-wrenching singing is like a punch in the chest. A real orchestra, swelling and receding along with my emotions—my God. By the time I got home I was exhausted. But it was a good exhaustion. I needed it. That song released me and I'll never forget it.

9.) “People Get Ready” by The Impressions. I've written on this song here before here. But I'll add this. It is one of my earliest audio memories, a song that sounded 400 years old—an ancient, soul-deep moan that I remember my dad giving me and my brothers haircuts to. I can still hear those ringing harmonies coming out of our cheap little phonograph as I watched the eerie ABC-Paramount label slowly spin around. I'm transported back to a simpler time. When I was a child, and while the world was tearing itself apart, a familiar song could actually soothe my soul. I still fall back on this tune for comfort today.

10.) Run-DMC's “Sucker MCs”. I heard this live at a block party three blocks off Hollis Avenue in front of St. Pascal's school on 109th Avenue in Hollis, Queens. Run, D and Jay freaked the assembled when they tore into this live version of their first hit for the locals. There were about a thousand people there with Jay's rig jacked into a light pole for juice. I'd listened to rap, mostly stuff done live at house parties by local would-be's, but when these three rocked the house that day it was amazing. Local boys made good, or, def as it were. The energy they radiated while performing was almost electric. People dancing, jumping, shouting and singing along as rap in essence was coming to life before the world's eyes, and we were there soaking it all in as guys from 'round the way were doing their part to spread it around. We knew something special was happening, but couldn't put our finger on just what—what we did know was that they were rockin' shit like we'd never seen it rocked before. The version they did was considerably extended and chock full of call-and-response stuff between the audience. We danced till our feet hurt and screamed along until we were hoarse. The late Jam Master Jay ended the jam with a two minute virtuoso bit of cutting and scratching. As an old rap song used to go, God damn that Dee Jay made my day!

Those are my ten. I could give you twenty, but those are the big ten that immediately come to mind here in LowerManhattaniteVille. :)

Heal up kiddies, get your music on—the “Silly Season” we're in the ever-lovin' middle of absolutely decrees it.

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