"Farther Down the Line" Lyle Lovett-Lyle Lovett

"Ugly but effective" It was the way my old golf coach spoke of our number one player. He had a low, slight fade which never apex more than fifty feet off the ground, a hideous swing which produced a ball that rolled on and on forever. Myself, I would rather hit high draws that sometimes turned into hooks which wandered into the woods and maybe that is a character flaw but I preferred looking like a player over actually scoring like one.

Lyle Lovett is not a handsome man but somehow he pulled one of the hottest movie stars in her day. His pocked-marked faced mouthed myriad fantastic songs based on a life experienced on the plains of West Texas in Rodeos, Ranches and Texas swing honkey-tonks. Like our number one he wasn't the best thing to look at but he got the job done. In a word he is legit, the real deal whiskey drinking madman riding, as his good friend Robert Earl Keen says "A car down the highway at eighty miles and hour and taking the steering wheel off". Many times he has broken bones on the back of a thousand pounds of twitching pissed-off muscle, so many times he has parlayed that experience into song. But also he has used his experience (such as losing the hottest movie star in her day) to write three minute long, epic Keatsian ballads on loss and the emotions involved in such sad scenes.

Farther Down the Line combines rodeo nomenclature, ideas and actions and mixes them with that most serious of all rodeos...the nightlife at the bar and the procurement of a mate for the night. It fits. Because just like at seven and a half seconds, at times you can feel her slipping out of your grasp, the rope around your hand loosening and her mentally bucking out of control, you try to hold on for just a half a second more and find yourself on the ground left dusty and worse for the wear only to move on to another venue and another bull.

It's a quick three minutes this song but it possesses enough gravitas to be covered by the man Wille himself; a man known to spin a few yarns in his day. Its a quick life spent in the bars, running around from town to town, bull to bull, woman to woman, and it isn't the most rewarding. Strolling away from the bar with rejection in your mouth only to be washed away with some warm whiskey, strolling away from that bull and sliding a snooze of Copenhagen between your gums. But you do it and you move on to the next because you are only eight seconds away from immortality, only a smile and a caress away from satisfaction. In the end it doesn't matter how one gets there, if it is a low, slow fade, a high scraping draw, or a pocked-marked face mumbling lines to someone out of its league. In the end all that matters is hangin on and surviving till that next buzzer sounds and the next casual glance turns into a drink on that midnight rodeo.

"Sous le Soleil" Mixed by DJ Stéphane Pompougnac with the Major Boys Featuring Aurélia-Hôtel Costes:Quatre

Forgive me for the long title, but with sampling there's a lot of people to credit these days. Two main events have taken up the majority of my time, one of which being the catalyst for this post and the catalyst behind me spending hours thinking of a certain place in the Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur region of southeastern France. You know the stories, the beauties laying on the beach baking in the sun after dancing till nine in the morning. Mick is always there, as is Stephanie, David, Gianni Agnelli when he was alive and every beautiful person who wouldn't talk to you in a million years.

But lately I've been talking and hanging out with a few of those people and beyond the artifice and the name I must say that their bad rep is under served and have found them to be terribly genuine, interesting, gentle and warm human beings. In their fashion there have been seven hour lunches at tables swilling Chateau Corton smoking Marlboro's until they turn back into late dinner followed by more hours of excess into the morning. All the while I hear stories of this little town and the nights that take place this time of year.

This song is the soundtrack. The Cuban rhythm, maracas holding the beat together, tight chords of a nylon string guitar with layers of spicy lower latitude piano barging in the door past the gaze of the tempo bouncers. A soft, smoky, sexy voice in your non-native tongue easing her way into your mind while her hips rhythmically shift with the rim shots hidden way back in the track until that guitar comes to the front piercing with purity.

There's a lot of things coming at you full force in this song, there's the aforementioned construction, there's the title which is also (conveniently) the title of a French Soap Opera set in said town dealing with the love lives of Laure, Caroline and Jessica, three of its residents. All those sweaty nights of Latin America mixed with the passion of Mediterranean France combine to overload one's mind until you are at the counter at JFK paying full price for the one way ticket to your new life unencumbered by the constraints you have built up in your day to day operations. Go ahead and do it, you'll never be happy until you've tried.

I'll be there in a few months, trying to bring my French and tan back up to the levels they should always remain at. If Mick is there I'll try not to talk to him, if Stephanie shows up I'll try not to stutter again when talking to her and play it a little bit cooler. More importantly I'll throw my short suit back on (hasn't seen daylight since Rio) and try not to feel hopelessly huge against those skinny French boys, the iPod will remain in the room but this soundtrack will be playing as the sand rises through my toes with every step and (hopefully) and every turned head of the women I walk by.

Chanel - Remember Now Part. 1 (By Karl Legerfeld) from baronshocolaat on Vimeo.

Chanel - Remember Now Part. 2 (By Karl Lagerfeld) from baronshocolaat on Vimeo.

"You Can Have Him" Nina Simone-Nina Simone at Town Hall

Most men have no idea what women think. Most men don't want to know what women think. But deep in that brain, behind those lips and questioning eyes, beyond the roots of silky hair, deeper than what the constraints of society has told them and what their roles should be, their careers and their liberation; beyond that it is my sincere hope and wish that they think like Nina's narration in this sublime, solo piano tune so eloquently performed at Town Hall decades ago. The juxtaposition of an unrequited love, a song telling the listener how little she cares for said man while describing everything she wanted to do to him is probably the most romantic idea for a song I have ever run across. Beyond the standard crooning of love and loss, Byronic in scope while retaining the intimacy she never knew phrased in Nina's own legendary voice and meter is heads and tails above anything else existing in the ether.

Like so much music in the American Cannon this song comes from the great Irvin Berlin. Jerome Kern saying once: "Irving Berlin has no place in American music - he is American music." He truly is the master and father of every he precedes and set the tone for the paradigm shift that occurred in music in the early 20th century.

To escape the didactic and cease the digression, the ideals possessed in this song could solve a lot of problems between men and women. Arguments solved, divorces stopped, the birth rate of the United States would rise and everyone would feel fulfilled in the places that matter. Speaking for a men I think one thing women have lost in the past decades is the idea that they are to care for their men in every way. In no way is this degrading, nor does it downplay their abilities and skills in this world. Rather it is probably the most important, noble task in the entire world. Conversely I think they would find that if they began some of the actions in this tune they would receive the attention and stability they crave in their relationships. There is nothing more endearing than being wanted and to be selflessly taken care of without any need of reciprocity.

It is beautiful. It is the world and the way we are made and it is the glue that keeps us together and from chopping each other's heads off but for now it will probably never happen. So I'll keep Nina on and think of the days when a woman brings me slippers and caresses my head in the morning lovingly after a bender with the boys, grabs me a glass of water and massages my back without yelling about how insensitive I am and how terrible my breath reeks of gin or questions how much money I wasted on strippers the night before. When she realizes that I am next to her not because of any feeling of obligation but because it is her I want to be next to, to feel her arms wrapped around my shoulders while her head rests on my chest, when that day comes I'll throw this song in the recycle bin. For the time being I'll just have to keep this on the playlist, put it on mentally in a crunch when venom is spitting out of the pretty face outside that brain, those pretty lips, questioning eyes and roots of silky hair.

"Fruits of My Labor" Lucinda Williams-Live at the Fillmore

I knew this woman from college, she dated my one of my roommates and was always around. A great girl, terribly fun (no I never slept with her so that is not what I am speaking of when I say fun), smart and just always ran with the flow. One day out of the blue she gave me a call. In a pre-Facebook world it was a little strange to get a call from a woman you haven't spoken to in six or seven years so I was taken back and had no idea what she was up to in her life. As it turns out she was living in Laguna Beach and wanted to get together for a few days, since I was only an hour south in San Diego I decided to take the drive up. When I arrived at her place it was breathtaking and not in a typical McMansion-Orange Country-Douche Bag type of way.

She lived a few blocks off the beach on a hill above a three car garage. The front of the apartment was nothing but floor to ceiling window-doors with white curtains wafting in the Pacific breeze. The apartment stretched the entire length of the structure but was very narrow. Looking out one of the many windows with the kitchen to my left and a small bedroom down a narrow corridor I saw the currents of the Pacific obstructed only by a palm tree every few hundred feet laterally. The interior of the apartment was pure white with old deep burgundy hard wood floors, there was no TV only a long white couch pressed up against the wall. From it you could relax and view the sea.

We went to a cafe on a small cliff hanging over the beach. We smoked cigs, skulled Sapphire and Tonics and laughed about college and the stupid times we had, spoke of her ex boyfriend, my ex roommate and how he became a Catholic Priest afters years of debauchery. Spoke of our lives and what the hell we were doing under the soothing sun and standard Southern California Scenery. Those nights I would go back with her and sleep on her couch while she rested in bed. I never crept in there for some reason even though there was a bit of sexual tension running through the air and I was never one to turn down the hint of an advance. Rather I watched the curtains breeze in through the open doors and meditated on my surroundings. I drove her to LAX a few days later and never saw her again, can't find her on Facebook and her old number doesn't work. Last time I spoke with her she fell in love with a Brasilian man and was marrying him against her parents' wishes.

When I first heard this song I was living in Florida and had downloaded it the night before in a drunken music buying binge. I woke up still intoxicated and sweating in the sick humidity of July and hit the play button. After my first listen I was taken back to Laguna and that girl, the azure and sweet scent of flowers wafting through a pure white room. I walked to the store and bought a case of Pacifico ice cold, sat on my own porch overlooking Memorial Park and the St. John's river, clicked the repeat function on iTunes and didn't stop the music until the case was gone. With no company, no phone and nothing but two packs of Bravo Hotels (Benson and Hedges but that's another story...) I wasted myself with both physical pleasure of addiction and the mental jerk off session's pleasure of that week while Lucinda stoked my synapses until I came.

Come to my world and witness
The way things have changed
'Cause I finally left baby
I got out of La Grange.

Got in my Mercury and drove out west
Pedal to the metal and my luck to the test
Baby, sweet baby.

Lucinda Williams was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, her raspy, sultry voice honed by the same humid air I breathed in on my porch when I lost my musical virginity to her that day. Her father was a poet and a pianist, she spent her 20's in the Austin-LA-Nashville loop without much fanfare but privately crafted intensely beautiful songs honed by years on the road. Much like Tom Waits she is known in the circles that matter and not recognized by the pop-bullshit media machine known as the contemporary music world.

Baby, sweet baby if it's all the same
Take the glory and day over the fame
Baby, sweet baby


When I hear this song I think of those two days that are so different and so similar to each other in strange ways. I think about just how perfect life can be on perfect days that you don't realize are perfect until they are long gone. The fleeting nature of life passing by without consciousness like that tightly rolled shitty tobacco from a long Bravo Hotel. I think about how if I was a better writer I could capture it all and let people know just how cool those days were and bring those experiences to them. Or how sometimes you can wake up on the couch in the morning in an apartment you slept in with a fully beautiful naked woman lying feet away from you that you have never touched and be okay with it in some strange way while your animistic impulses are banging against the inside of your midbrain screaming demands that the Cortex ignores. But then again whenever I try to stand on the shoulders of Lucinda and this song I realize that perfection has already been written. That in this song a tat covered Louisiana girl sweating Southern Comfort and bleeding raspy tonality knows about what those two days are like and that many times she was that other women laying naked in the other room, waiting.