"He Loves and She Loves" George and Ida Gershwin performed by The New York Philharmonic

One may say that Paris is the most romantic city in the world. I am inclined to say that wherever you are madly in love with someone, whether it is in Paris, Venice, Barcelona or Lagrange, Texas...then that is the place.

There are many who argue that New York City holds that title, whether it is because life is so terribly hard, difficult and miserable most times that the pretty parts stand out or because of those nights when you head out expecting nothing and hours later find yourself in a situation so unexpected if you were not to experience it you could never believe it true. The nights when it snows, the streets are blanketed in silence and the fires at La Lanterna are billowing. The spring when the terraces are filled as the sun rises and sets through the canyons of re bar and glass. The cab rides home from a wonderful date, the noise the rain makes on the falling leaves that find their final resting place on sidewalks. Doormen saying hello as you stroll down Park Avenue in the morning on the way to work. How every scene captured with your eyes has multiple levels, the beautiful girl walking her dog directly in front of you while cars pass behind her in front of buildings reflecting the noise and the sun, further still into the background a glimpse of a bridge, helicopters and planes flying.

And just as every glance is a scene, every person is cinema. They all have stories and many of them are quite interesting and far from banal. At times walking through the city alone I question what's her story? His story? Even that parked car and its history.

A small snippet into this life is available for one's very own viewing by coming here and most importantly staying away from Times Square, Broadway in SoHo and various other places tourist converge. But if your finances limit you from such endeavors the rental of a black and white movie from 1979 will suffice. A movie that is housed in the Library of Congress and was nominated for two Academy Awards.

"Manhattan" is a story centered around four main people and their lives. In it you will view legendary Manhattan venues starting with the opening dialogue scene at Elaine's after an gasping opening of "Rhapsody in Blue" with scenes of the city flashing under Isaac's narration into a tape recorder. The entire soundtrack is done by Gershwin as the writer was inspired to write it from the love of his music.

There's something about an Allen film where in the end one feels as though the weight of the world is off one's shoulders, it feels as such because throughout the chaotic plots everything comes into focus. When focused one realizes that everything, everything that transpires around and inside of you, good and bad is hauntingly beautiful because it is life and that life of your own is worth living and later on at times watching.

In this film, the terribly short, short version is Isaac, in his 40's and twice divorced, is dating a sublimely adorable seventeen year old, Tracy. His best friend, Yale, is having an affair with Mary of which Isaac initially finds intolerable. However one night Isaac and her meet and begin to see each other. He quits his job, moves into a small, dirty apartment, breaks up with Tracy as he always thought her age was proof of the lack of seriousness in their relationship. Life progresses, Yale is conflicted with his marriage, then confronts Mary, Tracy is going to England to study of which Isaac encouraged her to do. He is now alone and find himself in his apartment speaking into the tape recorder once again this time not about Manhattan but what makes life worth living. In doing such he rambles until he comes to a final thought: "Is Tracy's face." He goes to a draw and picks up a harmonica she gave him for his birthday "He Loves and She Loves" comes trickling in, picks up the phone to call her and then puts it down and grabs his jacket.

He runs out into the street looking for a taxi but cannot find one, begins to run and does through the wonderful busy streets, stops at phone to call, no answer, heads through Grammcery Park, until he stops at a door looking in at Tracy with her things in the hallway, the doorman carries her bags out of the building and we watch her brushing her hair until she looks up and sees Isaac. He tells her not to go, that he loves her and tries to convince her as such. She gives reasons why she can't, makes a joke about her turning 18 and how he hurt her and that it is only six months. Isaac is skeptical and it all plays out until Rhapsody in Blue oozes out of the woodwork and this innocent looking, plain 18 year old girl tells him that it isn't that long, that not everyone gets corrupted and that one needs to have a little faith in people. He smiles and it cuts to the Manhattan skyline as Rhapsody in Blue reaches its maximum volume.

Words cannot do the scene justice. It is dark and intimate while naked and exposed, like the city itself it is one of the most beautiful, well constructed and surprising endings in cinema and I'm sure that same scene is playing out on this island as I write this in my small, beautiful apartment as Gershwin floats out open, spring windows.

"(You're My) Soul and Inspiration" Righteous Brothers-Single

Man, where do I begin with this song and these boys? I guess I could start when my neighbor and I went to see Top Gun in the theaters, I was around nine years old and my neighbor who was an FBI agent told me that if I wanted to be a pilot in the Navy I needed to study as they didn't let morons fly their jets. At the time I said to him in my mind "Dude I am going to play pro hockey, I don't care about that crap". And I would go onto to try to fulfill that dream.

For some reason along the line I thought about joining the Navy and flying. I did that, went to flight school in Pensacola where so many amazing men had treaded. I met a great bunch of boys, hell, some of the best men I have ever met in my life. We would study hard, fly our asses off and drink to get rid of the stress every night at the Florabama right on that line and stumble back to my house on the beach for the early morning brief, which I would stumble through and fake my way through flights I was barely prepared for everyday.

After flight school I received orders to San Diego. I went out there before my peers, went to SERE school only to make it out in time for my best friend's arrival to town. He drove straight from Pensacola to the bar in San Dog where we met and started skulling Sapphire and Tonics. Standing around the bar these two chicks came up and started talking to us, we told them what we did for a living and they asked us to sing "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" to them. For some reason we did and casted aside whatever apprehensions we had to eventually spend a blissful weekend at the Hotel Del Coronado drinking and rolling around in the sand.

The funny thing is in our world everyone wrote off "Top Gun" as the cheesiest of cheez, while outside of the fact that it was in no way true to form, I love that movie. I love when he goes to see Charlie at her small cottage in Mission Beach, the ending of which the picture above takes place at Kansas City BBQ which has now burned down. I remember going there one day, and having to go there with my leather jacket on and aviator glasses, how my life had turned into a fantastic movie and how I reveled in it while the sun was streaking in through cloudy windows.

And it was amazing, flying jets in San Diego, running wild, playing golf weekly, surfing the La Jolla reefs in my spare time between studying and flying.

I think and hope that atmosphere still exists. I hope there are still mechanized cowboys running low levels through the desert, getting wasted at the I Bar with sunglasses on. I hope there are still guys running around like Socks and Toby that are keeping the tradition alive. I hope there are guys shooting the TACAN to 27 in the May Grey to the numbers and following it up at the bar before they serenade some lass at a Gas Lamp bar in the sweet SoCal air. And that when they come home they throw on this song because it is one of the most beautiful and inspiring songs in existence.

Man they were some good days, roaming around in a flight suit, flying and having a grand old time while B+9 and Letteri told salty old sea stories at at the debriefing table. We were kings of the world living our lives in a romantic haze a few hundred feet off of the Pacific. I wish those boys were around me at this time, I wish Doo Doo and I could head downtown and drink till black out until we had to find Cooper wandering through the streets of downtown San Diego. I wish we had Patches to make fun of and watch him drive down into oncoming traffic on the five while we were laughing and pissing ourselves. How Slackey would come out and we'd get a steak at G5 under the portrait of Duke Cunningham and Wille "Irish" Driscol, the last aces from Vietnam.

The Navy has tried to take to romance out of being a carrier aviator, they moved TOPGUN up to Nevada, gave up the base in Miramar and shut down fixed wing aviation out of North Island. Those motherfuckers will never know what they gave away and how amazing it made us feel to be a part of a fraternity of which so many wanted to be a part of, now it is just a bunch of XBox douche bags who fly by the numbers and go home to study NATOPS.

But they were heady days back then and we ran it full out without consequences, for me I did the nightly portion of my life while listening to this song with a gin and tonic in hand, eating mystic rolls at Bistro D'Asia until I staggered home to a home on the beach with the Pacific wafting in through open windows next to a raven Southern California Native. It was everything we ever thought it would be and more and whenever we get on the horn and bullshit, those days always come up as I assume they always will until we are sitting around in diapers with our teeth flapping in the breeze needing the same DLC we utilized on the ball, but our attitudes will never change and we will always be running the ragged edge of control until they sprinkle our ashes over that Point Loma hill under seven Marines taking aim towards the sky.

"Primeval Rhythm of Life" Mandango-Black Rite

This soundtrack is blaring while I am watching the second half of Apocalypse Now Redux. It's heavy, it is the scene when they are at the bridge at the Cambodian boarder and everything is spiraling out of control, the shit is so thick you can walk on it while Lance is painting his face and the Captain is trying to maintain some military bearing.

I found this song earlier in the day watching a surfing video which in some way ties into the Apocalypse Now theme. Just as Conrade before us the path up the river gets stranger and stranger, more surreal while everything gets hairier and hairier. There's flares shot at the boat, one of the men just died, the Chief is freaking out while the tape plays his mother's voice as they cry over a man's dead body.

War is the breakdown of all cultural mores, it is what happens when man becomes an animal and because of that there is no logical conclusion that can be drawn from the actions made inside of its sphere. Many people would say that it is wrong and not the way of our civilized society but in the past four thousand years of written history there have only been around two hundred and forty years of total peace. Man is made to destroy each other. Those that disagree are only living in a false reality. Do we like it? Of course not, I would rather be holding hands with my brother, running around naked with beautiful blonds listening to Jazz. But this is the world we have to live in and it is the world in which we make our stake.

This song tracks its history to the ancestral roots of African natives and the beat that emerged on the plains thousands of years ago. And make no mistake about it, regardless of what your school books tell you, it was violent. It was despicable and it was every man for himself. Today we look at death as if it was something in the ether that would never transpire, years ago it was a fact of life. The fact that death has been subjugated for worse in our society and the fact that we place it out of our minds leads to more death, more insensitivity which leads to the constant killing of men before their time. Men who wanted nothing more than to live their lives, get laid and have a drink before bed; after which they would rise to work their jobs at the factory.

It's a heavy thought, but then again life is quite heavy. Whether it is Colonel Kurtz at the end of our journey or some other political diatribe all should know that the end will come. At the very least let's hope the soundtrack is as funky as the track in this title.

Off to Sea Once More-Traditional

Out in the blue water there are some monsters in the deep. They'll take you down into their realm, for a human meaning death. They'll test your endurance, your ability to cope with the cold and sea-sickening rocking in which even the old salts will put down their glass of rum and start staring at the horizon.

I've had a lot of experience in this realm, mostly when I was younger, chasing the leviathan through the waters a hundred miles offshore where the canyons begin and the gulf stream meanders its way up into the northeast pushing warmer water towards the shore for the Benny's enjoyment. While not chasing the mammalian leviathan and rather the fish version of the water borne species, particularly Marline, Tuna, Swordfish and Shark the intensity of the pursuit is no different.

I've spent many months at sea both on civilian and military vessels, many months with the time wasting away watching the different permutations of the water, the sun's refractions, the harsh reality that exists in a world where if you are not on that vessel, that home and personal piece of small land, you are dead. In all my years as a surfer I never experienced something as heavy as being at sea in a small boat during a gale. At the very least while surfing there is the sanctuary of land if you can only hold on just a bit longer; in the deep you can't hold on long enough to survive.

And when I hear this song I think of these things. Of men from a time when there was no Gore-Tex, no neoprene or modern technological advances to shield one from the elements. There was only waxed cotton, tweed and wool. Just as George Mallory summited Everest in what we would call traditional shooting tweeds and buy at Orvis or Holland and Holland the men who roamed the seas searching for oil had little creature comforts.

"Off to Sea Once More" is a darker side, though the side we know is dark enough, of being a mariner, a whaler, back when that was the only way to procure the greasy substance worth more than gold. The "Gloucester Sleigh Ride" was fully known and experienced by most, the waking in the morning sans money and clothes, taken by the woman you had laid down with the night before, the hatred that entity which has taken the life of so many of you comrades.

In the end we derive all from the sea, we came from it in the primordial soup, and eventually we return, whether that be from it taking our lives or the disintegration of our corpses and seepage into the water table and eventually flowing into the seas. Whatever the reason we will end up in that realm with the giants who we've challenged in our living lives and in listening to this shanty one feels the terrible dread that existed and made this land what it is today while in its infancy. Gloucester was the Houston or Saudi Arabia of its day, the biggest oil boom town reaching its arms out and granting asylum in its new breasts under cover of safety. Those that chose only found heartache and death, those who did not never knew of the adventure that could possibly lay in front of them. For us those days are over never to be returned, at least we can grab a taste of the dread in this song.

"Lazybones" Jerry Garcia Band-Live Bootleg

I think one of the coolest things I have ever heard was when Hoagy Carmichael called up Keith Richards and told him that the way he sings "The Nearness of You" was the exact way he pictured it being sung when he wrote the song. Here it was two men from totally different time periods, totally different genres and two totally different personalities coming together in an understanding about the way music was meant to be made. If you don't much about the man then just take a look at Hoagy Carmichael's page. He was not only the writer of such epic songs as "Stardust" (which is the most covered song in history) but also "Heart and Soul" and "Georgia on My Mind". In addition, his likeness was what Ian Flemming used to describe his young secret agent, James Bond.

Tonight though the reason why I started with "The Nearness of You" was I was jonesing for some Keith and also in a pretty sad mood. Sentimental, feeling sorry for myself after an emotional day just wondering what the hell was going on in my current state; a state of waking up at eleven and doing a lot while still doing nothing all day. With that and maybe a product of it in and of itself, trying to snag someone who....

Well I'll just tell you the story. I was at a restaurant a few months back and couldn't take my eyes of this woman. Truly couldn't even act normal around her because of the vibe that she was giving me, I stared with longing and fear of what she was bringing out of me. She was with a man and I just left with the gentleman I was dining with and tried to put it out of my mind. When I returned to the restaurant I found that she had left her number for me. I called her and we planned to get together. On that day we were to meet, someone from my past who had found out about the situation the day prior as well as her number called her and scared her off with me knowing no idea of what she said to her about our past relationship and how she twisted it to meet her needs and spite. I tried to patch the situation to no avail. But I called again months later and she never called back. More months transpired and with the reliability of cell phones mine broke and her number was lost in the process.

Then a week ago I thought of her again, requested some old phone bills and set to the task of finding her number to call her again, frantically looking up area codes and calling similar ones to try to track her down and hoping she'd take a chance. Tonight I finally did and she actually answered, she had no idea who it was and her end was loud, horns and traffic in the background, we couldn't hear each other and she said she'd call back. She never did. Of course she determined after the fact that it was me and acted as she saw fit. So with that I headed to the gym and blocked her (again) from my mind. A few martinis after the fact I couldn't ask my brain to be up to said task, couldn't tell the man I was drinking with and simply came home and threw on Keith crooning "Nearness".

While listening to it I thought about Hoagy and the story I heard which I began this post with, and then I remembered "Lazybones". I remembered it because I had a show of the Jerry Garcia Band which was the most perfect version, the most perfect song in so many ways I have ever heard. And I looked back at the last time I had that show in my possession and utilized it accordingly.

My first junior year of college, living in an apartment after the hockey season was over and my days consisted of drinking, drinking, working out and more drinking. Boston may have some of the most terrible weather on the planet but in the spring there are a few weeks before it becomes too humid to walk where it is perfect. I skated, hit the weights on campus and walked out in Rainbow sandals, t-shirt and loose jeans feeling exhausted, strolled back to my apartment and grabbed an ice cold beer out of the cooler that I always had in my room which is far superior to any fridge, there's something about pulling a glass bottle out of 32.1 degree water. With the windows open, the sparrows chirping, I pressed play on my Aiwa and the slow meter of this song came spilling out through the speakers strategically placed around the apartment.

I fell into that pre-sleep haze that can only be experienced laying on the couch with the spring air perambulating and wafting through four walls, the streaks of the sun warming my bare legs while the bottle cooled my hand that was not down my pants. The pre-sleep environment, the selective hearing of highs, the full octave difference in Jerry's Guitar hitting me as he played to the twenty fourth fret and further on...his liquid chromatic scale solos dribbling in and out of the light and finding their way into my ears.

I never did find that bootleg show, and like the woman I called tonight maybe it is better to not ruin the moment and think about what could be if you had it/her in your possession. Nonetheless I still wish I had that show and those notes pouring out of my speakers while I laid on the couch with her on my chest in the beautiful spring sunshine.

"East Virginia Blues" Black Crowes-Live at the Fillmore San Francisco

Along the North Carolina boarder there are some of the most beautiful roads and country you could ever wish for. There are people who are friendly and hospitable, people who are in no way like their "Deliverance" counterparts are portrayed on the screen; the person who wrote that book was a massive racist and hater of all things southern. When you awake in the Great Smokey Mountains there's a slight haze surrounding the bottom quarter of those beautiful hills that waft through the valleys, the pines and flowing rivers that meander their way out towards the great Atlantic.

From this land comes a musical tradition that dates back before The Carter Family, towards bluegrass roots where the only entrainment was each other, a guitar and a banjo. "East Virginia Blues" has encompassed my mind since my friend sent it to me a week ago. It boggles and enlightens in the most visceral way. Written by said Carter Family it encompasses such beautiful songs that are credited to "Traditional" such as "Rosa Lee McFall", "Dark Hollow" and "Going Down the Road Feeling Bad" all driven into the lexicon by the Dead, Dylan and the great traditional songwriters and performers that have made musical history.

I've seen The Black Crowes multiple times, seen them together, with Jimmy Page and all the other iterations they have been over the years. They never disappoint, they are the quintessential Rock and Roll band that were born of this great land and sing out into the ether of the muddy river that is American music.

So as I sit here listening to this song over and over I am reminded of this great land, the people that make it as such and more so after a visit to my friend who sent me this tune in Nashville how I strapped into the old Porsche and made my way towards the Tail of the Dragon in those beautiful mountains, where for eleven miles there are 316 turns on the precipice of disaster, in the rain and ice I drove through the blackness not knowing where the next turn would lead me; dreaming of some dark haired maiden living in the shack I just blew by waiting for her escape from the hills and towards greener pastures. How she and I would build our lives on the solidity that was formed by time engaged in such a land that carved those hills and how perfect it would all turn out in the end. Just as the clarity of those Martin extra light strings resonated through the cherry wood of the Taylor that was being played in the background as I thought of such things, I saw her as an apparition before me.

In the end I would traverse through that land without finding her and continue through the darkness alone with only a slide solo for companionship and a whining Chris Robinson voice to keep me company. Maybe it is better that way, maybe in the end it is better to never have one's dreams realized and to keep searching for that carrot dangled before one's eyes. It keeps you hard, it keeps you on your toes. But for now sitting here with some old time-home grown whiskey delivered by a southern friend in my veins and a solid dip of Copenhagen in my lip while watching Gerry Lopez mastering Pipe, well, it is about all you can ask for outside of that maiden laying her head in my lap while I take it all in during the late hours of the night while the city pulses through its own veins around me.

"Amarillo By Morning" George Strait

I just returned home from a night at the gym followed by four martinis at a local place where one of my favorite bartenders was actually sitting at the bar and not working behind it. The moral conflict between hitting on a bartender was lingering in the air and the question remains was she really a bartender tonight or just another woman sitting at the bar having a drink? I don't know.

Before she sat down I was emailing one of my best friends and talking about another trip. A year ago we did a trip from the west to the east through some of the most beautiful, open and free places in this not so free anymore country.

I came home after the bar and put this song on, loud enough that my French neighbor probably heard it, busted out the acoustic and played it a dozen times over. It is a fun song to play with an interesting chord progression and a fantastic bridge, a key change that brings it all home.

But the technical details of this simple song are not what matters at this time in the night. What matters is the run we made from Santa Fe through Amarillo all the way to Nashville in an Audi that was a few years old with myself at the helm penetrating the darkness as we made our way through the breadbasket of America.

Before we left for that stretch we had drinks at Evangelo's on San Francisco street in Santa Fe, a bar with a very long and famous history...one of those places that you only find on the road. We traversed from there to the Cadillac Ranch simply because there was a Springsteen song written about the place; waded our way through the Texas clay out towards those ten cars all of which are positioned at an angle corresponding to the Great Pyramids of Giza in the hurling northern winds whipping across the barren landscape. Had a steak at the Big Texan where we watched a man try to eat a 72 ounce steak, dinner roll and a salad in one short hour.

Out there on the road it is pure. It is everything one could ever dream it could be with a good friend and a road that goes on forever. Even so those 895 miles of Texas passed through the windshield far too soon and we were out of the promised land into Arkansas and eventually Tennessee where we had George Jones on the radio preaching about the horrors of a lost love.

Nothing compared to the time when I shot the video above. Running across the panhandle with a snooze of Copenhagen in towards some distant goal that only existed in our fantasies. There is no end point and there is no goal. Like Homer before us it is the journey that is the point and not the destination. You don't have to get existential or metaphysical about it, you just have to do it and get your ass out there and see what the road has for you in store. A man that is free...there's nothing more noble and I promise you the ride it won't disappoint.

"It's Not My Cross to Bear" Allman Brother's Band-Peaking at the Beacon

I was barely 18 and a few of the boys and I drove down to my Uncle's place in Myrtle Beach to play some golf and just get loose. We knew it would be difficult to score booze so we bought fifty cases of beer and loaded them in the back of a Ford Ranger pickup. Two boys were in that ride and the other two rode down in another friend's Jetta that would eventually be crashed at 65 miles per hour around a telephone pole on a road in Jersey. Miraculously the friend driving it at that time walked away from the accident drunk, waited it out at a diner and then headed back to the scene of the crime with no injuries and no ramifications from the law.

It was an excellent trip, one for the records, especially when we left South Carolina at midnight and drove down to Key West for another week without planning. I sang Karaoke at Rick's and we left with three older women who took us around town including "Teaser's" Strip club and eventually ended at "Barefoot Bob's" which was a Deadhead bar that was eventually closed down because of the drug trade they were operating out of the back room. We drove home from Key West straight back to NJ and dizzy with hangovers, lulled into the malaise of the night I remember locking up the brakes to a dead stop on 95 because I thought the reflectors in the middle of the road were headlights. The whole trip: an experience? You bet your ass.

One night I remember we were on The Strand in Myrtle Beach and wandered into a bar that accepted our fake IDs. We were slamming beers when this big hulk of a man came by and asked for a dip from a tin of Copenhagen that was on our table. He asked for a pinch and said he'd buy us a round. We gave it to him and then bought him a round. Back and forth we traded rounds until he and his group of equally massive men asked us to roll with them to another place where there was some "trim". These guys were all over six four and three hundred pounds, they were the O line from NC's football team and were in a mood to rage. We followed and rolled into this bar running the show with no consequences. No one was a problem with these boys and we certainly took advantage of the back we had.

Of course we went home alone and drunk to our cases of beer we had stashed in the fridge. As a group we had done Allman shows throughout high school. I'll never forget seeing my 15 year old sister shitfaced wandering though the crowd when I never knew she was even attending. I'll never forget walking out of the bathroom in jean, cowboy boots and a skin tight black t-shirt and this biker chick grabbing me to stick her tongue down my throat and telling me how hot I was....at seventeen this was a big deal.

But the music was the real reason we were there and while the Allman's setlists became banal over the years and one could usually expect what was going to be played there was this one time when they ripped out this gem and brought then entire house down.

Greg was sitting there at his Hammond B-3 organ with the three Solo cups atop, from what I was told by a roadie he would not step out on stage without them. Two cups were straight Vodka and the other was ice water. With his long hair flowing in the hot New Jersey night he laid down this track while we stood there on the lawn aghast at the phrasing and sincerity of a song about a bad woman and the ramifications of her and his departure.

Flash back to South Carolina and the post NC linemen at the bar activities. We slid out of a DUI on the drive back home and of course for some reason had our Awia machine installed at the residence, put that thing on Karaoke setting and my boy Bobby belted out this song. He drew out that first "Sat down and wrote you a long letter..." screaming it from the top of his lungs. We were dying of laughter and that sense that comes around so few times of the world being at one's fingertips. The cops were called and we talked our way out of it, we slammed more Shafers that were dripping with ice cold water from the cooler and sat out on the balcony with the muggy lowland humidity steaming up the windows dipping Copenhagen and bullshitting about what we were gonna do and how the world was going to bow at our fingertips.

I never knew what Gregg was singing about until I sat down and wrote her a long letter, and the one after that. I never knew that there were crosses to be borne and what the hell he was singing about when we screamed it that night before the cops came. But with time the blues speaks to you in ways that you never though possible.

In the end it was a trip of a lifetime and eventually we would all fall apart. The Allmans would as well, Dickey would leave as well as Warren Haynes. The way of the world it may be but it was a lot better before we were nailed to that cross and stepped through that door in the floor that is experience.