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Sunday, June 26, 2005
NEW YORK CITY
John Lennon
1972 Demo
Released on the Anthology Box Set in 1998
[Buy It]
I'M WAITING FOR MY MAN
The Velvet Underground
Live 1969 Vol. 1
Mercury : 1974
[Buy It]
SOMETIMES I RHYME SLOW
Nice & Smooth
Ain't A Damn Thing Changed
Def Jam : 1992
[Buy It]
BIG CITY BLUES
Wynonie Harris
Aladdin : 1947
Available on the Rockin' The Blues Box Set
[Buy It]
ONE MONKEY DON'T STOP NO SHOW
Joe Tex
Atlantic : 1964
Available on The Very Best of Joe Tex
[Buy It]
ROMEO HAD JULIETTE
Lou Reed
New York
Sire : 1989
[Buy It]
LET'S GET RID OF NEW YORK
Yo Lo Tengo
Live @ Rhino Records in New Paltz, NY
9/7/1991
[Find It]
Midway through the NYC-centered mini-mix you'll find above, Wynonie "Mr. Blues" Harris describes a city that'll "make you do things that nobody understands." I wonder if he means paying $2,300 a month for your studio apartment, $350 for that pair of perfectly distressed jeans, and eight bucks for the pack or Parliaments you smoked during a Smith Street bar crawl that reintroduced you to the half dozen people you'd normally pay to avoid?
I've lived in the city, on-and-off, for twenty-five years - two or three of them probably took a decade from the other end of my life. But aside from passing infatuations with Memphis and Nairobi, I've never considered living anywhere else. I'm not sure why that is: NYC living takes a toll on your health, your relationships, your ability to earn enough money to leave NYC when the mood strikes you (or the weather gets to be as unbearable as it was this weekend). On the other hand, walking across the Brooklyn Bridge at sunset, risking your life on the Cyclone (and following it up with a bottle of wine of Brighton Beach), or just staying up late and drunk with your closest friends (who tend to be so brilliant that you're humbled in their presence, but try your best to keep up), can make the whole thing seem worthwhile.
So today and tomorrow, a salute to my much-maligned and perpetually in-decline hometown.
Three of the seven tracks I've posted reference 125th Street in Harlem: Nice & Smooth find themselves on 125 & St. Nick; The Velvets score smack on 125 & Lex, and Wynonie Harris comes to 125th & Eighth Avenue, and discovers that, even in 1947, "New York will turn a man into a woman/And a woman into a man." "One Monkey Don't Stop No Show" isn't the most honest song about the city (things do happen like that in NY, and they happen like that all the time), but thanks in part to the nod to James Brown, it is my favorite Joe Tex song. And "Romeo and Juliette" is as good as Lou Reed got after breaking up the Velvets, and the closest he came to realizing his lizard-brain street-poet persona:
'Caught Between the twisted stars,
The plotted lines, the faulty map
That brought Columbus to New York
Betwixt between the East and West he
Calls on her wearing a leather vest
The earth squeals and shudders to a halt
"Let's Get Rid of NY" is a Randoms song Yo La Tengo used to cover once in a while. (I'm not sure they've done it since 9/11, which put a new spin on: "Fashion that is always fashion/Airplanes that are always crashin'/People askin' 'how'm I doin?'/I think NY is just a ruin!") Tomorrow, part two, with songs by Cab Calloway, Olu Dara, Jim Carroll, Bob Dylan, and Big Star.Labels: alex
posted by Alex
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