richard Thompson – East Hollywood Blues

In East Hollywood, Karaoke is no longer an event at a party or something you go to a bar in K-Town and rent a room to do with 30 or so of your closest friends. In the neighborhood it’s become exactly like the Influenza Outbreak of 1918; a disease that’s infecting everybody, everything and bathing everyday can’t save one from the inevitable artistic death it promises. Man Bun, A Line and all their pals have diseased my 40 something neighbor Liz from Manila and all her just off the boat friends.

Trust me when I tell you the Filipino Karaoke was going strong last night, with a heart stopping sharp then flat then sharp then flat version of Passionate Kisses as the nominal high point. As the singer warbled the final “passionate kisses from you” in Filipino accented English, I tried to slip by Liz’s apartment unnoticed and run off to find my destiny, something that passed for it or some peace and quiet although I would have settled for an overhead helicopter sortie anything but another song damaged by a sharp then flat then sharp then flat reduction, in the cool, humid East Hollywood night.

Liz found me just as I put my right foot on the top stair.

“Come in and sing a song,” she said.

I tapped my watch. “I’m late.”

“Then come in and have something to eat,” she said in her sing song lilt opening the outer black security gate that doubles as a front door.

I always have a quick 2 second pang of guilt every time I turn down the offer to get something to eat; I am the scion of two immigrant cultures where food is love and getting up to scream out White Light/White Heat while spitting crumbs of Crumbs from a Salami sandwich to a neighborhood full of Millennials that just don’t get it has a certain delicious irony then I always remember what these Filipino Karaoke sessions are really for: a Fundy prayer group for the anointed assembled. I looked in the apartment. Everyone was thumbing through a Karaoke list or a King James Bible . I don’t think this group would welcome or understand a lecture on the mistranslation of YHWH as Jehovah.

“I’m sorry Liz, at this moment I’m not of the persuasion to pray in the Protestant fashion,” I said.

“We have the Persuasions don’t we,” she asked someone in the apartment.

I thanked her profusely and made my escape into the February darkness.

When I got to the corner it hit me Liz either has something by Brooklyn’s own Persuasions or, at the very least, Persuasion by Richard Thompson. If so, that was one hip room back there. Perhaps I’d made a mistake. As I crossed the street a quick strain of ‘My Girl’ broke through the tops of the trees.

Persuasion, Temptation same thing, right?

The 30 Something Leggy Brunette sent me the gift of music today via iTunes. Her note was full of concern for my well-being.

“I’m sorry you have to spend the 15th alone. Try not to get too depressed, I’ll be home soon. My stepfather played this song ‘Deacon Blues’ and it totally reminded me of you. Listen to it and think of me. Love you baby!”

She actually bought me Aja, I thought. I haven’t owned that album in years. I was truly touched somewhere in the depths of my pitch-black soul. I clicked on the appropriate Get Your Gift now button and found my brand spanking new MP3 waiting for me: Steely Dan’s Greatest Hits. It’s the thought that counts.

The 15th is a date I’ve tried hard to forget for the last 2 years and nothing’s worked. I tried blowing all the bad shit out of my brain but it all came back after I got hungry in the eighth hour of the field trip to my frontal lobes. Crawling down to the bottom of a Jim Beam bottle proved to be a liver not memory eraser so I was forced to trust in time.

The Once and Future Ex went back to New York to see her family for the holidays and except for a text telling me she had arrived safely on December 24 decided to cut off contact – ghosting as the kids call it. There were no Facebook updates, Tweets or any return calls to my many voice mail messages. I moped around the house for a couple of weeks grappling with the knowledge my marriage was indeed over. We had been dancing around the topic of a separation for months and let’s face it you are never surprised when love dies and a relationship ends.

The surprise came on the 15th. My production partner threw me several texts telling me to go to her Facebook page ASAP. The Once and Future Ex had finally posted, sharing a link to a National Geographic documentary on polyamorous marriages. “Come see me and my new life partners,” she enthused. I clicked on the link and at the 22:34 mark there was the Once and Future Ex telling the documentarian why she left me for a man and a woman. “I was so bored in my marriage. He was too Career oriented and had no time for me. I wanted an adventure with someone who wanted to be with me.”

At that exact moment while I looked out over my Michael Mann view of Culver City wishing my filthy hand crank panes from 1954 were a Bay window with rain droplets gently hitting the glass because it seemed like a classier way to find out you were betrayed by the best since Brutus, the doorbell rang. I opened my large white door and was served with divorce papers. And of course just when I thought it couldn’t get more humiliating and embarrassing, the sympathy texts/calls started. After they were done I couldn’t get off the couch for a week. So much for sterner stuff.

‘Deacon Blues’ didn’t seem to fit my mood. However Bob Mould’s bloody howl of pain to begin the Golden Palomino’s ‘Dying From the Inside Out’ worked nicely. As my memory amped up the pain of two years previous, I looked through my bookshelf for a glimmer of anything that tuned me on to go 30 years earlier. Jim Carroll didn’t seem right and I couldn’t find my copy of ‘Men Without Women.’

Finally, after listening to Richard Thompson’s side winding outro solo with Anton Fier’s bombastic yet jazzy drum fills for what seemed to be the twelfth time, I tired of the misery and put on ‘Deacon Blues.’ Although I could see how this would remind my dark haired, olive skinned, blue eyed friend of my youthful self she never knew – I did always dream of being able to blow a cool blues in the afternoon just like Miles in between bouts of stomach flu in January of 1987 – the loser aspect of the song always bothered me. I was never a loser, an aspiring bohemian but never a loser until I was ghosted, left, forgotten and had the letter L tattooed on my forehead. I can hear you saying aren’t you a huge Leonard Cohen fan? Yes, I am but unlike Lenny I have never found beauty in the aforementioned condition.

So after the third time through the song, I perused my iTunes looking for Dean Benedetti’s recordings of Charlie Parker’s solo’s or maybe ‘Candy Says’ by the Velvet Underground, something to placate my thirsty, aging bohemian soul. Suddenly from across the driveway I heard something, a karaoke tune played in Jamaican dub style with a familiar, horribly fractured melody. It was ‘Deacon Blues.’

“That’s my new go to karaoke tune,” Man Bun said moments after the song mercifully ended.

“That is so cool. Did you know Steely Dan is named after an early version of the Rabbit vibe? I read it in the liner notes to their Great Hits MP3,” A-Line enthused.

It seems in my corner of East Hollywood a man can’t have a Mid Life Crisis without a karaoke soundtrack.

I am bereft.