A few nights ago I was at Rose Bar in the early evening. It is the best time to head out there before the "crowd" gets there and ruins the vibe, crowds the fireplace and enforces the Manhattan club scene of too hip and far too cool to even be there aura. There's no sleek blond with sunglasses on who tells everyone she is a model but in reality is a waitress from Ohio who failed and now gives herself up late in the night for rent in her LES 300 square foot apartment. At that time there is also few boys who claim to be Managing Directors at Goldman or the washed up drugged up douche bags who keep telling said blond that they are designers working on their new line and "of course beautiful I may be able to get you on the runway, Richie Rich is a close personal friend of mine and last week I was out at Schnabel's place in Montauk." Earlier in the night there is none of that bullshit, which is the way I like it.
For a while I was caught up in that bullshit, waist high with porous waiders trying pretend that it was the place I needed to be, for of course this was the town and there was primo trim hanging around regardless of how high it piled, it was worth it in the end. Somewhere along the line I stopped caring and when that waif Ohio slut started telling me about her next gig I decided to call bullshit on it, walk home and take care of myself without the hassle of dealing with her and her ego which I would be hard pressed to fit into my apartment.
So on that early night I was lubed up and feeling high, sitting at the bar with an an acquaintance flapping about various things. Facing the bar on the right in that back corner was the DJ who was straight off the J and Q line via fixed gear bike, thick black rimmed fake glasses, flannel shirt and black skin tight jeans with headphones the size of stage monitors around his head grooving to whatever the fuck it was he though fit the mood.
When all hope was lost I heard an A minor come through the speakers, it oozed blues corrupted by acid fueled days of schizophrenia and electroconvulsive therapy, shearing vibrato and ten second sustains. I knew the song within an instant even though I couldn't place the name. It reeked of Clapton without the ego and hearkened back to the days of Mike Bloomfield and John Mayall, the Bluesbreakers, and a faithful Les Paul doing the dirty work.
Peter Green was the one of the founders of the epic fuck-each other literally-band Fleetwood Mac. Back when he was at the helm it was significantly more blues inspired, before Stevie's flowing scarves and while great, such indulgent songs as Landslide and Lindsey Buckingham's beautiful fingerpicking.
In truth it made me want to leave Rose Bar and hole up in my place, burn some incense, spark a spliff and eventually take a few tabs while I watched the walls melt around me in a chromatic haze of melody worms burrowing into my brain. To sit there incapacitated, shirtless in baggy jeans while a different, skinner blond with iron pressed hair in a headband reeking of patruli and unshaven armpits dosing on E grabbed and groped as I laid there motionless entranced in the experience.
There's something about this groove that is so perfectly fit for nights such as those, while they are far behind in my past I can recall those days, days in which that hipster spinning off in the corner has no knowledge or experience of, I still can't even fathom how he knew of this song to begin with and I must say the fact that he put it on in such a false atmosphere detracts from the work somewhat, cheapens it and makes me want to take it out of my vinyl collection.
But then again I come home and put it on in the long hours and think of those days, Peter isn't the one who sold it out, the world has sold out around him and because of that our children will never know such debaucherous, hedonistic bliss in its purest form such as I have, rather it will be a constant reaching, imitation of a past time when musicians had the balls to take their own progressions and creations to the level they envisioned in such narcotic inspired hazes.
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