Observe, to my left, 1970's singer-songwriter Boz Scaggs. What does ol' Boz here have in common with left socks and car keys? Scroll down to the bottom of this post to find out.
***************************************
When people ask me where I'm from, I have difficulty answering. I was born in Jacksonville, Florida, but grew up at the Jersey Shore. Since the beginning of college, I've lived in a half-dozen other places in New Jersey and I also lived in Massachusetts for two years.
So is where I'm from where I'm "from" (like the "Born:" line on a baseball card)? Or is it "home" (like the place I have listed on my driver's license)? As a result of this strange, almost-paradoxical problem I have, people will ask me perhaps one of the simplest questions in the world to answer ... and I will exhibit the kind of difficulty in answering it one might expect from a developmentally-challenged first grader.
The things I am good at do not make me smart - they make me barely function at adult life. I'd be better off having talent at knitting.
***************************************
Without sounding too romantic (which I know isn't manly, and I have to be manly in the OTHER parts of a blog post where I'm executing a Boz Scaggs running gag) - I love the Jersey Shore, and I've completely forgotten what it's like spending the summer within spitting distance of it.
Wait, you may argue, have you been to the Jersey Shore at all yet this summer? (Yes, I would reply, two times.) But hasn't the weather sucked all year? (Yes, except for three days since the end of the month of April. I spent both of these days at the Jersey Shore. So there!)
Even though the government is using its Evil Weather Machine to control our emotions and keep us in line, when the weather gets nicer - and it will - I plan on spending lots of time down the Shore this summer. People give the Jersey Shore a bad rap, and I suppose it makes sense. There are a lot of douchebags down there, but if you pick your spots correctly you can avoid most of them.
For instance, Long Beach Island is way tamer than Belmar. I'm 25 and now a little old and a little lame, so I definitely prefer bars/clubs on LBI to other places at the Jersey Shore. In addition to there being less douchebags (the higher cover charge and the fact that it's LBI deters them), LBI beach bars are legitimately on the beach and often have looser restrictions about what can be done on said beach. All in all, these are very good things.
(*ASIDE: It's a running theme between some of us on the Damaged, Inc. team that we're going to focus our resources and write a book about a summer at the Jersey Shore where we would presumably spend a lot of money in order to get drunk at a lot of different places. This book would basically consist of a lot of jotting down strange things that happened on a notepad, interviewing popped-collar douchebags and douche-baggy cover bands, and drinking all of the ingredients for vomit. Because this book may never happen, I'm making the concept public and if anyone wants to run with it, you just need to thank me in the acknowledgements.)
(*ASIDE: There was an article in the New York Times today about how Jersey Shore bars were starting to become classy. Fuck you, New York Times, and your faux-journalistic pretention! For instance, check out this quote:
“A lot of people don’t realize there’s Jersey after Atlantic City,” said [name redacted, for reasons to be made clear shortly], 32, of Manalapan Township, N.J., as she sipped a martini at Elements in Sea Bright, a restaurant with a lounge (including D.J.’s and bottle service) that opened in 2003.Yeah, I want you to contract AIDS and die in a fire, lady. Take your $12 martini and shove it up your ass lengthwise. If I'm paying more than half that for a drink - any drink - I'm going to be super pissed. People who want to spend recklessly in order to pretend to be cool have a place to live, and that place is Brooklyn. I suggest you move there.
[redacted], who goes to Elements three or four times a month, is a sales representative for a liquor distributor, and works with bars all over the state. “I wanted that Manhattan atmosphere at the Jersey Shore, to get dressed up and get a $10 or $12 martini,” she said.
And what's with that Atlantic City quote? Surely you doth not speak geographically? Because Atlantic City is not the first thing anyone (except for maybe 15,000 degenerate gamblers living in Chinatown) thinks of when they think of New Jersey. Fuck the heck are you talking about? /Rant.)
***************************************
To answer the Boz Scaggs randomness from earlier in this post: like left socks and car keys, people often completely forget Boz Scaggs' music.
There is a deja vu-type feeling that happens a lot to me and the rest of the Damaged, Inc. crew. We'll be at some bar somewhere, and we'll hear a random better-than-average song from the 1970's (e.g., America's "Sister Golden Hair"). Someone will immediately recognize that it's a good song and that its etymology should be recognized. Of course, we'll have no idea who performed the song.
Because we're precocious by nature, we ask someone (usually Brainpan, who has firsthand experience with the decade). At this point, we will be informed that the song is, in fact, "Sister Golden Hair" by America. We will then return to our cold beverages and all will be well.
(*ASIDE: In my opinion, this situation occurs way more frequently than it should. I think this is made worse because the New York City metropolitan area does not possess an unironic classic rock FM radio station. There is Q104.3, of course, but they care so much about trying to be hip that they only play the top 500 classic rock songs of all time. They're practically Z100 for old people, and there are already 4 Z100's in NYC, and that's enough. To be frank - and yes, I know I'm Fred - if it weren't for the part of my daily commute where I get to listen to Philadelphia rock radio, I would switch to satellite in a heartbeat.)
Anyway... getting back to Boz Scaggs. Boz had a couple of hits in 1976, one of which was a song called "Lido Shuffle". (Go ahead, click on the link. Put the song on and come right back here. It's a good song, right?) "Lido Shuffle" was my aural nemesis for the better part of a year. It was the Vader to my Skywalker. The Rommel to my Patton, if you will.
Over the past year, I heard this song in a number of different contexts - in a Wegman's grocery store in New Jersey; at Roggie's Bar and Grill in Brighton, Mass.; at a bar in Jacksonville Beach, Florida. Every place I went, "Lido Shuffle" followed me. The only problem was, I had no idea what "Lido Shuffle" was called.
Lots of different people had guesses. Most often, people guessed Chicago or Van Morrison (Van the Man was an especially good guess; if you listen carefully to the song, it's difficult to tell the voices apart). Unfortunately, all these guesses were wrong, and I remained flummoxed until May 14, 2009 (my last night in Boston).
Boston (like Sheboygan, Wisconsin, one would assume) has a better FM radio repertory than New York City. As an example, Boston has a radio station called Mike-FM (if you're from the NYC area and you remember Jack-FM, it's the same concept). Mike-FM is designed to be a mostly random, iTunes playlist of music. That last night in Boston, I heard "Lido Shuffle" on Mike-FM driving back to my apartment and was FINALLY able to online-search my way to the answer. I immediately downloaded the song on my iTunes and haven't gotten enough of it for the past month.
So, Boz Scaggs, you magnificent bastard, I've defeated you. Enjoy your royalties.
Stay classy.
No comments:
Post a Comment