The Snapshot Chronicles: 7/12/16

Posted: July 12th, 2016 | Filed under: Music, Ruminations, Snapshot Chronicles | 1 Comment »

chron

Another Mule (Triangle Park). Kim’s back in town. So he and Monk and Barry and Don and Nick and Michael, whose jokes are corny as ever, but a smidge less blue, got it together for another reunion gig we’ve never expected.

The boys practiced and it showed, kicking it in from the first note. The tuneage rang as true as the perfectly delightful summer night.

Two hours of familiar faces, reminders of forgotten moments from back in the day, and old folks boogie.

We’d a stayed all night if they’d a let us.

Send in the lawyers, guns and money/ the shit’s still hittin’ the fan.

“Hurt” Timi Yuro. The car’s been sitting on a black asphalt parking lot for several hours in the middle of sunny, hot in the 90s day. I forgot to crack the windows open.

The V Dub’s interior is hot at Blue Dog’s baking ovens.

I crank the AC to 11. Just then, Ms. Timi comes on the box, with so much chilling ache in her voice, the Fahrenheit drops immediately. An ache so shivering, her singing gives up. She’s suffering so, her voice quivers, she halting says to her lover with a cracking in her throat, “much more than you’ll ever know/ Yes, Darlin’, I’m so hurt.

“Chasing Cars” Snow Patrol. It’s a sophomoric, soporific tune from this Northern Irish outfit.

We’ll do it all/ Everything/ On our own/ We don’t need/ Anything/ Or anyone/ If I lay here/ If I just lay here/ Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Yet the throng at some rock fest shown on MTV Live were locked in, knew all the lyrics, and sang ’em loud. To the extent that scraggly bearded lead singer Gary Lightbody, obviously overwhelmed by the adoration, put both hands over his head, and stared vocal-less at the multitudes, in wonderment, with an endearing geez-they-really-love-us grin on his face, as they sang his words at him.

It was all kind of endearing even though the group’s music bores me.

I’ve been in two audiences that did the same. Chuck Berry at Louisville Gardens in ’70. But that was actually a sing along. Berry knew/knows how important he is, and he kept singing. And at a Simon & Garfunkel show when Art’s voice was a croak, and the audience lovingly sang his parts.

“Go up there to the fork and take a right. You’ll come to Lexington Road. Take another right. Then another right at the first light, which is Alta Vista. Follow that as it goes over a hill and down into the park. Lots of big houses with big lawns. It ends at the park. Take a left and you’ll come right to Big Rock.” Those are the directions I didn’t give the couple lost in Cherokee Park on the way to a family outing. Instead I kept trying to figure out how to route them through the park from the rugby/ Frisbee field, which can be a maze, even for those who have been traversing it their whole life.

Finally we gave up. They went on their way, befuddled. And, as soon as they drove off, I thought of that simple route.

I hope that little tow head in the back seat got to visit with his Uncle Tommy, which he kept repeating was his aim for the day.

If he does, it was with no help from me.

“We Do Not Support Your School” Alta Vista Road. Had those weary travelers taken the high road on Alta Vista, they would have seen the “low road,” a plethora of signs that have popped up like kudzu, along the street, one of the Highlands’ most bucolic, with its manses, large lawns and canopy of shade trees.

Seems as if some folks have purchased one of those estates, with the intent to open Stonecoat Sudbury School, with its no discipline necessary agenda. No curriculum. No tests or grades. No principal.

The well to do residents of this sidwalkless parkway haven’t been this put upon, since they built I-64 back when, cutting right through their serenity.

The idea of a bunch of urchins, playing soccer or volleyball on a front lawn in their hood has put them in Not In My Neighborhood Apoplexy.

“Blow – An ’80s Love Story” Jay McInerney (Esquire Aug, ’16). You’d think that McInerney might have found something to write about after all these years, other than doing coke in an NYC SoHo loft in order to boff your bestie’s GF.

Apparently not.

— c d kaplan


One Comment on “The Snapshot Chronicles: 7/12/16”

  1. 1 Richard said at 3:33 pm on July 12th, 2016:

    Love this Timi Yuro song! Pain. Anguish. The Blues! This is some brown-liquor-drinking music!


Leave a Comment