June is Black Music Month -- Remember?

June is Black Music Month.

I first heard this tagline during my years as editor of black music at "music industry bible" Billboard in the late 1980s; heretofore I was unaware of any such celebration.

I was raised in New York City and blessed or cursed with the cynicism of natives of the metropolis; after a few years in the music biz I was quickly learning the warp and woof of the rather slick fabric undergirding the frothy array of the music industry. So I quickly attributed the proclamation of black music ascendancy for the month of June as an invention of the record industry itself – much as Valentine’s Day, Secretary’s Day, Mother’s Day and other heart and hearth holidays were inventions of the greeting card biz. I thought, Hey -- the kiddies were out of school for a glorious stretch of "hot fun in the summertime," and the season offered endless opportunities for music-infused vacation activities of all kinds. The record labels and their distribution companies – which in the '80s and '90s had only recently established freestanding and now lucrative black music divisions – were only too happy to funnel money into elaborate Black Music Month advertising campaigns that easily compelled music fans into record stores (remember those?) to snap up the latest discs from their stables of soul, funk, and R&B stars. It was a sales scheme disguised as a moral imperative. It was only later that I learned the history of the designation, how a hard-fought Congressional Proclamation by music industry stalwarts and a star-studded White House Lawn celebration in 1979 compelled the country to acknowledge one of its most profound artistic treasures.

Black Music Month at its core is a celebration of the genius and prodigious musical output of people of African heritage in the Americas. It marks righteous pride in our ingenuity and beauty. It taps into the same cultural pride and unimpeachable ascendancy that brought Black History Month into the common lexicon, offering as it did the open invitation to all and sundry – but especially to African Americans – to luxuriate in the pride and power of our indigenous aural soul sauce. Tasty! But like most celebrations, it also became a commercial vehicle, a boon to music retailers and radio programmers alike. Black Music Month was one of “our” holidays, one that generated not just abundant good will but cold hard cash, sponsored by the biggest corporations. (I garnered enough Black Music Month T-shirts, umbrellas, wall posters, baseball caps, CD samplers, calendars and jackets to supply a small village over the years.) But today many of the record companies, music retailers, radio programmers, and music executive jobs that were the beating heart of the black music business are no more.

As with Black History Month, the argument persists that every month of any year is in fact a celebration of black cultural expression. If one considers the broad array of musical styles that the term Black Music encompasses under its red black and green umbrella – hip-hop, neo soul (if in fact this term is still acceptable), R&B, funk, jazz, and blues – then the Black Music celebration carries on unabated January to December, for the music is still being made and purchased and enjoyed by legions around the world.

But if we consider the ways in which Black Music has been co-opted, contaminated, controverted, synthesized, dumbed down and ignored, today’s Black Music Month celebration could be seen as a sad mockery of a once-noble cultural pursuit. Is this opinion the sour grapes of those who once labored near the center of a thriving music industry that is no more? Is it the expression of an embittered elder shaking a finger at the young’uns over a bygone golden age? Perhaps. But I remember when Black Music was truly Black Music.

Is the celebration itself a shadow of its heyday? Is there still something to celebrate in today's musical output?

What do you think?

Love To Love You, Donna

I am devastated to learn of the passing of the brilliant Donna Summer, whose music was such an integral part to my maturation. "Love To Love You" was mindblowing, with its driving synth and daring vocals. I thought Donna was gorgeous. When her second album, A Love Trilogy, was quickly released in March 1976, just eight months after Love To Love You, I went to DiscoMat on Lexington to buy the album. Reminiscing about dancing to Donna's music, I listened to her 70s output on YouTube one day back in 2008, and it reminded me how much I loved these tracks. I even incorporated Donna into the current novel I am writing, in which the main character is obsessed with her (Lady Lady or Personal Summer).

In tribute to Donna, here is what I wrote back in 2008:

Writing while jamming to music on YouTube. Why does “Try Me (I Know We Can Make It)” by Donna Summer give me such a delicious thrill? Because it’s 1976, lost in time.

Donna’s voice is operatically, candy-coatedly sweet. There’s the precision of the violins making their commentary over the four-on-the-floor beat, made more emphatic with congas, drums, and rhythm guitar in unison, on the One. Behind it: an ethereal progression of harpsichord notes, questioning, as though this is Marie Antoinette’s disco fever, as though Mozart himself condones this conga-driven, guitar-scratching morsel of dancefloor heaven. Try me, try me, try me, try me just one time, try me, try me, try me, try me any time, try me for love, baby don’t you think you should? Don’t you? The beat clops on, simple, bright and sharp as new pennies landing in a marble fountain. Donna in a wind tunnel, her voice a piccolo of melody rising from a golden throat, her breath and her hair floating, tossing, as the background vocalists sigh their harmonies.

And the breakdown, it’s heartbeat compelling, it’s a Gotta, you are gonna move your damn feet! The bass is metronomic in just two keys, alternating, I tell you the congas are delicious, I just wrote a whole story about the compelling propulsion of congas, try me, ohhhh, try me…. And now it’s a decision, a mandate: I know, I know, I know, I know, I know … twirling around in a silver feathered dream, and now the oh-so-European synth is tinkling down like a stream over the running bass and the shiver of high hat accent, … I know --we can make it! Now comes the part that is just the running bass with a tickle of guitar, the part that made me pick up my feet, hop a little in the Hustle, back and forth, We can make it if we try, we can make it touch the sky. Oh the happiness, the optimism, yes we can, I know we can can, there’s no way not to keep the beat, you bump up against the bass drum’s wall of massive power, pow, um, pow, um, every two steps, and she says, I wanna hold on tight with all my might, pray you’ll never stop, it’s a cupid prayer sent to the sky, to the glory of the night, and this is a disco siren song of symphonic, epic proportions, we’re now in the third movement.

We can make it if we try, we can make it, dead or alive, because even if we pass from here, we’re going on, our feet keep us moving to a place beyond this pale reality, where nothing fails us. And now we’re onto the next phase, baby, the place where we began, and the cymbals crash, we pause for breath, there’s a tense warning crescendo of strings, and we tumble back to Try me I know we can make it, I know we can try, and the black girls go, if we try try try. Damn, this shit gives me goosebumps.

Yet it’s so silly, so simple, so creaky with age, this track. But it wings me back to 16, when all is still new and I am fleet of foot, dancing in perfect time with a guy, a stranger who holds my hand who matches me step for step, we’re a tag team of two, never met but we know exactly what to do, and there is nothing but wind in front of us as we concoct this instant magic across a starlit floor. We’re sliding into the end zone, a beautiful high-heeled and sequined denouement, and now the drum kit is shivering, the drummer’s got both feet working, the cymbals are chattering with joy, and Donna is heaving, moans of ecstasy fading, afterglow sweet as honey sliding slowly down like the sweet icing in MacArthur Park, and I am sticky, limp with gratitude.

Thank you, Donna. Thank you.

Bittersweet Memories ….

Whitney Houston: An Alternate View

From the beginning she was
the embodiment of duality:
Sweet yet sensual,
young yet old,
pop yet R&B,
gritty yet sophisticated.
Who could successfully balance these opposites
without verging on schizophrenia?

The world is bidding farewell to songbird Whitney Houston, who left us much too soon. Her passing at the age of 48 is so tragic, ironic, and awful that even these words can’t encompass it. Her voice was a gift to the world, a force so powerful that whole generations of singers owe a debt to her shimmering mix of gospel feeling and pop precision. She had seen the pinnacle of success through adulation, awards, applause, and admiration. She had also endured the deepest recesses of hell due to addiction, abuses, failed expectations, troubled relationships, and public ridicule. I mourn for her passing, and pray for her family, friends, and fans – all of those who loved her.

I first became aware of Whitney Houston in the mid ‘80s via WBLS New York’s quiet storm program, which played her “Saving All My Love For You.” I was an editor at Essence then, and not on the music beat. The song was amazing. It sounded world-weary to my ears, rendered in a voice that was sweet yet supremely mature. This was a song about dreams of forbidden love crushed, over and over, by a married man who won’t commit, yet the dreamer chooses to delude herself into not giving up on it. Relatable, certainly, but also pathetic: love leads us to make foolish choices but we just can’t help ourselves. The performance put me in mind of someone older and/or stylistically alternative – an Anita Baker, a Regina Belle, a Jean Carne, or a Marlena Shaw. Who was this fabulous new singer? Whitney Houston, a fresh-faced former teen model, daughter of the great Cissy Houston, barely into her 20s.

The photos I finally saw of Houston, and the material she released immediately after “Saving,” did not jibe with my initial musical impressions. What could this stick-thin baby diva know about cheating with married men? I know that singers are only interpreters of music, of lyrics often written by others, and that their material is not always autobiographical. However, experience does deepen performance. In a certain way I felt gypped – maybe not by Whitney herself, but by what was being presented to me as Whitney. “Saving All My Love For You” was a great song – but the fact of her recording it told me things about her: That she was after an audience that wasn’t exactly her peer group, that she was fine with casting herself as a victim, even in a song; and that she was out of step with an era witnessing the rise of street-level hip-hop, retro British soul, and new jack swing.

Sure, I loved Whitney’s “You Give Good Love,” and she did a fantastic job with the notoriously difficult anthem “The Greatest Love of All,” but when the video for “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” came out – with Whitney in pastels, blonde extensions, and tutu, jumping around like a pogo stick, backtracking artistically to scoop up the young, all-American pop audience – the disgruntled feeling of having been duped in an artistic bait-and-switch had taken over me. I admit that I’d been giving the girl the fish eye ever since.

Whitney possessed a beautiful face, figure, and talent. She was an old-fashioned chanteuse for a new generation; she could venture into pop ditties, sweeping anthems, and R&B grooves with equal ease. She had laserlike control over that unbelievable voice – like Luther Vandross, she could execute exactly what she envisioned with little audible struggle. Her phrasing was off-the-chain pristine. My response to her was varied, though. I liked individual songs. I knew her story, where she came from, how she had developed, who she was working with musically. But I couldn’t really feel her as a person behind the artist. As naturally talented as she was, I was profoundly aware of her as a construct, as a product of an ever-spinning “A Star Is Born” machine.

Does no one remember how Whitney was booed at the Soul Train Awards in the early ‘90s because of the perception that she’d sold out to cross over to the pop chart? Whitney was a church girl from Newark whose genes came from Cissy, Dionne, and by extension, Aretha, and she had become the epitome of the American Dream Girl. But we like to claim our own. And folks weren’t comfortable with the genre tightrope-walking visible in her career trajectory. From the beginning she was the embodiment of polar opposites: Sweet yet sensual, young yet old, pop yet R&B, gritty yet sophisticated. She went from chitlins to caviar. (And let’s not forget that her first film role as a proud black diva paired her romantically with – not Denzel, not Eddie – but the older, white Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard. When she married Bobby Brown, her fans could not seem to wrap their minds around the Pop Princess marrying the Bad Boy of R&B.) Who could successfully balance these diametrically opposed qualities in their life without verging on schizophrenia at times?

Personally I was stuck on the jazz promise I’d first heard in her. I wanted Whitney to front a big band, break out some standards, and scat. I wanted her to write poetic material and sing words that came from her soul, backed by organ hits and a horn section or soft acoustic guitars. I wanted her to, as Teddy Pendergrass once sang, “get down, get funky, get loose.” Some people will say that I’m nuts, that Whit was as real as it got, that certainly she could go there, and when she performed gospel material it was a revelation for all. Folks were eating up what Whitney dished out and clamoring for more. In interviews there were flashes of warmth and charm. Still, I wondered when the real Whitney Houston would stand up. To me she seemed professionally rehearsed and guarded, with something harder underneath. But this was my critical view; my perceptions can often be those of a jaded conspiracy theorist. What I wanted for Whitney clearly had no bearing on anything, and if she had taken the musical path I imagined for her she would not have become a worldwide phenomenon and beloved vocal icon, may not have attained the well-deserved honors bestowed on her. But perhaps she’d still be alive.

While working at Billboard, I did get a chance to meet her. In fact, I was invited to her palatial home in Mendham, New Jersey, for her 26th birthday bash. It was incredibly exciting to make the drive out to her private domain for a spectacular bash chock-full of music industry greats. She was a gracious hostess, but we did not have a conversation.

Just a few years later, I became a product manager at her label, Arista Records. I did have dealings with the Nippy camp; The Bodyguard soundtrack had just topped the charts when I came on and Whitney was busier than ever. I dealt most often with her close friend and handler, Robyn Crawford, rather than Ms. Houston herself. I remember making a business trip to provide support for a Houston event, and Whitney barely acknowledged my presence. Granted, she had a lot going on. I had a better time goofing around with her husband, Bobby Brown, whom I always found to be engaging and funny. But I lasted less than a year in the gig. I was never to see Whitney again other than on television.

Whitney’s downward slide into drug abuse, bizarre behavior, financial ruin, and ultimately divorce saddened me. Like her most ardent fans, I hoped that with the release of her last album she would rally and reconnect. That did not happen. I was surprised to learn that she had been cast in the remake of Sparkle: that too represented a glimmer of hope for her professional and financial future. But perhaps the role – as the mother of a singing star in the making – only served to remind her of all she’d lost. We’ll never know. But as Whitney Elizabeth Houston is sent home in grand style at her family church in Newark this weekend, I hope that she truly and finally is “at rest.” The world will never experience a voice like hers again.

Remembering Don Cornelius

I’m not sure when I first became aware of Soul Train. I probably heard my friends talking about it, or perhaps it appeared in psychedelic splendor before our startled eyes as my younger sister and I battled for control of our living room television set, flipping channels between cartoons and reruns on a South Bronx Saturday morning. Our attention was galvanized by a seldom-seen-on-TV-in-the-70s glimpse of hip young black folks (hey – they look like us!) in their Afros and bell bottoms dancing in a yellow and orange stage set to the latest soul tunes. I was instantly hooked. I don’t know what I liked more: watching the live or semi-live performances by the flesh and blood R&B artists whom I only knew by name from the Top 45s list at the Korvette’s record shop, or watching the funky dance moves executed with such abandon by the studio dancers. Soul Train was THE show, hands down. You were socially required to study and report back on the dances, the clothes, the performances, the newest tracks, the scramble board mystery name (usually an African American historical figure or performer) -- even the latest Afro Sheen and Ultra Sheen commercials, which featured proud and regal black women and together brothers sporting glistening, perfectly rounded natural ‘dos.

Soul Train was water cooler television before there was a name for such a thing. It was beyond exciting to see Stevie Wonder sit before a piano and play, to watch Al Green (perhaps one of my favorite Soul Train performers) croon out one of his numerous hits, to see what Aretha Franklin would be wearing. I remember seeing the electric Joe Tex – accompanied by popular Soul Train dancer Damita Jo Freeman -- perform his tune "I Gotcha!," which scandalized my 12-year-old sensibilities (“you made me a promise now you better stick to it!”). In junior and senior high my girlfriends and I would stay after class and practice the moves we’d witnessed on the most recent show’s "Soul Train Line," especially popping and locking, the breakdown, the penguin, the funky penguin, the bump, and a gang of other colorfully named routines. As a 45 rpm spun on a portable record player (I remember in particular the Isley Brothers’ “Who’s That Lady?”) we’d mimic the formation of two opposing lines, with the dancers bopping and contorting their way along between them.

And then there was the program’s host himself. Don Cornelius. He was unlike anyone I had seen before on television. The sonorous voice, the elegant and distinctly hip diction, the glasses, the wide lapels, the crisp collar and tie, the giant puff of afro. He looked part business man and part gangster. Before I knew what a producer was, I knew that Don was clearly in command of everything on and off camera; it seemed to me that by the sheer force of his personality, a wave of his hand or the arch of a brow, he commanded the teenagers to undulate, the “TSOP” theme to begin blaring, and the Soul Train train logo to chug its percolating path across the screen. Soul Train was Don’s House, and stars like Stevie Wonder, Isaac Hayes, Marvin Gaye, the Spinners, the O’Jays, Gladys Knight &the Pips and all the others arrived in a steady stream not only to entertain the viewers, but to pay homage to The Media Potentate. Even some pop and rock acts – Elton John, David Bowie – paid a visit to The Soul Svengali. Most of the time Don seemed cool and distant, but every once in a while he broke out a smile, or gushed over a guest of whom he was truly fan. His deliberate style of speaking and his dress set him apart from the artists and the dancers – he often seemed to be operating on a different vibrational wave length, even as he delivered his famous and radio smooth parting phrase at the end of every show.

I became R&B music editor of Billboard in June 1989, and the Soul Train Music Awards – which were inaugurated in 1987 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium -- were traditionally held in March. I flew from New York to Los Angeles to cover the awards for the first time in 1990; Don and I were likely introduced backstage or at the Sprite-sponsored pre party. I found him somewhat intimidating; he was, after all, an icon. He was tall and imposing, decisive, urbane, and just old school cool. Over the course of my time at Billboard I had occasion to speak with him several times.

I interviewed Don by phone for a Soul Train anniversary story that I did in the early '90s that included his own recounting of how—inspired in small part by Philadelphia's American Bandstand -- Soul Train was originally produced in Chicago on a shoe string before he decided to move the whole thing to Los Angeles to be closer to the labels. The details of his history are well documented by now; I don’t have a clear recollection of any particularly significant comments he made (and I thought I had a printout of our interview somewhere in my files, but I can’t put my hand on it). He was justifiably proud of the fact that he’d been able to take this nugget of an idea and run with it until it became the cultural touchstone of an entire generation. He was pleasant to talk to, funny, and occasionally he could be flirtatious. Back then I would type my phone interviews in shorthand to save myself the agony of transcribing later, and Don spoke so slowly and deliberately that I could write every word he said.

I think we got along because I was very much aware of the history Don represented as an African American television producer, and as a consistent presenter of black culture and artistry on television. I didn’t hesitate to pay my respects for all that Soul Train meant to me, and what it still meant as Don continued to build the brand through the presentation of the Soul Train Music Awards, the Soul Train Lady of Soul Awards, and even an annual Soul Train Christmas Starfest broadcast. His personality seemed to demand that kind of acknowledgment. There was a prickly quality to him – I had the sense that if things didn’t go his way, I might find out how quickly he could administer a colorfully worded cussout. Occasionally I heard rumbles from the music industry about how as the producer of the Awards show, he played hardball to demand top musical artists, sponsorships, and more. Some questioned how the winners of the awards were actually determined. That side of Don I was not privy to, and I never questioned the integrity of the Soul Train Awards themselves.

By 1994 I had moved to L.A . As a publicist for Perspective/A&M records, I escorted acts like Barry White, Sounds of Blackness, Mint Condition and CeCe Peniston to the Soul Train studio set on Gower Street in Hollywood to tape the weekly show. Don had long since retired from hosting duties, but sometimes he lurked on the sidelines with his producers and we said hello. I remember being shocked at how small the TV studio actually was – the set seemed a vast playground on the screen.

Don would appear at an annual press conference to announce the nominees and performers for the upcoming Soul Train Awards. The locales for these announcements changed from year to year: a Beverly Hills restaurant or hotel or at the Paramount studio lot. The Soul Train Awards presentations were generally held at the Shrine Auditorium in downtown LA, while the Lady of Soul presentations usually were staged at the Pasadena Civic Center. I was writing again as Managing Editor for Billboard’s R&B Airplay Monitor by 95, back on the R&B radio beat. At one press conference in the mid '90s I stood up in the hotel ballroom to ask him a question and instead of answering he made a comment about my appearance, something along the lines of “that fine Janine McAdams.” The room laughed. I was mortified and annoyed – one, that he hadn’t answered my question, two, that he had made a sexist comment, and three, that I hadn’t used my formerly married name in years!

Don did show his prickly side – to me and especially to J.R. Reynolds, who was then the R&B Editor of Billboard. In March of 1996, we each attended the Soul Train Music Awards at the Shrine. I was backstage in the press room, and I believe J.R. may have had a seat in the theater itself. This was at the height of the popularity of the awards show; the Awards were really the place where R&B and hip-hop artists could celebrate themselves. The show was well attended by stars, their handlers, labels, and the press. There was a lot of excitement because I think Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. were in attendance. As the show finished, more artists and their entourages came into the backstage area. At one point there was a scuffle, followed by screams, and then the crowd rushed for the exits to the parking lot – me included. There were reports from several people on site that gunfire had erupted between the Death Row and Bad Boy camps, fueling more rumors of the deadly feud already brewing between the two rap stars. Later, others said there had only been a fight. In the parking lot I got quotes from several people who claimed to have seen shots fired. In my reportage of the Awards for R&B Monitor I included information about the incident, as did J.R. in his section of Billboard. We weren't the only journalists to report that this incident took place.

Don was enraged. He felt that the media was trying to smear the reputation of the Awards with a false story; African American events involving hip-hop artists were already battling to keep big money corporate sponsors who feared that rap meant violence. He sent a scathing letter to the publishers of Billboard; I don’t have a copy of it, but both J.R. and I printed a rebuttal saying we were not guilty of a smear campaign and that we stood by our stories. We were reporters. You can read J.R.’s response at Google Books (Billboard, April 27, 1996, p 19).

-- unfortunately Google Books did not archive the Monitor so I can’t access my version and I don’t have a copy in my files. Strangely, it seems there is little evidence now that this backstage East Coast West Coast incident ever took place. But six months later Tupac was dead in Las Vegas, and a year later, upon leaving a Vibe-sponsored Soul Train Awards post party, Biggie was gunned down (I left the same party literally minutes ahead of Biggie -- he and Puffy were coming down the escalator at the Petersen Automotive Museum just a few feet behind me and colleague Suzanne Baptiste).

Don was one of a kind. He had a profound vision and a commitment to pushing forward our unique culture and artistry through the Soul Train brand. He was driven as a business man and as someone who wanted African Americans to attain their rightful place of recognition in the fabric of society. For a considerable period, he may have been the most powerful man in black music for his ability to showcase new talent and new projects nationally. However, the downtrend in the music industry negatively affected his media profile, and in recent years he has battled personal and health problems. Now, as the Soul Train brand has been consolidated and celebrated through DVD rereleases, compilation albums, and the revival of the Soul Train Music Awards, it is sadly ironic that Don chose to take his own life now. Suicide is an extreme response to private pain, but I pray he rests in peace. Thank you, Don, for letting us take the hippest trip in America.

The '80s Redux, '90s Got Next

Within every new decade, pop culture looks back 20 years. As we get closer to 2010, ‘80s nostalgia has reached its apotheosis. Look around. Lady Gaga is channeling not just Madonna, but the theatricality of Grace Jones with the spirit and hooks of Debbie Harry from Blondie. Atlanta’s Janelle Monae fashioned a robot persona to explain her music and stagecraft, a blend of techno, soul, and rock that seems like a foward-looking black spin on Talking Heads and David Bowie, who in the ‘80s was coming out of the elegant iciness of the Thin White Duke.


Edgy artist Santigold wears the day-glo colors and polka dots of ‘80s fashion with the door knocker earrings and asymmetrical hairstyles of early hip-hop circa Salt N Pepa, while her 2007 tune “Lights Out” is new age proto-punk surf pop, like the Go-Gos on acid.



Rihanna and Keri Hilson are rocking asymmetrical ‘dos right out of the ‘80s fashion playbook, while Dorothy Hamill wedge cuts and shredded T-shirt, straight-legged jeans and wide belts are in again. Kanye West is sporting skinny ties and everyone is wearing those giant white sunglasses that didn’t look good the first time.

It happened last decade as well. By the late ‘90s, culture was all about the ‘70s. We were rocking our bellbottoms and peasant blouses again, Afros and peace signs and smiley faces were back, and rappers were no longer the only ones ripping off classic ‘70s soul tunes to fashion new records, singers were too. So we’re on a roll with the double-decade about face.

The ‘80s were a whirlwind of self-discovery and change for me. I graduated from college in the second year of the decade, then spent three years working at youth and educational publisher Scholastic wearing Oxford cloth shirts, jacquard bow ties, padded-shoulder suits, baggie pants and kitten-heeled pumps. I started as a secretary and then graduated to reprint production editor, managing the production of several manuscripts at a time. In 1984, by a fluke, I was hired by Essence Magazine and the bow ties went out the window. By 1985, so did the Pat Benatar feathered hair. This was the first place I’d ever worked that was by, for, and about women of color. I began as the Careers editor, assigning stories about business survival strategies and educational paths, profiling business success stories and editing advice columns. I then moved to the Contemporary Living department, working with Harriette Cole. I met some great people. In addition to working for Susan Taylor and with Harriette, I also met Deborah Gregory (who wore fabulous Cheetah Girl prints even then), publicity mogul Terrie Williams, who was director of publicity, Keith Clinkscales, who was just starting his first magazine Urban Profile, and Nelson George, who wrote for Essence.

In 1986, I married a part-time musician. He was an avid Billboard reader, and I read it too, keeping up with Nelson’s column and the music industry. It was tough to make ends meet on my Essence pay so I left for an ill-advised three-month stint in the public information office at the New York City Housing Authority. It paid good money but I didn’t have a city employee mentality. My hubby showed me a NY Times want ad for a copyeditor at Billboard and I leaped. I sent my resume on a Monday, they called me in for a same-day interview on a Wednesday, and on Friday I had the job. Within a year I was promoted to head copyeditor and a year after that, when Nelson left his editor post, I campaigned to management and was named R&B editor in 1989. That year was all about new jack swing.

As 2009 segues into 2010, and a new decade begins, new jack swing is about to raise its head once more. Teddy Riley has reconciled with Aaron and Damian Hall and the Kings Of New Jack Swing tour is getting off the ground, and a new Guy album is due next year. Whitney Houston is back. Al B. Sure is back. Yep, it's gonna be the '90s again in a minute.

Legacy

I am sitting in front of my TV, watching Michael Jackson’s golden coffin, bedecked with crimson flowers, as it is loaded into the hearse at the Forest Lawn Cemetery, just a few miles down the road from where I sit. It’s hitting me anew that this talented, conflicted entertainer will no longer be walking the earth in his velveteen loafers and military style jackets. I am both weary of the barrage of news coverage – Jackson doctors being investigated! Debbie Rowe decides not to attend public memorial! Battle over children to heat up! Estate wrested from Katherine Jackson! – and wholly riveted.

The Staples Center memorial is getting underway half an hour later than anticipated. The golden-ticketed chosen gathering downtown are of all ages, all races, some dressed as for a funeral, others as for a concert. Roland Martin on CNN is saying that you can go to any club in America, and anyone young or old, white or black -- even the toughest gangbanger -- cannot stand still in the face of “You Wanna Be Startin’ Something” or “Thriller.” The memorial service will be dignified, inspiring, heartbreaking, and ultimately humanizing to the King Of Pop.

The question on the lips of every media commentator will be, “What was it about Michael Jackson that we all related to? What will be his legacy?”

Fans who attended the memorial all speak about the power of his music, fellow stars point to his brilliant vocals and incredible dance moves and pioneering video work, and civic leaders discuss his philanthropic and social work, how much Michael gave back. Certainly all of this is true. He was without question a consummate entertainer who was able to distill the best of all the old masters – Jackie Wilson, Fred Astaire, James Brown, Frankie Lyman, and others – and make it all his own. But I’m going to tell you what it was that made him unique the world over:

Michael appealed to our inner child.

When Michael Jackson performed, the primary thing that we responded to was his sheer unfettered glee. He absolutely loved creating magic through song and dance. It wasn’t work to him. He was more like a child at play: utterly free and in the moment and having fun. Have you ever really watched how children play?

Michael was an adult in a child’s body, until he became a child in an adult’s body. He gloried in games, amusement parks, animated characters, animals, practical jokes. He could also be like the intelligent yet stubborn kid who, when you tell him the rules, asks, “But why? Why? Why?” until you too wonder and end up watching him do exactly what he wants, to your chagrin. He refused to accept imposed boundaries of race or age or music industry strictures – and yes, he even refused to abide by the rules of what is considered appropriate adult behavior.

Think about how jaded and mature we all are, how grown up, how impulse-controlled we become as we reach the age of majority. Our society teaches us to bury the child within us and leave behind childlike things. The young boy or girl grows into a teenager and then into an adult through a series of life lessons, hard knocks, discipline, heartbreak, and challenges. We are congratulated for maintaining a kind of adult reserve once we come of age. Michael rejected that. He had his own brand of dignity but he never let his childlike wonder, joy, and curiosity die.

He reminded us that we were once little kids with big dreams. Kids who fervently believed we could accomplish anything at all, including dancing, singing, dressing up in spangly costumes, building a fantasy palace straight out of a Disney fable, and sharing our dearest treasures with all our best friends. Maybe your kiddie dream didn’t involve singing and dancing. Maybe your dreams featured other fanciful props – badges or crowns or masks or gloves or capes or imaginary paws or make-believe wings or a camera -- ideas that caused the adults around you to chuckle knowingly as you babbled and raced through your innocent, imaginary world. Nobody told you then that none of these things was possible and in this lack of knowledge, you were free.

Michael reminded us that the kid is still there. In our quiet moments we still longingly recall those pure dreams.

But life is full of dichotomies. While we were fascinated, we were also perplexed and disturbed by the childlike man. Children accepted Michael unconditionally, but adults were skeptical. It was Michael’s very childlike nature, his immersion not only in juvenile pursuits but in actual juveniles, surrounding himself with children, that earned him both his highest accolades and his most heated scorn. Ultimately it led to scandal. His love of children was a liability to him, his Achilles heel. You know where this is going. To the dark side. I’ll say no more.

Michael Jackson’s legacy? He gave us back our younger selves. He gave us not only the magic of his talent, but the ability -- however briefly -- to believe in magic once more. And that is universally appealing.

PS: My favorite moments from the memorial: Jermaine Jackson singing “Smile,” which reminded me of what a fantastic singer he’s always been; Al Sharpton’s rousing, seemingly extemporaneous speech; Jennifer Hudson’s transcendent performance of “Will You Be There”; Stevie Wonder performing his tunes “I Never Dreamed You’d Leave In Summer” and “I Won’t Go When They Go”; John Mayer’s haunting and respectful “Human Nature” on guitar; and Marlon Jackson’s heartfelt goodbye.

Remember The Time

Oh, Michael. What a sad way to go. When I heard the news I was shocked, but not surprised. There’s something about your untimely passing that I understand.

Over the past month, as I reported on your upcoming series of 50 shows in London next month, I told people around me: “Michael will never perform a single date of that engagement.” It was evident to me that you were not well. If you weren’t physically ill, I thought, you were ill inside. You wouldn’t withstand the pressure, the expectations of the madding crowd. I knew it wasn’t to be, but I never imagined your death. I simply thought that the Michael Jackson who speaks in a whisper and wears surgical masks and told the world that the most loving thing you could do was to share a bed with a child – the Michael Jackson who had crooned a tender “Ben” to a rat -- I knew that that Michael Jackson was being consumed in the conflagration of the world’s desire, a desire to both love you and see you utterly destroyed. There would be nothing left of you to display in the stage glare of the O2 Arena. In your heart, you wanted to give yourself to us. But your heart wasn’t strong enough to withstand the pressure from within and without, and so you fell.

You weren’t like other people, Michael, you never have been. You were born a stunning, gentle, sensitive child with a staggering talent, and you held onto your childlike nature for as long as you could despite the tests and trials and tragedies, the world’s determined and often mean-spirited attempts to grow you up. Your path away from us was never going to be mundane or simple. This is why I am in no way surprised. What does surprise me is my slow reaction, from surface sadness to a deeper ache that has to do with time and talent and waste and mortality and the sense that you were in some way mine.

I remember you, Michael, from when you first appeared on the scene in the late ‘60s. We are only a year apart, but I always thought of you as younger. You and your brothers, a picture of familial unity, on the television, on the album covers, you in the middle with your dark cherry cheeks, dimples, and bright eyes. You with your preternaturally angelic and polished voice. One more chance, is all you ask of me? It is yours. If you want me back, I want you too, Mike. You and Jermaine, Jackie and Marlon, even Tito and his blues guitar, all of you in your psychedelic bellbottoms, your supremely sculpted Afros, I am for you, I am on your side. I was formed within myself just from watching you on TV, hearing you on the radio. You gave out hope as well as joy, awe as well as pride. Did you ever truly know how perfect you were, Michael? Not just the little-man-soul vocals and the James Brown dance routines, but your gorgeous, shimmering blackness? You stunned the world. That fact seemed never enough for you as you grew into a man.

I have a memory of seeing you, Michael, you and your four sho-nuff Brotha brothers adding up to Jackson 5, in the way-back-then of exploding fame and gushing teenage adoration. You were young and nimble, on the stage of Madison Square Garden, the opening act for someone then deemed bigger. Was it the Isley Brothers? And I wonder, who’s loving you?, you cried, in an anguish that made me speculate on what the world held in store that could stir up that amount of emotion. And I betcha, you chirped with your brothers. You seemed so sure and wise. You hinted at things to come, Michael.

Oh, I loved those Motown/Corporation Jackson 5 hits. Especially “Sugar Daddy” and “Mama’s Pearl.” They were sheer confection, pop perfection. The idea that you, Michael, or some other boy your age might be interested in buying me treats to win my affection, or that there was a real understanding that I was a gem not just to my parents but to you, dear Michael, were concepts so potent, so lofty, so romantic and gratifying that I began to see myself differently. Maybe a gawky, spectacles-afflicted girl from the Bronx was truly worthy of you.

I must confess, though, Mike, that I wasn’t as swept away as some of the other girls in my class. I didn’t fight in the rest room over the latest issue of Right On! Magazine, or indulge in debates over who was cuter, you or Jermaine. I didn’t have shouting matches in the schoolyard with the other girls, which began, Michael’s my boyfriend! No, he’s mine! I was always sort of reserved, lowkey, conservative. But I knew you were special, Michael, in a class by yourself. I had heard you speak on The Mike Douglas Show, knew you were shy and quiet too. Oh Michael. Did you know? Did you ever truly know that you were a shining black prince?

So much has occurred since those early days, when you were coming into your own. You grew up, a bit awkwardly, but your talent never flagged. Eventually you left your brothers and forged a stunning path that was purely your own, and this is the crux of your fame: Off The Wall and Thriller, the albums that telegraphed your brilliance to the world. So many people acclaiming you, celebrating you. Generations thrilled by “Thriller,” nations rocked by “Rock With You.” I too applauded, but I felt crowded out, Michael. I had connected to you when we were young, felt a kind of proximity and kinship to you back then, but you had outgrown me, like a cousin who had moved to the ‘burbs. I waved to you from my seat high up in Giants Stadium in New Jersey when you reunited with your brothers and gave a dazzling performance on the Victory Tour. You were on a well-deserved rocket to the stratosphere, while my feet stayed on the ground.

Beautiful and strange things were happening to you, things I could only guess at as I too, grew up, began my own career, married, divorced. I was now on the music beat, writing, but you were as far away as the rings of Saturn. By the mid ‘90s I had played tennis with 2Pac in Miami, shaken hands with Prince at Paisley Park, brunched in Minneapolis with your sister Janet, sat in a New York restaurant as your brother Jermaine expressed disappointment in a story I’d written. But you, Michael, had gone into the Ivory Tower of your melanin-depleted skin, you indulged yourself in whims and became inaccessible, at least to me.

When Bad was delivered, then Dangerous and the rest, I listened without much comment or enthusiasm. Your brilliance was intact but it had lost the power to amaze me, I am ashamed to admit. You became shrouded in rumor and accusations and blame, and I wanted to believe that there was still an innocent living inside the grotesque figure you appeared to be, no longer black, not ever white, an incongruous presence. Unlike so many of your fans, who forgot and forgave, I had to divorce myself from you Michael. It was too painful to see you this way, fading and blundering and afflicted with a kind of selective blindness. Like Peter Pan, you could only maintain your eternal youth within the boundaries of Neverland. When that sanctuary, too, was finally gone, I knew your days were numbered.

It is the Saturday after the Thursday of your demise, dear Michael. Strains of “Beat It,” “Thriller,” “Remember The Time,” “Bad,” “The Way You Make Me Feel,” “Billie Jean,” and so much more fill the air, wafting from radios around the world. These are the tunes that most people cite when they speak of you. And rightly so. With each song, each recorded step of your journey, I am reminded anew of the power you brought to bear. It has taken two whole days for the truth of your passing to finally sink me to the sandy bottom of this ocean of memory.

I go back in my mind to the days when we were children together and you were held lightly in the grip of the world. There was one 45 in particular that I remember, when I was in grade school and you were Motown royalty. I was partial to B-sides, and fancied myself a budding poet. You sang a cover of a Supremes tune, and the recording never failed to slay me, as they used to say; it used to make me swoon. I was way too young then to have ever loved and lost in an epic way, but I listened beyond the lyrics to the emotion held aloft in your voice, listened until I was moved to tears. I think of it now as I say goodbye, Michael.

Love is here
And oh my darling, now you’re gone
You made me love you!
And oh my darling now you’re gone

Self Improvement And Seeing Angels

Greetings, it has been more than a year since my last confessional.

In December 2007, soon after posting up the sad novel excerpt posted below, I began a two-year MFA creative writing program at Antioch University L.A. Challenging, and obviously much needed in terms of my own craft. Still, the current state of the economy means that the publishing world is not what it once was, and my two-year graduate education may boil down to an expensive self-improvement project, like elocution lessons. I hold out the hope that with Obama now in the White House and placing a renewed emphasis on higher education, I might be a little ahead of the curve, and a warm and cozy teaching post awaits me at some fab university when the stampede to academia really gets going. I'm optimistic that I will get over the humps of my final manuscript and a teaching seminar to graduate this December.

A propos of nothing, I was just on the street in West LA and saw a crowd of red-bereted dudes: black pants, army boots, red and white T-shirts. Guardian Angels! My God, I have not seen Guardian Angels since the early '80s in the subways of New York, when their controversial presence and outspoken leader Curtis Sliwa divided city opinion. Taking back the streets from criminals, or a group of vigilantes? That was the question back then. But when I was riding the subways through the Bronx and Manhattan at all hours, those red berets were a welcome sight, let me tell you. Seeing a group of them just now on Sawtelle and Olympic brought back memories.

A novel in 30 days?

Seems impossible, but I participated in the annual NaNoWriMo.org writing frenzy in November and actually crossed the 50,000-word finish line. It's not the best thing I ever wrote, but it's actually finished. Below, a sample of Guayabera, which is set in my fantasy of 1957 NYC: ----------------------------

Nadia sat back on her stool, satisfied, her broad face with their hard eyes now trained on him. “So you come with me, eh?”

This is what Ray had feared. She was a streetwalker, a little old and hard and stocky, but it took all kinds. He chuckled a little and waved his hand. “Oh, no. No, I’m sorry.”

Nadia never took her eyes from his face. “Yes, yes, you come. What have you got to do?” Her eyes moved over his uniform, correctly assessing his status as a sailor on leave. “You come and see, you’ll have a good time. Come, Billy Reyes.” She was sliding off the stool, and her sharp patent leather shoes hit the floor with a clunk. She was now pulling at his arm. Ray was surprised by her strength and was bound to resist. His long arms were always being pulled on by others, convinced of how easy he was to lead. And often they had been right.

Rivas approached just in time. “Say, what do you have going on here already?” he winked. “You going to introduce me to your friend?”

Relieved, Ray intoned, “This is Nadia. She insists that I come with her, but I believe we have other plans, eh Rivas?” He tried to catch the smaller man’s eye.

But Rivas’ bespectacled peepers were filled with the overabundance of Nadia’s figure. Ray could see the fibers in the Filipino’s very masculine being impacted pleasurably by the prospect of so much rippling female flesh in close proximity. “Oh no, no, we have no immediate plans,” Rivas chirped. “We have accommodations for the night, but that’s much later. Why it’s still early, isn’t it, Miss Nadia? I am Manuel Rivas. Where would we be going? A little feminine companionship for two old sailors?”

Nadia turned to confront Rivas’ leering, gap-toothed countenance and her mouth twisted. “You got the wrong idea,” she said. “Nothing dirty. Just the dancing. And the show. It’s down the street, you come. Come.”

Curiosity compelled them down 48th Street toward Eighth Avenue, following the surprisingly fast-moving Nadia down a steep flight of stairs from the street to a basement-level bar and ballroom that reeked of whisky, beer, and cheap perfume. The band was reassembling on a tiny bandstand in the far left corner, and a number of gentlemen of various ages and backgrounds were lined up at the bar, nursing drinks. With a friendly wave that urged Ray and Rivas to take their seats in a flimsy booth, Nadia left them and took her place, again surprisingly, at the piano.

There was a rusty rimshot from the portly drummer who was squeezed behind a bare bones drum kit, and the people in the room turned their attention to the dance floor. With a downbeat lunge that seemed to strain the piano stool, Nadia launched into a jazzy vamp that made Ray think momentarily of the Latin orchestras he’d seen in some San Juan casino lounges. A weak spotlight clanked on, and a middle-aged man in a bad toupee took the mike. Ray lost what he said amid the music and the arrival of a barmaid at their booth, who took down Rivas’ lusty order of beers with whisky shots.

The man had apparently been introducing a parade of young ladies, dressed in theatrical yet scanty costumes. A group of about 12, in bra tops, tap pants, and fishnet hose, with spangles in their hair and professional smiles affixed to their faces, broke into a dance routine that to Ray’s eyes seemed less than artistic. The men at the bar and at scattered booths around the back of the place erupted into whoops and applause. Even Rivas seemed impressed.

“Carajo!” he cried. “It’s the middle of the day in New York City, and we get to feast our eyes and whet our whistles! This is something, eh?”

Ray threw back his whisky shot and picked up his beer glass. He tried to smile. He didn’t want to be here. He was always going along to get along, always trying to do what people expected. He had always gone along with the program and tried to be as pleasant and unobtrusive as possible. His life had followed a simple trajectory of schooling, then the marine service, marriage—it was what a young man of breeding was supposed to do. Long, tall, studious, and quiet, Ray had never caused a ruckus, never been any trouble to anyone, never robbed or cheated, never fought or harassed anyone. He had never been arrested, cited, accused, or complained against. And yet people found ways to use and abuse him, to inveigle him into their schemes, to set him up as a prop in their real-life theatricals. And he went along, like a stooge.

For in hindsight it now seemed to him that Annalisa might have plotted her escape from him even from the moment that they said their vows. There was no way to know for sure, but he certainly hadn’t seen it coming. He hadn’t foreseen that her treachery would leave him just another poor lonely old fellow with limited means, without the carefully saved and nurtured nest egg that he’d hoped would see him into a comfortable retirement. It wasn’t in his initial plan to sign back on to the merchant marine service and spend another two years at back-breaking work designed for a man 15 years his junior just so he could get enough scratch to maintain himself. And now as he was taking his first steps into a new life here in New York, he had allowed himself to be shanghaied by this chatty little man and into this cheap big city dive where the cheap chippies now hoofing it onstage would later be hustling the customers for tips and drinks. All of this was beneath him. All Ray had ever wanted was to be left alone to go his own way in peace. A peaceful life, an uneventful life, a righteous life—por Dios, why couldn’t he attain it?

He was actually angry.

Anger had long been an emotion that Ray avoided if he could. He had prided himself for most of his regimented life on maintaining his composure. He had seen the destructive effects of anger and rage among the men he’d grown up with in the slums outside Wllemstad, in the alleyways and bars of San Juan and the shacks of Loiza Aldea, among his comrades in the bowels of the ship. They shouted hurtful words, brandished knives or their bare knuckles, spilled blood onto the ground. Or they devised dangerous, intricate and hate-filled schemes to ensnare others in massive misfortunes, or plotted for the fatal downfall of their fellows in the name of revenge. Up to now, Ray could not see how anger proved a useful social function. It seemed to hurt the one who was angry as much, if not more, than the ones they directed their anger toward.

But now as he looked around this dimly lit booze hall, full of out of work bums, sailors, office workers on a downward slide, and these sad little girls tricked out in satin and sequins, Ray felt full-fledged anger well up inside him, right at the spot underneath his breastbone where earlier he had felt a pang of empty confusion.

He gulped down his beer and pushed his lean frame up to his feet, shouting over the music, “Basta! I’ve had enough. I’m leaving.” He threw down some American greenbacks onto the table to cover the cost of their drinks.

Rivas, already showing signs of inebriation, slid out of the booth to stop his friend. “Oh no, Alarcon, the show has just begun! Come now, have another drink. And later we’ll go up to the boardinghouse…”

“Oh no,” said Ray curtly. “You go on. I’m sorry, but I have changed my mind about it. Good luck to you.” But as Ray turned to cross the barroom floor, Rivas was upon him, his hand on Ray’s arm.

“Oh, ho, you cannot leave me alone in this place! That’s not very friendly,” Rivas wheedled. “We’ll have another drink and then we’ll find someplace that meets your high standards…”

“Sit down!” hollered an angry voice further back in the hall.

“Yeah, down in front!” shouted another distinctly New York-sounding voice.

One of the girls in the show flickered a pair of concerned hazel eyes in their direction as she performed her pedestrian brush ball shuffle in the pool of light beyond the two merchant marines.

Ray had no wish to make a scene. He just wanted to go. Sweat had broken out on his forehead. “Rivas, you stay. Enjoy yourself. But I have to go. I have to go,” he tried to mollify the Filipino. As he took another two strides toward the illuminated exit sign, Rivas again pounced.

“OK! OK! So angry!” Rivas giggled a little desperately as he clung to Ray’s arm. “So we’ll go. There are other places.”

Ray took a deep breath. “Rivas, I am done with drinking, I am done with talking, I am done with your uptown boarding house, I am done with this stinking place. Amigo, forgive me for saying so, but I am done with you. I am sorry,” he couldn’t help apologizing, after all, “but I have to go now. Release me, please.”

“Sit down, you yokels!” came shouts from around them. “Say fellas, get out the way!”

“So now you insult me!” Rivas, offended, still hung onto Ray’s arm.

Ray was amazed at the man’s tenaciousness. He was like a bulldog. In his frustration to be free of the whole ridiculous situation, and to loosen Rivas’ grip, Ray gave the smaller man a shove to the shoulder. To the amazement of both men, Rivas stumbled backward, lost his footing and fell, his broad rear hitting the floor. Some of the patrons around them applauded.

Ray instantly regretted that he had put Rivas down amid the cigarette butts, dirty cocktail napkins, and spilled drinks but there was nothing for it. Again, he was determined to reach the stairs that would bring him back up to 48th street, a breath of fresh air, and a few moments of sanity, away from Rivas forever. But then he heard a kind of guttural cry over the music, which hadn’t stopped its bluesy flow, and now Rivas leaped onto his back and began boxing his ears. “Ungrateful black bastard!” Rivas screamed in Spanish. “Stupid mute lout! Dickless moocher!”

Ray whirled, reaching behind him wildly to snatch at anything to get the drunken Filipino off his back. His ears rang, and with each turning step he felt the whisky coursing through his bloodstream, dizzying his head and muddling up his balance. The nerve of this fellow to call him black, when he himself was darker than a coconut husk. True, the mother of Ray’s mother had been an African slave, but he himself was not black—he was Venezuelan! To call him black in front of these people was the lowest of the low. He came up with a handful of the Filipino’s uniform shirt while his other hand closed on the smaller man’s forearm. With an awkward yet swift bend at the waist, a move he had learned in secondary school wrestling matches, Ray managed to flip Manuel Rivas over his head and back onto the floor.

“Stop!” Ray cautioned as he saw that instead of being beaten, Rivas was now scrambling on his hands and knees to grab at Ray’s leg.

“Pansy! Dimwit! Simpleton!” screamed Rivas, wildly. “You’re an idiot without an original idea in your monster head! A moron! You bored everyone on the ship to death with your bullshit! No wonder your wife left you!”

Ray’s brain sizzled with the insults heaped upon him. He was tired of this, again and again. So many time he had succumbed to others’ whims, tolerated and humored their flaws and foibles, only to be ridiculed and insulted by their intolerance of his own humanity. But furthermore, he would not stomach talk of Annalisa. He now wished he had never shared any single word of a personal nature with this insensitive prig.

“Don’t you dare to mention my wife again, ever,” said Ray. In a fury now, and without thinking about the consequences, he lifted his foot with its size 13 marine-issued boot and delivered a mighty kick that caught Rivas right in the chin. The man’s lip split, blood spurted, his glasses flew sideways, and Rivas himself slid backwards, seemingly senseless, across the littered barroom floor, coming to a stop with his head slightly propped against the leg of an empty table.

For a quick instant Ray caught his breath in fear that he had killed the man. After all, Rivas had really done nothing heinous to him, only tried his patience to the breaking point and called him foul names, and he had repaid him with violence. Ray shook his head. Violence was never the answer, Ray admonished himself. In the dim light, Ray was able to see Rivas stir slowly and put a hand to his jaw. So he was alive. And now Ray would leave.

He heard screams from the chorines behind him and the heavily accented tones of Nadia’s husky voice from the bandstand as the music stopped, but there was nothing he could do for Rivas now.

Willem Rafael Alarcon Reyes turned back toward the exit sign of the Dandy Drop In Bar & Lounge and caught a right hook to his left cheekbone. As he whirled in pain that seemed only a justifiable answer for the pain he’d just inflicted, with lightning flashes exploding behind his closed and tear-filled eyes, he felt the presence of other men around him, grunting and jostling. The men in this awful place had only been looking for an excuse to vent their familiar frustrations and daily rage in a fight, and he wondered at the fact that something as simple as a disagreement between two men could infect others with such bloodlust so quickly.

As he put out a hand to steady himself, someone else delivered a punch to his stomach. When he raised himself again after doubling from absorbing the blow, he opened his eyes. There was an angry white face in front of him, and Ray could sense rather than see another balled up fist headed his way. So he jabbed the man in his Adam’s apple and watched him double over. And then another man took his place before him with a beer bottle in his hand and now Ray ducked and knocked the man’s knees out from under him, causing him to fall forward with an ugly grunt. But Ray was drunk and tired and 41 years old and his knees crackled and his head throbbed and his stomach burned and he had never been in a brawl in his life. He didn’t think he could take another blow until one abruptly came, knuckles connecting with his ribs and knocking him sideways against one of the fake leather booths. All the air in his lungs came out of him in a whoosh, and he gasped for oxygen. Then he heard more shouts and scuffling, a kind of keening moan that could only belong to Rivas, squeals from the women, and the sound of wooden furniture being broken. Then there was the shrill sound of a whistle being blown, the harsh bright overhead lights came on, and then things seemed to calm down.

The whistle trilled again, loudly. “Get out, all of you, before the police come,” shouted one of the bartenders. “Get out.”

Feet clattered across the wooden planked flooring as both the innocent and the guilty headed for the exit in varying degrees of haste. Ray righted himself and ran a hand through his thick dark hair before moving with the crowd toward the stairs. It was a struggle to climb, as parts of his body throbbed with pain and creaked with middle age and his head swam with two whiskeys and two Rheingolds. His shirt was torn at the elbow, there was dirt on his knees, and when he dabbed at his face with his handkerchief it came away streaked with blood.

He ascended slowly and painfully to the street with some of the other patrons, who made a berth for him on the pavement as he limped by. The sun had sunk low in the sky, it was well after 5 p.m. and once again the streets were filled with busy commuters heading home after a day’s work. Ray leaned on the hood of a parked Ford for a few moments to gather his thoughts.

Yes it was true that violence only bred more violence. Yes it was true that anger, the righteous emotion he’d just allowed himself to indulge in, had only rebounded on him bringing him more pain. And further, the loss of Annalisa was still reverberating painfully through his life, through his mind and heart, as fresh and anguishably sharp as if the event had just occurred this very day. Ray plunged his scraped hand into the pocket of his gabardines to check for the locker key and bus schedules he’d collected from Port Authority that morning. He paused to pore over the brochure marked Atlantic City.

Yes, Rivas was right. He was a dimwitted fool. He had trusted the wrong people, he had chosen the wrong wife, he had relied on things never changing. No matter what transpired in his life, no matter how he had tried to wise up, somehow he always ended up in the dark. Now it was two years later and he was still tied to the dream that Annalisa represented to him. He needed to see her again, to find out what had happened, to find out, moreover, if she was well and happy. If she was indeed satisfied in life, then he would worry no more about her. After all, he had truly loved her, and her happiness was what mattered. Perhaps that was foolish, after all, she had committed a crime against him. Further, he was taking a chance on a two-year-old postcard, and that was foolish. But again, he admitted to being a fool. If nothing else, they could formalize their break with a legal divorce. That had to be something that she would want too.

“Alarcon! Alarcon! Forgive me! Please!” came the voice of Manuel Rivas from the entryway to the Dandy Drop In several feet away from where Ray stood. “Alarcon, help me, I’m bleeding. Help me. We can get a taxi to La Mercedes on 113th Street, La Mercedes…”

Ray saw his fellow merchant marine staggering onto the pavement, blood across his mouth and on his shirtfront, glasses clutched in one hand, his tie askew. Pedestrians shrank back from the man in dismay and horror.

With every ounce of strength left in his body, Ray turned and walked as rapidly as he could back down 48th Street towards the anonymity of Times Square, weaving his way with miserable speed through the throngs crowding the streets of New York City.

Chaka Khan, Wanna Love U, Wanna Love U, Chaka Khan...

Chaka Khan is back. Not that she ever left. Like many of the artists that I grew up on, she had her youthful heyday with a seminal band, Rufus, and hit another level of greatness as a mature woman and solo artist. But as time marched on and the music industry changed in the '90s, producers and songwriters seemed not to know what to do with her. And I'm sure that Chaka didn't know what to do with herself for long stretches, musically, when she gave a lot of concerts and seemed ready to turn into a bad parody of herself. Now she's on a creative roll, and it's all about her glorious instrument, her voice.

In late 2005 she released ClassiKhan, a collection of her favorite pop tunes recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra. That album has not been much discussed in the press, but it's a personal favorite of mine. Chaka poured her heart into reinterpretations of two Shirley Bassey hits, "Diamonds Are Forever" and "Goldfinger," as well as Peggy Lee's "Is That All There Is" and the classic "I'm In The Mood For Love," among other tunes. That album shows off her instinctive jazz phrasings and considerable interpretive skills, as well as her sheer vocal power. It also gave a window into her personality, oddly enough, through the choice of songs and her delivery. That album made me fall in love with her all over again, though her talents have never been far from my heart.

In the meantime, since that set was released, Chaka had more personal drama. Her son was charged with the shooting death of a friend at her house. It was a heartbreaking situation, particularly as the shooting was an accident. A foolish accident, but an accident nonetheless, a fact to which she tearfully testified in court last year. Thankfully, her son was acquitted.

With that situation behind her, perhaps Chaka is happier, freer, renewed. On the recently released We All Love Ella, she sings a fun duet of "Mr. Paganini" with Natalie Cole, and then soars through a fantastic "Lullaby Of Birdland." Now she has a new album coming in September called Funk This. I don't know that the title really reflects the album's contents, but it doesn't matter. It's wonderful. Perhaps made more wonderful by the fact that she has teamed with Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, whose musical brilliance I have always admired. (I have to fess up that I did spend the better part of a year working for them, but we had little contact and I was already enamored of their work.)

They are geniuses at encapsulating the spirit of the artist they work with, at writing tunes that are like testimony straight from the artist's lips. Back in the '80s when Jam & Lewis and L.A. & Face were competing studio talents, I used to say that LA & Face's songs were like gorgeous, ready-made tract houses that they invited the artist to move into, while Jam & Lewis's songs were custom-built houses to each artist's specifications. In fact, maybe I learned my professional bio writing talents from Jam & Lewis in this way. I talk to the artist, learn their language, what makes them tick and what's important to them, then I design the document around that. But back to Jam & Lewis--they really can produce the hell out of a thing. For Chaka, they also had help from Big Jim, the Avila Brothers, and Jesse Johnson here and there. The recording sounds deep, layered, and yes, funky in a profoundly old school way. In fact, they have infused Funk This with the flavor, the timbre, the orchestration elements of some of Chaka's best Rufus and solo recordings--no easy feat.

Anyway, on Funk This Chaka proves that she truly can sing anything. She tackles rock, funk, pop, jazz, and of course R&B. She goes all Jimi Hendrix on "Castles Made Of Sand," she hollers her own backstory on the funky "Back In The Day" (which reminded me of how she sang Stevie's similarly remember-when tune "I Was Made To Love Him" on her 1979 debut Chaka), she gets old school bluesy on a version of Dee Dee Warwick's "Foolish Fool," and I have to say, I ADORE how she does it.

In a nod to Prince, whose cover of "I Feel For You" helped cement her solo stardom, she does a pounding, pointed version of "Sign O' The Times," tacking on the modulating "whoa whoa whoa" strains of her own "I'm Every Woman" toward the end. She reunites with Rufus guitarist Tony Maiden on the medley of their hits "Pack'd My Bags/You Got The Love" which is deeper the second time around. She charms on her own ballad composition "Angel," and soars on the uplifting "Super Life."

There are a couple of missteps, like a tune called "Disrespect," an ill-advised duet with Mary J. Blige that sounds like a screeching catfight at a NAMM percussion showcase(uh, NAMM stands for the National Assn. Of Music Merchandisers, which stages a giant annual trade show for musical equipment). And she drags out Michael McDonald for a reprise of "You Belong To Me." Michael already did fabulously with the tune, he doesn't need to do it again, and while she's trying to pay tribute to him (she's already said, "I needed some Doobie in my funk,") anybody who tries to duet with Yvette Marie Stevens is fighting an uphill battle. (Except the aforementioned Cole on the Ella track.)

Another minor complaint: Over the years Chaka seems to have developed a new quirk among what Patti Austin has termed "vocal affectations": Where other funk singers growl, yelp, or use "ow" or "uh!," Chaka now employs a rather nasty guttural bray that I guess she feels is digging deep for the funk. It can be a little ... off-putting. But no matter. She can still effortlessly lasso a high note out of the stratosphere like no other. I'd rather listen to a donkey-calling Chaka tune than a chart-topper from any one of these little pop tarts out here.

Really, I'm just splitting hairs. There is much that is wonderful, reaffirming, interesting, and soulful in Chaka's new disk. It's a great listen, and Chaka really challenges herself, just as she did on ClassiKhan, and it's great to hear. Funk This is one of those albums that restores my faith -- however briefly -- in the music industry. I never lost faith in Chaka.

Funk This is out on 9/25. www.chakakhan.com.

The Eyes Have It, Part II

[I had just been informed by doctors at the Jules Stein Eye Clinic that I needed emergency surgery immediately. ]

As Chic put it so eloquently in 1978: Freak Out!

It was now 7 at night. I had left my work half done at the office. I hadn't eaten. There was no one to come pick me up or get my car out of the hospital parking lot. My company had just switched medical insurance carriers and I didn't even have an ID card yet. I didn't know if it would cover something like this. I had been expecting the clinic to simply dole out a future appointment with a laser and a prescription for eye drops. But there was a possibility I could be BLIND, at least in one eye, where if a retinal detachment involves the central macula, eyesight in that eye is irretrievable.

I was shocked by what they were proposing. The operation involved knocking me out, extracting my eyeball, clamping it into a plastic belt called a scleral buckle that would keep my raggedy eye tissue together, then reinserting the eye over a gas bubble at the back of the socket that would further tamp down the retinal tissue. It sounded frightening and more than a little sick-making.

As the doctors kept trying to convince me-- taking turns running out to make all the surgical arrangements and sending me to their hospital intake office-- I alternated between being a rational adult and blubbering like a cranky toddler. I made a kazillion phone calls, mostly to my boss and to our insurance consultant on the East Coast, where it was way after business hours, and to many of my very busy, geographically dispersed friends in the hope they could fetch me post-surgery. I wept, I wailed, I ranted and railed. I was embarrassingly unhinged. I blame the freakout on fatigue, the unpleasant prospect of being a further burden on my overburdened friends, and the fact that I'd have to bail last minute on numerous projects I needed to make good on. Things weren't looking good.

Finally I reached a breaking point where good sense reasserted itself. I felt railroaded and needlessly frightened by the hospital staff. I suddenly turned off the waterworks, gathered up my stuff, and calmly informed the medical team that I was leaving. With four hours' worth of dilating drops still in my eyes, I stumbled down to the parking lot with one of the doctors literally trotting across the plaza after me, begging me not to go. "I'm not saying you could go blind overnight, but it's a possibility," he warned. "You shouldn't go."

I kept stepping. My rationale was this: I had gone weeks with the symptoms. Another day wasn't going to make a major difference. And I wasn't going to succumb to surgery with no way home, my car racking up charges in their parking lot, my work going begging, and a $10,000-plus surgery bill that I didn't know would be covered or not.

The next day I confirmed my insurance status, left my car at the job, and hied it over to the Jules Stein Eye Center. But in my hospital gown, cap and booties, with nurses pulling me onto a gurney, I was still phoning around desperately to find someone to pick me up and then drive me out to where I was staying. I left messages for several folks and finally connected with a guy friend who owns a 2-seater convertible just before they jabbed me with the anesthesia IV.

Silly me--I'd been thinking that the operation would be like a laser procedure--the eye would be the only thing affected. I hadn't banked on the impact of anesthesia and a major surgery (the hint was that I had to chuck all my clothes for a hospital gown, duh). When I woke up, I felt as though I had been hit by a truck. My left eye was bandaged (they'd do laser work on the right eye later), and I could barely hold my head up as they wheeled me in a chair out to recovery.

"Your friend is here to pick you up," chirped the nurse. "She's right outside."

"SHE?" I repeated.

I had been expecting my male buddy and his Miata. For some reason I'd told him I would meet him outside afterward. I was in no condition to get up and meet someone outside!

Thank God for my girlfriend L, who got my desperate messages, dropped everything, drove to the hospital and located me. I ended up phoning Miata Man, who was indeed at the curb, and sending him home. It was to the better. L, who had dealt with the needs of her ill mother for a long time, was well-versed in hospital routine. She also had an SUV, a smoother ride for a post-surgical patient. While my head lolled and I fought nausea, she drove us to a pharmacy, went in and paid for my prescriptions, then drove me to my friends' place. I could not have stood on my feet long enough to get the scrips myself. My teeth chattered and I shivered uncontrollably thanks to the anesthesia.

Thus began my slow recovery. Two weeks of continuously lying on my left side in one position so the gas bubble in my eye could sit in the proper position and do its work. I could barely eat, I developed kinks in my neck from the position, and I had a lot of time to think about my past and future. Through the next four weeks I went from seeping bandage to metal eye guard to sexy black eye patch, all the while unable to drive or read.

During that time I received many solicitous, concerned phone calls. Which was great. But also scary, because I heard from friends and relatives I had not heard from in years. Was my mother telling people I was dying? Did my friends fear I'd be stricken blind? Was I now eternally housebound and frail? Was I soon to be relegated to the cane-and-dog set? Or was this eye operation so much more serious than I still failed to recognize?

It was strange. I'd had other more serious surgeries in the last five years, but this eye thing really got people fascinated, horrified, and engaged. The idea of not being able to see, however briefly, or of having the eyes handled in any way just geeks people out. There's a squeamishness there. Perfectly rational people who asked me to explain my surgery would turn ashen, gag, and stop me the minute I got to the details of the scleral buckle procedure. I admit that when I first heard what the doctors planned for me, I was freaked, but now that I've been through it I'm unaffected.

Anyway, it's four months since the surgery. I had to go back to the clinic a few times for laser work to repair retinal tears in my right eye, and that was easy (if you call the feeling of stinging, burning ants attacking the inside of your eye easy) compared with the severity of the surgical episode.

I'm up on my feet. I can drive. I'm back to work. Miracle of miracles, I found an apartment and moved in. I'm not blind. My abysmal failure at moving cross-country seems a blip on the screen.

I'm grateful for everything in my life right now. Because I can see it all.

2007: The Eyes Have It, Part 1

If I told you all that happened to me since January, you wouldn't believe it. OK, maybe you would -- it was ME having trouble believing, since I still have problems adapting to any sort of glitches in the life program.

I had spent most of January in New York, riding the subway and working out of the main office. It was .... not horrible, but definitely less comfortable than my LA routine. So I returned to the West Coast. My life is just easier to manage on the West Coast, despite it being far from my kith and kin, offering a shallow wading pool for dating, and growing ever more expensive.

So there I was in February, still living with friends in Cali after four months with most of my belongings in storage, trying to adjust to the stunning revelation that no, I was not going to be moving in glory and triumph to the East Coast after announcing this intention to all and sundry. I was looking desperately for a new LA apartment to get out of my friends' hair and re-establish my life here. Seems landlords these days are much more greedy about what they charge for rents, and much more discriminating about who they rent to. They can be, because every piece of decent property in the county is being bought up for condos, and rental units are scarce. If you choose to rent anywhere near the city center you pay through the nose, and not before doing a major ass-kissing dance beforehand. Despite all my credentials, the fact that I paid Macy's late three times in 2004 became a black spot on my credit report that potential landlords used to screen me out. Applications were rejected, doors slammed in my face, one old bee-yotch gave me a lecture about my spending habits and I wanted to kick her in her 80-year-old racist shins. Freakin' unbelievable!

On top of that, I had taken on a staggering amount of freelance work in order to further finance my move East, and now had editors and others burning up my phone lines, inquiring as to when they would receive their due. Yours truly was scampering about, burning the midnight oil, going without food or sleep in an attempt to complete projects, all the while juggling the full-time gig and the apartment hunt. By March--with no apartment in sight and pressure from all sides-- I was both desperate and despondent, convinced my relationship with my current hosts was ruined forever and that I'd never be independent again. February segued into March. Much hand-wringing, hyperventilation, and weight loss ensued. In hindsight, it's easy to see how a major breakdown was already in the pipeline.

After a late-February trip to celebrate the anniversary of the only black-owned hotel and casino in Las Vegas (it's Fitzgerald's, by the way), I noticed problems with my eyes. I've always been horribly nearsighted, and ten years ago postponed the inevitable decline with lasik surgery. My vision was improved by the procedure, though not perfected. I still wear glasses, just not the Coke-bottle kind. And if I take them off, I can still find my way around without assistance. But I do experience the halos and bad night vision side effects that come with the operation.

In mid March, I was in Pasadena to cover an awards show. I spent a miserable day constantly polishing my glasses, complaining that they were dirty. It soon occurred to me that it wasn't my glasses--it was my EYES that were cloudy. As I mentioned, problems with my eyes have always been a constant. But now I was developing lightning flashes at night, dark shadows during the day, squiggly floaters obscuring my vision round the clock--amazingly, stuff I ignored. Then I woke up with hundreds of tiny black dots floating around in my left eye. While I was surprised, this development still didn't alarm me. I figured I needed some eyewash and some sleep. I didn't have time to deal with it--I had deadlines.

A friend convinced me this was serious. I consulted the Internet and learned that these symptoms signaled a dire condition that required me to seek medical assistance immediately. I bolted from my desk at the office just after lunch and headed to nearby UCLA, where they have a highly regarded eye clinic. I was seen by no less than four specialists, who damn near popped my eyeballs out of my head and blinded me with ridiculously bright halogen torches through a series of lengthy examinations. They announced that I had detached the retinas in both eyes-- the left eye being worse than the right. "You need surgery immediately -- TONIGHT," intoned the retinal specialist. "Not tonight, I'll come back," I said. "No, TONIGHT," they said.

I freaked out. Majorly.

More in Part 2...

Midlife Moving Madness

I wanted to make big changes. For six months, for a year, I've been talking about it. The the opportunity actually came to make the leap from one coast to another, and do it lightning quick. I wanted to close the book on one portion of my life and start a brand new book in a different locale. I had come from the East, after all, how hard would it be to return?

Waaaay harder than I ever anticipated, as it turns out. Too much time has gone by.

I had a good plan, to move back East, and it all seemed very noble and right and progressive. But I just can't make myself do it. I WANT to be there, I want to be with my sisters and my parents and spend warm and fuzzy time with my peeps and everybody, but I just spent six weeks on the East Coast, and every moment there just felt like a trial. I kept telling myself to get with it, get with the swim, try to enjoy, and I was compromising. Maybe it was about being in the cold, which I never could stand, but I think it was more about my being in the city itself. I no longer fit in there, I have lost my "Bronx skills" as a friend put it. I no longer have love for New York City, the love you have to have to survive happily in it, to be thrilled and attracted to it.

I used to have that feeling, that absolute heady romantic adoration for New York's gritty crumbly realness and crass commercial newness. Growing up there I swooned over its movie theaters, parks, and museums, I slavered over its China-Criollo restaurants and wine bars, the bodegas and Jewish delis, its funky music and dance clubs and upscale bistros, I thrilled to its old architecture, its history, its sprawl, and I strove with everyone else to be "in" with the in-crowd and the folks another friend calls "the N----rati." It was always expensive, but somehow in my youth and my excitement at being smack in the heart of the most exciting city in the world, I felt honored, even privileged to hand over big bucks for everything from cocktails to cab rides to club admission. The dearly departed (and currently in syndication) Sex & The City captured what was romantic and sweet about New York, the sheer fantasy of what kept me in love with it. But no longer. The things I used to enjoy about it seem ridiculous, overrated, and unfulfilling. That's age for ya.

Not bashing the old Apple. It has its charms. But I have become one of those West Coast hippy dippy slackers I used to joke about: Too used to palm trees, sunshine, valet parking, a certain glossiness and sheen. I love my backless mules, my yoga classes, my sushi hangouts, my Whole Foods and Trader Joes excursions, and even--God help me--The Grove, that monument to consumerism over in the Miracle Mile. They say Los Angeles has no culture, and that's not entirely true. It seems to lack a true center, but hey -- that's what the automobile is for.

Anyway, I haven't completely given up on moving closer to my peeps. I think perhaps now is not the time--I'm not quite ready. The prospect of making big changes is wonderful and filled with hope and possibility, but one must be prepared. I'm not. Not yet.

Music Soothes The Savage Stress

--OK, stress is a mother. I have never handled stress well. I'm a person who likes to focus on one project at a time. I can go beginning to end, wrap that up, and then on to the next. But life is rarely like that. When I have to juggle three or four or six different projects or situations all at once, I start to feel like I have a 100-pound pack on my back, like Sisyphus rolling the rock up the hill on the daily, I feel like I will never see the light at the end of the tunnel. My eyes get a little wild, my breathing gets a little on the hyper side, and the timbre of my voice starts to rise into Minnie Mouse territory, squeezed by my escalating anxiety. (People can always tell my mood when I answer the phone by the level of my voice). Oh -- and my back goes out. I have a nasty crick in my neck right now. Of course, having a crick in the neck or kink in the back goes a long way toward easing the already troublesome flow -- NOT!

I'm not going to get into all that has me taking shallow breaths these days. It's all so minuscule in the scope of a world where Lebanon and Israel are exchanging bombs, soldiers are falling in Iraq every day, residents of the Gulf Coast are still sifting through the rubble almost a year later, and gas prices are rocketing into the stratosphere. Some people would count my little work and home dilemmas as blessings compared to what they have going on. So I need to CHILL.

I know I should be calm. Life IS problems, as an old boyfriend used to say. But I was raised to expect things to be smooth sailing with no surprises by a mother who seemed in shock whenever things went awry. Which was basically all the time. I am trying to unlearn the example of her responses, but it's hard. I mean, why SHOULDN'T things be smooth as glass all the time, dammit???

It's hard to keep all the balls in the air when I take time out of my busy schedule to blog. I guess whatever crushing pressure develops from my ongoing procrastination is only my just desserts. Pass me a spoon and some whipped topping. As a character in one of my favorite novels says, You just hungry, chile, that's why you carrying on this way.
So in addition to snacking my way happy, what improves the mood? Music.

--MMMmmm, that new Beyonce track is Hot Hot HOT! Deja Vu has a great sound, it's like an event record, the same way Crazy In Love sounded BIG coming through the speakers. I think it's the horns and the percussion that take it there. Very few R&B/pop records these days have big, brassy horn lines in them, sampled or otherwise. The single has that uncanny feeling of something you've heard before, though you know you haven't. I'm anxious to see more of the all-girl band, too. I'm not mad at Miss B at all.

I got to interview Beyonce just once, at a photo shoot for a magazine about six or seven years ago when Destiny's Child had just dumped LeToya (who's now rising to the top with her own single) and LeTavia and taken on Michelle and a fourth girl who didn't last long, Farrah. I was just completely charmed by Beyonce, she was like this polite, well-bred Southern girl. It seemed like an act at first, like something put on for journalists, the Houston accent and all. But I finally got that it's her way. Sweet on the outside, tough on the inside. Tough, but not ... rough. Maybe I just want to relate to her because I'm also a Virgo with big mama thighs. Ha!

An addendum: Writing that story was among the most unpleasant journalism experiences I've had. In trying to run down the inside facts of why the other half of DC got dumped, I later tried to press some of the group's entourage for details, and got cussed out and hung up on by hair, makeup, and security people and read the riot act by Papa Matt. Hey -- I was just doing my job, though I felt a little icky about it. I didn't ask them anything outrageous, just if they had any factual tidbits that they could even supply anonymously. This was before news of the lawsuits came out. I'm sure their loyalty was well rewarded over time.

Will I ever get to interview Miss B again? Time will tell.

Superman Recycled

Hollywood's got nerve. We knew this, but still. Ripoffs abound. Bad enough theaters show you a half hour of bad commercials and charge you a grip to get in, then the big studios fail to deliver half the time. Now they serve leftovers.

On Saturday night, the Man wanted to go to the movies, which was fine. It was hot as all heck in the San Fernando Valley, a theater was the best spot to literally chill in. The Man also wanted to check out Superman Returns. Fine with me. I'm not a comic book fan by any stretch of the imagination (I had to be restrained from getting my money back within the first five minutes of Unbreakable, when that overrated Shyamalan character posted some superhero mythology gobbledygook onscreen at the top of the flick), but the first two X-Men movies were cool, and I dug Spiderman. OK.

Again, within the first five minutes of Superman Returns I smelled a rat. Starting with the opening credit sequence. Uh, that music sounds darned familiar. And the swooping blue holographic screen credits seem awfully been-there-done-that. Wake me, shake me, is it 1978? Why does director Bryan Singer recycle the same exact elements, John Williams score and all, from the 1978 Christopher Reeve flick? I know it was great the first time around, no question, but no updates, no add-ons, no remixes? I mean, that's just CHEAP. Like watching the TV movie version. As an audience member I already felt insulted and swindled, like a professor whose student grinningly turns in a plagiarized paper. Perhaps he meant it as an homage, but it felt more like frommage (uh, cheese). I guess that's what I get for being old enough to have experienced the first Superman in an actual movie theater. I wouldn't even have known if I was 20 years younger.

Spoiler Alert: (although how much of a spoiler could it be if you've already seen the weekend box office numbers?) Things did not, as they say, get better from there. The flick was just OK. The director banked on the audience already knowing the Superman story inside and out. And while he felt it necessary to waste a lot of time on fancy flashbacks with old Brando footage and a childhood cornfield sequence, he spent too little time on character development. We liked Superman once, hey -- we'll like him again! But that doesn't always work with a new actor (Kilmer, Clooney as Batman, anyone?)

Brandon Routh fills out his tights quite nicely (seems the suit is one of the things they spent money to update) but doesn't have much to say that's new or original or interesting and spends most of the flick imitating the dearly departed Chris Reeve or posing like cells from the original DC comic. And Kate Bosworth? Sweet girl, badly miscast. Lois Lane should have been played by Parker Posey, who livens up any flick, and who gamely injects humor and pathos into the minimal character of Lex Luthor's moll. Kevin Spacey strikes the right note of nastiness as Luthor and he has some great lines. I'd also throw a few Oscar nominations at the set designers and set dressers--nice art deco touches--but the costumes are a weird mix of 2006 and 1946. But the movie is looooooooong. Just when you think it's over, there's ... more. And more. And more.

Well, don't listen to me. I'm the ancient chick who went to the original Superman in a theater on 34th Street in New York where mice ran up and down the rows to get fallen candy. My screams should have summoned all the residents of Krypton.

Welcome to the Blog

Welcome to the blog.

Why does this phrase make me think of Blue Magic's "Welcome To The Club"? For two reasons: I just got back from Philadelphia, City of Brotherly Love (true true) "and Sisterly Affection," as one of my girlfriends is known to say. Philly is where Blue Magic got its start, blah blah bah. Philly is a happening spot these days... more on that later.

Second reason: I'm a product of the early disco years in New York, when "Welcome To The Club" was a dancefloor "hustle" record. Guess I'm giving away my age. But believe me when I say that I was a mere slip of a girl when I was sneaking into Nell Gwynne's, the Loft, the Buttermilk Bottom, and later going to Impanema's, Pegasus, the Colli Bron, Leviticus, Justine's, and the mecca of the Paradise Garage, among others.

As a South Bronx chica, I wanted to be slick and worldly, hip and happening at 15 and 16, and I just wanted to dance. Nobody I knew talked about going to the gym, doing yoga, or lifting weights back then. It was just putting on your disco purse with your lipgloss and your mad money and dancing for five hours straight, with or without a partner. And if I had to navigate the subways, the pre-sexual harrassment law negroes trying to cop a feel, the fascinating world of homosexual culture, the drugs in the bathrooms and the acid in the punch to get my dance on, that's what I did. And I have great memories. They're embedded with the music.

I've been re-living those years recently by reading this book "Love Saves The Day: A History Of American Dance Music Culture 1970 - 1979" by Tim Lawrence. It's a fascinating look back at New York's club culture after the '60s, and how "disco" grew and then died. The book is written from a mostly white gay male perspective, but it mentions many of the DJs, the clubs, and the records that I remember. It's the first book that I've read about dance music that really and truly captures the joy and abandon of the dancing itself, the power of the music to liberate people from their everyday selves and allow them to revel physically in the melody and the rhythm. For many people discos were about drinking or finding sex partners--only if you were a true dancer did you understand why Larry Levan of the Paradise Garage is still so revered.

Growing up in the Bronx meant I witnessed the birth of hip-hop as well, but it seemed to me a mostly male aggressive phenomenon that didn't capture my imagination as much as the orchestral romance of Philly International, the drama of Ecstasy Passion & Pain, the wisdom of Loleatta Holloway, the soulful pleading and breakdown of Eddie Kendricks' "Girl You Need A Change Of Mind." I heard Kool Herc spin, Grandmaster Flowers, and others. Rollerskated at the Empire Ballroom. Went to hip-hop parties. But I was about the dance, now known as disco. As usual, what began as a hip, underground, black/gay thang got co-opted for mass consumption with bad records, gimmicks, and tourists. Then the headbangers of the rock world--who couldn't snap their fingers to a beat if they wanted to--got together and shot disco dead.

Now it's 25 years later and I haven't danced as long, as creatively, or with as much sense of liberation or celebration as I did back then. I'll admit it: I miss the Nightlife, I miss the Boogie. It's so unfashionable to say so.

Anyway, was in Philly to witness the first Rhythm & Blues Foundation Pioneer Awards in three years. Very nice event, honoring the legendary artists who made great music, toured the country during times when segregation was still the law of the land, and many times did not get the royalties or the accolades their artistry deserved. Frankie Beverly & Maze -- who doesn't know or like their music? They had never really received any real honors, but Frankie was on stage to get his Pioneer Award. Barbara "Yes I'm Ready" Mason, still adorable, still in good voice, also honored. Chubby Checker, whose "The Twist" permanently altered dance floor dynamics; Bettye Lavette, who watched all her Detroit friends sign to Motown and become stars as she struggled for years to have her earthy R&B style heard; the brilliant songwriter and arranger Thom Bell whose astounding orchestrations made the Delfonics, Stylistics, and others sound so lush and multilayered; and the Delfonics themselves, La La means I Love YOU, my brothers.

Berry Gordy, looking like an aging rock star (clean! clean!) received a lifetime achievement award, and Philadelphia International's Gamble & Huff nearly swooned as they presented it, being as Gordy's Motown operation inspired them to soar with their own legendary musical imprint. Smokey Robinson and Patti LaBelle co-hosted; and as usual, Miss Patti was doing things her way, going off the script at the top of the show while Smokey tried to endure. I won't get all into her shenanigans--too much respect for her pipes (and LaBelle in their silver spacesuits dominated my imagination during the Disco Years)--but really. Someone needs to invent a pill for Diva Syndrome.

There are plans afoot for a major National Center For Rhythm & Blues to be established within Philadelphia within the next few years. As Gamble says, Not the home OF rhythm & blues, because many cities can lay claim to the title, but a home FOR rhythm & blues, a place where the music and its history can be cradled and nurtured and promoted. Love it. Maybe with more visibility for the music as its own distinct style (not under rock, as its listed in the All Music Guide, or as an offshoot of the blues) it can grow again. It's already starting, thanks to a bunch of artists who don't want to be known as "neo soul." Come to think of it, many of them came from Philly.

Stay tuned.