Of Cars, Friendship and Live Music

I don't know what it is about cars. I am not much of a car fanatic. In fact, I don't particularly like them. I abhor shopping for cars or spending much of any attention on them. They would probably be fun to fix, but I have not spent much time at all attempting that.

But there is nothing quite like listening to music in a car.

I don't know why music comes alive while cruising down the road, stereo blaring, all senses reeling. Maybe because music is motion. Its one of my favoritest ways of communing with friends. Singing to each other, living the music with our whole beings, speaking lines with every drop of expression as the poetry that they are.

The car doesn't even have to be running. (There goes the theory about motion above, but maybe a car--even a parked car--always has that potential of motion, its about being "out there" in the world and not inside a building).

Hats off to Scott Teresi: Its times like this when I realize how rare it is to have a friend who you can just sit and sing songs together with for a spontaneous block of time. We went out to dinner for what I thought would be a quick study break. We ended up parking in the car and just blasting tunes for not just one album cycle but about 6 hours virtually straight! We moved parking spaces occasionally, went for a Taco run and some refreshments.

There aren't many friends with whom who you can literally breathe Lionel Richie and Neil Diamond songs without any drop of weirdness (nor should there be, but society is what it is), or with whom you can run the gamut from funk to folk without noticing any discontinuity.

This time, we started off with a rompin' Victor Wooten album "Soul Circus"--a new found discovery of mine that has gotten me really excited. "Nasty, funky, low-down bass". This album is stunning and wildly creative, and rare to find such a precious gem (its not like high school where mind-blowing albums were discovered one after another after another). Just couldn't get enough funk, so it was Sly & the Family Stone after that, giving way to Marvin Gaye and Smokey Robinson. We always seem to find our way back to John Hartford's Hamilton Ironworks, one of my favorite albums of all-time (and no doubt one of his, too)--old time, expressive fiddle music interspersed with great stories of John's childhood and early music experiences. A lot of albums that play old time songs make them sound like museum pieces. These songs are the soundtrack of John Hartford's life and he plays them that way. Hamilton Ironworks, yeah.