The Muse

"And you can stand on the arms of the Williamsburg bridge, crying 'Hey man, well this is Babylon"

-Soul Coughing-

It's been raining here is NY for a few days and I haven't gone anywhere since last weekend. So that means I've been mostly sitting at home and doing 2 of my favorite things; reading and listening to music. Then I did some digging around for lyrics about New York or from New York musicians. I found them everywhere. I was reminded of a conversation I had with a friend of mine about which city is the greatest musical city.

"Detroit", he said "it is definitely Detroit."

He was, of course from Detroit. Naturally, I took New York, but we opened the discussion up for others as well. Maybe it was Nashville, or New Orleans, San Fransisco, Austin, LA? We talked about that topic for weeks. We changed the parameters often. Did an artist have to be FROM that city or just become famous there. Neither Stevie Wonder nor Frank Sinatra were from Detroit or NY respectively, but no one would argue that they weren't iconic figures of those cities.

Then we had to figure out a time frame. We certainly were not going to compare Mozart in Salzburg with LL Cool J in Queens. So we settled on U.S cities only, any time, any type of music...much easier.

Since this is a blog about NYC, I'll spare you the whole discussion but here are some of my thoughts about music in New York.

• Stephen Foster, the great writer of the Americana aesthetic, lived and died in tenement row in the Bowery.
• George Gershwin, possibly the greatest American classical music composer was from Brooklyn...so was Aaron Copland.
• Leonard Bernstein was the youngest conductor of the New York Philharmonic and brought New York music to the world with On The Town and West Side Story.
• The world's greatest Banjo player, Bela Fleck, is from New York.
• in the 1960's Greenwich Village was the epicenter for modern folk music giving voice to Pete Seger, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan.
• The whole style of the American Musical is named after Broadway...and Tin Pan Alley.
• Jazz great Miles Davis was kicked out of Julliard.
• KRS-1, MC of the ground breaking hip-hop group Boogie Down Productions, real name is Kris Parker, the same name as a friend of mine from High School.
• There is an area of Queens called Cyprus Hill in case anyone wondered where they got their name.
• It is said that salsa music started in NY, but i honestly don't know enough to talk about it.
• John Lennon, John Lennon, John Lennon.

There is literally not enough time or space to give anywhere near a good history of music in NY. New York gave birth to Punk, gave new life to Jazz and many if its forms, has always been a center of hip-hop and dance music. Every classical musician has either lived or passed through here. Antonin Dvorak and Rachmaninoff were drawn to the city by its sophistication...The Velvet Underground and Patti Smith by its dunginess. The worlds most famous music venues are here: Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, The Blue Note, Radio City Music Hall (CBGB-we miss you).

Sifting through all the lyrics about New York from the likes of Tom Waits, James Brown, Irving Berlin, New York Dolls, Ani Difranco, etc., I realized how some of these songs touch people and can live with you for life.

Once while listening to Guitar Man in central park sing Paul Simon's The Boxer, he paused after singing these lyrics:

Asking only workman's wages/ I come looking for a job/ but I get no offers...Just a come on from the whores on 7th avenue/ I do declare, / there were times when I was so lonesome/ I took some comfort there.

He told a great story about a kid that had heard him sing that song and kept nagging his mother that he wanted to go see the "Horse" on 7th ave. That is one of my favorite New York stories.

Of all the things that connect music to New York, all the things I have wrote about, read about or experienced, there is one thing above all that makes me happiest of all...music is what brought me to New York. New York is my Muse!!!