.It’s Been a While

Hey, I know. What have I been up to?
Much of my time was spent writing a cover story for the Bohemian about Roseland, and how it’s not a part of the official city limits of Santa Rosa, even though said city limits surround and extend well beyond Roseland in all directions. Roseland has the highest concentration of Latino residents within Santa Rosa, who, because of their non-city status, have no political voice in the city and no amenities such as parks, libraries and community centers. I spent a couple weeks interviewing city staff, county supervisors, residents, business owners and more to find out what’s really going on. You can read it here. I feel it’s important; I hope you will too.
Simultaneously, I was planning the North Bay Music Awards, something the Bohemian has organized for six years now. This meant that I was contacting nominees, booking bands, arranging a schedule, finding a DJ, downloading and editing winners’ mp3s, combing through exported voting data for fraudulent ballot-stuffing, printing envelopes, making ten gold record awards from scratch in my garage, loading in bands and emceeing the event. Winners are announced in this week’s Bohemian, along with details about myself being tied to a chair and showered in lingerie, which yes, actually happened.
I took this past weekend off to root for the oh-so-frustrating Giants. Driving down to the Saturday game with Lena, my small daughter, I was yet again bowled over by Robyn’s “Hang With Me.” Is it a perfect song or what? I think I’d heard it four or five times before realizing that it’s not a plea for love, but rather, to not be loved. To just hang. To be close, and to probably sleep together (“I know what’s on your mind / There will be time for that, too”) but above all, to avoid the perils that emotional involvement so inevitably attracts. The stunning effect in the song is that Robyn sings this warning to herself as much as to anyone else; the tone she uses reveals she’s been on the other side too often. The acoustic version is better; hear it here.
When I got to the game, they were playing Radiohead’s “Idioteque” over the P.A., which is a bizarre jam to be playing in a sports arena to promote getting pumped on the competition at hand. Also, Barry Zito walked in two runs. Boy, you would not believe the vile things I overheard people shouting at him. I was beside myself too. Just in a stupor. I’d bought a standing-room ticket, it was a beautiful day, and Lena, who’s 14 months old now, was even at one point up on the Jumbotron. I couldn’t allow myself to be excited about it, though. Here all the Giants had to do was win one lousy game to clinch their division and they were blowing it, hard.
But then a great, weird, amazing thing happened. The P.A. started playing the inescapable “Don’t Stop Believin’,” when surprisingly, the Jumbotron showed Steve Perry, former lead singer of Journey, rocking out to his own song . . .  in the stands at the game! ROARS FROM THE CROWD. You’d think Babe Ruth had come back to life and hit number 715. Steve Perry! This is, of course, the year of “Don’t Stop Believin’,” thanks to Glee. (It comes in handy at weddings, too.) So of course people are gonna go nuts, but it was still pretty great, especially considering Perry’s strained relationship with the other band members who still go around playing as Journey without him.
The Giants lost. Lena and I drove away, already dejected, when I got a phone call that my best friends’ dog Oly had been hit by a car the night before and died. My favorite dog in the world. The day just could not get any worse. I drove to Amoeba. Records took my mind off things for a little while. Drove home on 101 while listening to the Good Life album, Black Out, which is what I wanted to do.
Of course, things got better over the weekend. The Giants clinched. I went to a good movie. I fixed my bike. I repaired the gutters on the house. I visited friends. I kept busy.
But mostly, I listened to this Valerie Simpson song called “Fix It Alright” over and over.
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I know the song is aiming to be comforting in its lyrical content, but it was actually the bass playing that reminded me that there is beauty all over the world, in the most unexpected places. Christ, this is a bass player if I ever heard one. His name’s Francesco Centeno, and as it turns out, this was his first recording session, from when he was 15 years old. File him next to Deon Estes in the Overlooked Bass Player Hall of Fame. He did a lot of work both with Valerie Simpson and Ashford & Simpson, who you probably know from that not-really-interesting hit song from the ’80s, “Solid (as a Rock).”
Patti Smith once said that when her husband Fred Smith died, she listened to those two Bob Dylan albums of old folk songs from the ’90s over and over, World Gone Wrong and Good As I Been To You. The timeless beauty of the songs got her through the pain.
Anyway, I don’t know what happened, or how, but listening to the song on repeat with its timeless, beautiful basslines made me feel a little better about Oly. That, and I also remembered that Ashford & Simpson played at Live Aid in 1985 and brought out Teddy Pendergrass for his first public appearance since his car crash. I was nine years old when Live Aid aired, and had no idea who Teddy Pendergrass was or why he was in a wheelchair and crying, but I remember this televised moment really vividly because I could completely feel that something important was happening.
And maybe it’s not the knowing but the feeling that matters in life, and Oly made me feel really wonderful while she was alive, and somehow Francesco Centeno’s bass playing reflected that greatness to me, and we all live on somehow either in what we leave behind or chance reflections of our spirit after we’re gone.