[Songs My Son Should Know] Smokey Robinson & The Miracles | Tracks of My Tears

I can tell now that Enzo can be a bit suspicious of things that might suck.  Its getting harder to fool him with things like inert plush toys and lullabies, even ones that emulate a higher depth of sound, like Radiohead or The Beatles.  He's getting waaay more into blue note -- maybe even more so than he was into Kanye when he was, like a month old and wanting to throw his diamond in the sky.

I'm enjoying the very wide time arch that his little auditory sensors are trending towards.  He has absolutely no idea that Miles Davis and Bon Iver are like 5 decades apart in terms of career climaxes, but he appears to appreciate them as if their musically historical relevance are timeless.  Later, he will take the time to understand what impact each of these tunes has in relation to their of their individual genres, music as an art, and society as a culture. 

But until then, I'd like to keep his pendulum of music swinging from time period to time period, so that he may one day understand the stones that were laid by the last generation (and, by extension, this generation) of artists in relation to what he will enjoy on his own ...  in 2031.

This entry is an homage to his half-Michigan lineage -- a musical ancestry as important as his half-Texas heredity with Willie, Spoon, ACL, and SXSW.

This is the dappest man in Motown since 1955: Smokey Robinson and his Miracles.

Pound-for-pound, Smokey Robinson is the undisputed champion of soul.  And Enzo should know that any inventory of Robinson in any jukebox in his immediate vicinity is an investment worth making.

His music is both uplifting and debilitating at the same time.  The man could break up with the world in a text message and we would offer to refund his bill.  Its sweet music with a sledgehammer objective; The Tracks of My Tears being the most enigmatic in a slew of marrow.

At any point in his life, Enzo will need something to hard-swallow in a time of stripped emotions, and then something for the recovery immediately following.  Like a shot of whiskey, this will serve as both.  On a jukebox, in a bar.

[Songs My Son Should Know] Interpol | NYC

This is a tough song to write about because, like the city itself, NYC means a lot of things to a lot of people.  You rarely hear of another place on the planet that invokes the kind of personal chronicling that is elicited from a resident, a tourist, a wishful thinker.  New York is not so much a place as it is a story -- but not a story you tell of it, rather the story it tells of you.  It is a place inspired by its people, and because of this, it is ever-evolving spit, maintaining its historical gospel, but prompting the Quixote nature of its cumulate -- and so I ask, how does the city reckon for you?  What fortune and romance did you etch into its biography?

Manhattan is practically the birthplace of our son, since the architectural climax of our courtship resulted in the bright-light nuptials in The City, and thus, the logical next step was building a new generation, the first of which is Enzo Augustine, youngling of wishful thinkers.  It is his genesis.

Manhattan is also the anchorage of various important relationships and memoirs -- the time spent with so very many adored friends and family, rummaging the streets of neighborhoods like discomposed kids.  Its an incorruptible chronology that hails my heart with as much fervor as an occupied cab.

The radiance of NYC, the song, encapsulates the clash and clamor of such an cogent scratch of land, set to be the first embrace of envisage for the people of fantasy.  All things begin here.  And when you part, the ghost of it lingers.

NYC is a somewhat of a dangerous song, as its poignant reflection makes me a bit of a heavy drinker and habitual play-repeat-play'er.  I've sat alone on my front porch several nights, singing into a rehabilitative glass of Red Breast, serenading the neighborhood with 259 free plays of NYC.  Yes, you are welcome.  The whiskey, she is a porno.