My trip to NYC (May 1999)

Being an account of my peregrinations to and from New England, returning via NYC. 

I'm still recouping from being North of the Mason-Dixon Line for I was requested to participate in a friend's wedding up in New Hampshire. The best part was that I was able to take a road trip without the presence of surly teenaged children. I was also able to stop off in Amherst, Mass and visit a shop specializing in accordions and their appurtenances. As you may imagine, such establishments are not common and I took advantage of this visit to purchase a new set of orthopaedic accordion straps. I also visited a guitar shop in Amherst and saw a National Steel Duolian (a 1935 vintage "resophonic" axe) for sale at a mere $3500. What a steal! 

I had promised my friend that I would barbecue when I got there and would bring various sauces with which to season the previously purchased meat. I recall cooking twenty pounds of boneless pork and nearly the same of halved chicken breasts. These were scarfed down with glee and copious amounts of beer were also swilled by the celebrants in short order. 

We ran through the wedding sequence a few times and got the songs down with the dulcimer hammerer and waited for Saturday, the day of the nuptial ceremony. Since I previously spoke of resophonicity, I hipped the hammer dulcimore player about possibly fabricating a resophonic metal dulcimore. That sucker would plumb honk, I'll bet. And you could play it with those tiny peening hammers we used in metal shop. I think my accordion playing may have brought out the black flies. They had been absent until I began playing "HASTE TO THE WEDDING", an 18th century ditty fraught with references to "rural felicity" and most probably, an Anglo-Celtic fiddle tune from that great morass of fretless bucolic lubricity. This is the only song I know of that has the word "jocund" in it. Except perhaps for Karl Orff's CARMINA BURANA. 

The reception was held in a mansion in Vermont. It became rather interesting when the several cheerleaders in the wedding party started mixing Jose Cuervo with champagne and began doing cartwheels and other tumbling routines in the main dance floor to the dulcet tones of The B-52s whilst still in full wedding attire. I'd never seen such an amazing display and was watching to see if they might hit the crystal chandelier and knock it down. 

I had a Dylan experience whilst motoring through upstate NY on my way from Vermont to NYC. I stopped in Catskill for a beer & a burger(& a much needed pit stop; since there seem to be no loos on the Taconic Parkway). I would assume the movers and shakers who use this stretch of linear tarmac must piss in a bottle or have yogic powers of restraint. 

After this much-needed respite I was getting back to the NY Throughway and saw some neo-flower children hitching in my direction. I picked them up, but they got out about a half-mile later. They were going north, I was going south (to NYC). The young ladies told me "But there's a festival up north." I told them in no uncertain terms that I had been to festivals but had never been to Nueva Iorque. They left me with the curious admonition "Peace in Kosnia". Kosnia? Does this have something to do with Dr. Huxtable? Then as I got on the NY Throughway, an FM station out of Poughkipsee played all of The Bard of Hibbing's BLONDE ON BLONDE with no interruptions. Pleasant, but curious. 

I arrived at my cousin's in Westchester and she and her husband took me on the scenic tour of the Tarrytown area, full of Washington Irving sites like the Ichabod Crane bridge, etc. This is all surrounded by urban sprawl & IBM & Rockefeller property which is still undeveloped. I stayed across the street from Chevy Case's uncle who was recouping from prostate surgery so was not up for much merriment. On Memorial Day they took me on an amazing driving tour of the city and such places as the restaurant where the guys on SEINFELD hang out, The White Horse where Dylan Thomas died in his own puke after imbibing 39 pints of Guiness(!), the Fulton Fish Market, etc. I kept my eyes peeled for sewer entrances in NYC. I was ready to hunt albino alligators. 

Our main mission was to see guitar geezer extraordaire, Les Paul, who will soon be 85. This was at Iridium where he still plays two shows every Monday night. I was plumb tickled to have finally seen him and he is still a great guitar player and can tell jokes with a salacious innuendo and ready aplomb at the drop of a guitar pick. At the end of the first show I waited in line with a number of euro-trash types to get some of my old 10" LPs of his autographed. This was rather tedious but I finally got through to him before he began his last set. 

I don't expect I'll ever want to move to New York City. It's damn pricey.

TB Samsel