Reviews

Music for Crossing the Heinous Bridge

6/5/2018

One of the most heinous things about living around New York City is crossing the George Washington Bridge onto the Cross-Bronx Expressway. Abandon all hope, as Dante warned.

It’s even bad when Chris Christie’s little pals are not monkeying with the traffic lanes.

On Saturday evening, we encountered a cloudburst and a breakdown in the center lane, right around Webster Ave. in the Bronx. Thousands of assassins and cut-throats were doing evil things at the wheel, hacking their way toward Long Island or New England.

But I did get by.

My wife worked the FM tuner and somehow found a Grateful Dead hour on wonderful WFUV from Fordham University.

In short order, David Gans played one of the most ethereal of all Dead songs, “Attics of My Mind,” sung not by Jerry and company but by children from the Barton Hills Choir of Austin, Tex.

Apparently, the children perform Dead songs as well as other familiar pop tunes Their harmonies are amazing. They enunciated the Jerry Garcia-Robert Hunter lyrics so sweetly. They mellowed me right out to where I could withstand the assassins and cut-throats of the Cross-Bronx.

When I got home I downloaded the video of the Barton Hills Choir (above.)

I don’t know much about them or their repertoire but their faces and voices are so sweet.

Can’t see them covering “Mexicali Blues” or “Pride of Cucamonga” or “Me and My Uncle.”

But late Saturday night, in a cloudburst, with a middle-lane breakdown, surrounded by thousands of cut-throats and assassins right out of a Dead classic, these children got us through. We did survive. .

Jim Trupin

6/5/2018 09:52:43 am

Whenever I endured the hegira from Jersey across The George, one of Carlin's bits came to mind, the one in which he imagines his car's headlights turning into .50 caliber machine guns, the problem solvers, so to say. Is there anyone who hasn't entertained homicidal thoughts while steering mightily through that Robert Moses nightmare? I think not and, sad to say, music never helped.

George Vecsey

6/5/2018 04:05:24 pm

Dear Jim Trupin: Thanks for your comment. I never heard Carlin's comments, but I imagine my car sprouting a giant baseball bat or maybe some kind of jagged side bumper just to keep the lunatics at a distance. Don't tell anybody. Music does help me. I remember one ghastly Sunday evening, leaving the hideous Giants Stadium, caught in traffic of football fans and weekenders, but one of the WQXR hosts had a show with the owner of a Mexican restaurant in NYC, and she sang songs from her childhood on a finca in Mexico. So charming. It got me from Fort Lee to Queens. GV

Brian Savin

6/5/2018 02:44:35 pm

Beautiful. Sometimes it takes an acoustic version and clearly enunciated lyrics to appreciate the artistry of the best popular music. Sometimes it takes a Noble Prize.

Coincidentally, I also had a pop music epiphany last Saturday and it was also during an expected near death experience: I saw Alanis Morissette’s “The Jagged Little Pill” album turned into a new musical at the American Repertory Theater up in Cambridge. I knew it was going to be about a slew of problems besetting an entire family in a Connecticut town called “Greenport” being a conflation of all the towns along the Sound between Greenwich and Westport. Our daughter warned me it encompassed the full modern check list: opioid and porn addictions, bisexuality and gender uncertainty, race, date rape and me-too-ism, on-line bullying, money vs morals, pomposity and self-centered arrogance. Oh, boy! Really?

Well, it wasn’t about cultural sloganeering, it was about life, and it was just great! I came home and looked up the lyrics of each of the songs. She’s brilliant. In the end, life’s about muddling through what we throw at each other with all the learning you can master and humor you can muster. I heard in my mind a saying of a late good friend: “It’s human to be human.”

bruce

6/5/2018 03:21:37 pm

george,

enjoyed that and your eclectic taste in music.

i've never loved the dead, but my son in law is a serious dead head. he's travelled all over north america to see them.

bruce

George Vecsey

6/5/2018 04:08:25 pm

Brian and Bruce: thanks to both. I don't know the music you mention, Brian, but clearly it hit home. Bruce, our son introduced me to the Dead. I went to a few shows at Nassau Coliseum, saw Jerry. My wife and I saw a documentary of their shows at Radio City decades ago, and my wife liked them better seeing them up close in the video.

Mendel

6/6/2018 09:39:21 am

You got me George, been listening to this beauty all day. Glad to hear you learned something from your son. I first listened to Live/Dead after discovering the LP among my father's records.

George Vecsey

6/6/2018 09:32:47 pm

Mendel: my son took me to a Dead concert at Nassau Coliseum. A hazy section, let's say. One young feller turned to me and said, "Would you like a hit.....sir?" I giggled. Must have been the second-hand smoke. Same son also gave me 5-6 classic cassette copies...play them still...GV

Janet Vecsey

6/5/2018 03:29:32 pm

Loved watching the video, but couldn't get my computer's sound high enough to hear the words. When I lived in Hollis, I commuted for over a year over the Throgs Neck Bridge to my job in Fort Lee. It was on the Cross Bronx where I faced the worst nightmares of driving - battling trucks, and breakdowns, and maniacs. Once I moved to Ft. Lee to avoid the daily anxiety, I realized that from then on I could drive anywhere. And then I moved to Atlanta. Wow those merging 5 or 6 lanes on 85/75 are equally bad. Or maybe not! The trucks were the worst in NY. Thanks for the memory....? Glad you and Marianne had a bit of a distraction. I must look for the lyrics to the song.

George Vecsey

6/5/2018 04:15:00 pm

Jane, thanks, the lyrics are linked where I mention Garcia and Hunter. Should be able to click them on. If not, do a Google search but I just opened them with the link to make sure. It is a unique song, as eclectic as the Dead are. As for 85/75, yes, it is war to get through that. And what about driving in the very rare ice and snow? Oy, as we say up here. Love, George

Michael

6/6/2018 09:54:40 am

George - Thanks for this great post. I've listened to WFUV many times as I've navigated my way across the GWB (and then the Whitestone) to visit my dear mom in Bayside. I remember Dennis Elsas from my teenage years on Long Island (WNEW and maybe WLIR before that??). Great cover for a great Dead song. I immediately sent your post link to my brothers and friend (the same friend that was with me when i met you 8 years ago in Philly on your World Cup book tour...8 days to go by the way). Michael

Michael

6/6/2018 10:03:06 am

Correction - Your book tour was 4 years ago! Michael

George Vecsey

6/6/2018 09:33:40 pm

Michael: time goes fast when you're having a good time. GV

Joshua Rubin

6/6/2018 11:59:49 am

Nice post, George. I've never been a big Dead fan. If I want a long jam, I will dig through my jazz collection for some Coltrane, or maybe, in a pinch, Allman Brothers at the Fillmore East. The Dead were always too loosey-goosey for me. But I am starting to realize how much I like some of the songs, particularly from the American Beauty/ Workingman's Dead period. The children's chorus you posted would do a really nice job with Uncle John's Band, for example -- some really nice harmonies and inviting lyrics.

George Vecsey

6/6/2018 09:34:57 pm

In the Time of the Fool, I find myself listening to more chamber quartets because they are so....classic.
We need classic.
GV

Mendel

6/7/2018 12:47:46 am

Joshua,

No Uncle John's Band, but they do Ripple and Fire on The Mountain. If your cup is full, let it be again.

Edwin W Martin

6/6/2018 04:12:44 pm

WOW! That is a show stopper. Moist eye time. I don't know the song, My sons would. Thanks GV.
.
One memory of Cross Bronx, shortly after we returned to NY, and having just read Bonfire of the Vanities, we took the 3rd Ave. bridge, one night, to link with it and found ourselves riding through the Bronx without a clue, following under the bridge. It was kind of like swimming after Jaws, but here we are!

Peter Kennedy link

6/6/2018 05:23:59 pm

Beautiful George -- a wonderful, uplifting cover of 'Attics' and a great flashback to Barton Springs, our refuge during graduate school years in Austin. WFUV (90.7!!) has indeed gotten me through some terrible NYC area traffic, as well as many very late night drives up from the Island to Hartford. Cheers.

George Vecsey

6/6/2018 09:36:49 pm

Peter: I am going to Austin after World Cup to visit a journalism class at UT. Where/what is Barton Springs? GV

Peter J. Kennedy link

6/7/2018 01:58:29 pm

George, it's part of Zilker Park. It's a natural, spring-fed reservoir with clear, ice cold water. Enjoy UT! Keep Austin weird, OK?

http://austintexas.gov/department/zilker-metropolitan-park

Alan Rubin link

6/8/2018 12:31:46 am

The Cross Bronx Expressway must be avoided at all costs. There are occasionally times that is moves relatively well, but it too risky to chance it.

Things were different when it first opened. It was just about 35 minutes from my home in Teaneck, NJ to my grandmother’s apartment on Rosedale Avenue in the Bronx just of the CBE. Rush hours were tolerable, but all other times were a breeze.

Now, longer workarounds are usually time savers.

Robert Moses, the self-proclaimed master planner, created a significant network of roads in the NYC metropolitan area and upstate, but his arrogance also created much of today’s traffic ills.

The low bridges on the Northern and Southern Parkways to prevent the “church busses” from having access to Jones Beach and other LI attractions were a relatively minor inconvenience compared to his decisions concerning the building of the Cross Bronx Expressway.

Moving the roadway a very small distance at its GWB starting point would have avoided splitting the vibrant community a few miles down in the Bronx that led to the creation of and migration to Co-op City.

The George Washington Bridge is an example of planning for the future. The original design allowed for a lower roadway and had two center lanes for an eventual light rail commuter line.

Unfortunately, Moses killed any potential for this when he turned down his engineer’s suggestion to reinforce the two center lanes of the Cross Bronx Expressway during its construction. For a relatively small additional cost of $10 M, a small rail commuter line could have been connected to the city and NJ.

It does not take genius to image the hours of time and frustration that commuters could have saved over the years but for Robert Moses.

I won’t go into the Dodgers moving to LA.

George Vecsey

6/8/2018 12:21:21 pm

Hi, Alan: I agree with you. In other places, too, you can feel how a neighborhood was severed by an expressway. Friend of ours is planning an educational tour of Manhattan, and on a trial run the expert discussed how Moses was going to run an overhead freeway through Greenwich Village., Can you imagine? That Great Man could. I never realized the racist thinking behind those lovely bridges on the Grand Central/Northern State. That;s my childhood, family outings to Jones Beach. Outings harder these days as the roadways and subways fall apart -- legacy from our leaders. Be well, GV

Alan Rubin link

6/8/2018 01:41:37 pm

Robert Moses was brilliant in that he knew how to create authorities to raise money for his projects and remain outside any political or civic restraints. Unfortunately, method did not encompass a moral component.

The following quote and link are from the Untapped Cities web site.

“Along with the Garden of Eden and Central Park, Lincoln Center impresses the visitor as one of those Genesis institutions, fashioned by God to remind us how pathetic we are. It’s so vast, exalted, and venerable; surely nothing so grubby as human hand’s could’ve been behind it, much less Robert Moses’ hands. But you can’t get it away from it. The man who played God, laying a bridge here, demolishing a neighborhood there, and never once facing public election, is responsible for Lincoln Center. And if you think it wouldn’t be a Moses product without a little whole-sale bull-dozing thrown in, you’re be right. Before Lincoln Center, there was San Juan Hill.”

https://untappedcities.com/2014/03/19/vintage-photos-the-lost-san-juan-hill-lincoln-center-and-a-west-side-story/

I was born in 1935 and lived at 620 West 141 Street until I was seven when my family moved to 802 Fort Washington Avenue at 190 th street. We lived there until 1947. It was a time when it was safe for a youngster to roam NYC (mostly Manhattan) alone.

Before I was 12 and moved to Teaneck, NJ, it was perfectly normal to go to Gimbels to supplement my coin collection or for swimming practice at London Terrace on 23 rd Street between 9 th and 10 th avenues. No worries coming home by the A train at night.

When I was in high school, I worked summers and weekends in my dad’s Upper West Side retail appliance store. I often went into Hell’s Kitchen to pick up parts. The40's were mostly Irish and the upper section closer to 59 th Street was Afro-American.

I loved the smells and vitality of the neighborhoods. Although occasionally a bit nervous, I never had a problem.

In developing his Lincoln Center Complex, Moses promised to relocate the San Juan Hill population with a minimum of disruption. It was a disaster with most either receiving inferior accommodations or having to fend for themselves.

Moses was stopped from putting a roadway through the battery and destroying the aquarium.

Stretches of the parkways to LI need not have been so winding. Many route changes were made to either avoid disturbing homes of wealthy friends or to enhance their properties.

Robert Moses would have made our current administration's officials appear civic minded.

Gene Palumbo

6/8/2018 02:55:45 pm

Alan Rubin:

Thanks for these fine posts. I hate to have to be the one to tell you you've fallen short. In what sense? You didn't deliver the hammer blow you alluded to: "I won’t go into the Dodgers moving to LA." I say please, go into it. You're on a roll. Let 'er rip. Let him have it."

Joshua Rubin

6/8/2018 03:29:40 pm

Dad and Gene,
Our next door neighbor in Brooklyn is Mrs. Murphy, 93. A big baseball fan. If i don t hear tbe Mets game on her television, i worry something happened to her. I bet if i ever really found her passed out i could revive her just by aaying O'Malley out loud. Like a big shot of adrenaline. She would pop up ready to fight.

Brian Savin

6/11/2018 07:08:13 am

My, my....now doesn’t that give new meaning to an old movie line:

Bing Crosby: if you ever need anything, Sister, anything at all...

Ingrid Bergman: I know, just dial “O,” for O’Malley.

Andy Tansey

6/16/2018 10:13:52 am

Wow! Stream of consciousness. From back-in-the-day when Phil Lesh sang beautiful harmonies (accompanying Bobby and Jerry, of course) to the Brooklyn Dodgers of Anaheim (or something like that). And so, I shall indulge in my own consciousnesstream.

First, THANK YOU, GEORGE, for the beautiful music. Because of the events surrounding my story, below, I was talking with some folks on the Flushing Line about how the music is enduring, about how kids who were born after all the organic accumulation of tapes froze in the instant Garcia died are now playing his music. This is a different approach, and just beautiful. Also can't see the kids doing "I Need a Miracle."

STORY: Back-in-the-day, I'd carefully attend to the mail order, obeying all the rules, and usually get my desired tickets, paying full price. I'd bring my ticket to the show and inevitably see apparently penniless Dead Heads with handmade signs, "I need a miracle," universally meaning that they needed tickets. On the occasion I had an extra, I'd be inclined to help, expecting the needy fan to reimburse me for what I paid but no more. Invariably, they expected a free or reduced-rate ticket.

As some who read and write here may recall, I commute by parking at Mets Ballyard, paying a reduced-rate $5 for commuters if I follow the timing rules, as opposed to the exorbitant $25 for baseball fans. When I arrived yesterday morning in my lawyer's suit, the rate was $40(!) for the Dead Heads in their microbuses - perhaps for a day of microdots - and RVs already gathering for Dead & Co. last night. $40? I thought, "I need a miracle." The man at the gate in the garish orange shirt recognized me as a regular and charged me the reduced-rate $5.

(Among all the colors of a Dead & Co. audience, Mets' orange still stands out.) Dead & Co. consist of Bobby and the drummers Bill & Mickey, with the bassist from the former Allman Bros., keyboard man from a former Dead cover band and a former pop icon, John Mayer. All the new guys have former paths.

Later, strumming a few numbers and chatting with a dentist and cardiologist, we noted how the songs are enduring through the generations.

I play a game on the Cross Bronx Expressway. Count the net number of cars I pass versus cars that pass me. There are certain ebbs and flows where you can make time by changing lanes. No cheating! Use only the traffic lanes and be polite. I can usually rack up a score of +100. The cosmic reality that so many must pass through this place makes the traffic nightmare worthwhile. The Bruckner-Deegan is rarely a worthwhile alternate.

Thanks again for the music. I will share the young singers with my aging colleagues.

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Music for Crossing the Heinous Bridge

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