February 2, 2015

This is Barbies, on a chilly Sunday night, in a small bar on 9^th Street in Brooklyn. Stephane Wrembel, the guy who wrote the music for Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” is screaming away on his guitar. He is playing his new music tonight, not the Spanish guitar sounds that I love, but something new, a bit spacy, with a hint of Carlos Santana. I sit back and let the music sink into my soul. He talks about the universe and plays his music as if channeled Aldous Huxley, Carlos Castaneda, and Druits’ peyote dreams.

This music that fills the red tinted room is a mix of gypsy jazz, the manouche of the French Gypsies and a big dose of Django Reinhardt. The room looks a bit like a Mexican whore house I visited a million years ago when I was hitch hiking across the county, only this time I don’t need the two cents to come back across the border bridge. The young and hip move to the musical rhythms. The waitress collects money for the band.

I am drinking a shot of Jamerson’s Irish and a Stella. My good friend Bill asks,  “doesn’t that shot burn on the way down.”  I say, “no,” but wonder if I have been drinking too long. It’s only been sixty-five years.