Doggy Heart

Since the blog concept can seemingly encompass gratuitous inclusion of anything the blogger decides he or she wants, here are some liner notes I wrote some years ago for Bob’s (I’ve disguised his name by spelling it backwards) CD and have always liked. If you’re interested in purchasing the CD, let me know and I’ll have “Bob” send you one. If you do buy one you might find that the songs move into your brain and stay with you, rent free, for the remainder of your adult life. If the reader of this happens to be a child or an adolescent, the songs may stay with you for at least a portion of your childhood and/or adolescence but will stand a greater risk of being forgotten, or at least fading into a more generalized memory of “the kind of music your parents used to listen to” as you progress into adulthood. Good luck to you.

After we’d spent the night rehearsing, recording, stepping over mics and wires in the kitchen and horsing around in general, Bob would always walk me down the narrow stairs of his East Boston flat to see me off. We’d stand for a few minutes on his gigantic marble front porch overlooking the perilous traffic on Saratoga Street and discuss the fate of the world. Bob always made the trip downstairs, not just because he enjoyed doing so, but also because he has good manners. Bob stands on ceremony; the view’s better from there.
My car would usually be parked across the street pointing north towards Winthrop. This meant it was going to require a bit of athleticism (and luck) to get into the driver’s seat without being hit by a speeding vehicle hell-bent on making it to the 24-hour store before closing time. On occasion I’d park in the lot behind Bob’s building. The risk factor in that case was Fritzy, a big white dog just a chain link fence away, who hated me and wanted to kill me. Fritzy, who’d already barked himself hoarse upon my arrival five hours earlier, would be well past his refractory period, and by then would have blood in his eyes and rage in his doggy heart. I would have liked for him to kill me someday because he seemed so earnest in his desire.
This CD contains nine of Bob’s songs, realized in the kitchen and washed down with orange juice and instant coffee. The performances are flawed, “just demos”, “could be better” and all that other nonsense. But there are moments which are beautiful. The songs have been turned them over and over and over, looked at from every angle. They are polished, though not in any technical sense of the word. When I listen to them now, years later, I can still remember stepping out onto the back porch for a break and watching jets roar straight at us, just seconds away from landing at Logan Airport. I’m put in the mind of homemade bookshelves and Becky’s paintings of horses. I can even recall Bob Halperin’s raucous guitar playing, though that was from years before.
God knows where I’ve been for the past 15 years. Fritzy died, unrequited and Halperin has moved to an undisclosed location in upstate New York. These days Bob has taken to burning CDs in a bright pile in his backyard. He claims to be perfecting a production concept he calls the “picket fence of sound.” I don’t have the heart to tell him that you really need a banjo to pull that off. Maybe I’d better just buy a banjo.