Well I know I did the right thing on Friday, leaving work early, coming home and having a disco nap before going out again. I slept about an hour and woke up relatively refreshed. Bill had come home in the interim and dashed back out to see a friend of his put on a dance recital. I sat around, had a cup of strong ass coffee and headed out myself a short time later. It was a beautiful night around 65 degrees. I decided to leave my shoulder bag home, containing iPod and digital camera, figuring they would have to be checked once I got to the Bowery Ballroom.

I walked along the darkened esplanade aside the river, not many people strolling around, just a couple of joggers. I got to the train and sat in a nearly empty car, and since I had nothing to read I wound up going through various text messages on my cell phone deleting most of the older ones and getting off at the Christopher Street station. I got to the street and found most of the Friday night bar hopping underway. I walked through and met up with Linda and Amiable Alan on 7th Avenue.

They were standing outside a bar called Luke and Leroy and about to go in when Linda observed I was smoking and said we should have gone to a bar that allowed smoking. As luck would have it, we were a few doors away from Mr. Dennehy’s, a bar with a garden that was open and decided to go there as it was a warm night, we can hang out there and talk and smoke without having to compete with loud music. We settled in and talked, Alan telling us his story so far which was very interesting and deserves to be written about.

Despite our best efforts, we tried not to talk about work though it was the only thing we really had in common. The subject was broached, and it all came spilling out. Felicia this, Felicia that over my many pints. I was drinking like it was water. It was Guinness after all and after the first pint it all goes down like water anyway. I even was able to sit and have a Padron 5000 which was great, Linda loves the smell of a good cigar. After my grubby fingers eating most of the French fries, we jumped into a cab and headed east over to the Bowery.

I had purchased tickets a week earlier and I had mine, Linda had hers, but Alan lost his so he had to buy another ticket. We walked a bit so that I could partake in a jazz cigarette which would have been forbidden inside. Only a quick couple of puffs before we headed into the club, just in time for Scritti Politti to hit the stage. Green, the leader of the band looked great, not as fey as he looked in the photos from the eighties. Rather tall and hirsute, as tall as me I might add.

He stood and played guitar, chatting in between numbers and stopping a song as it began because he wasn’t happy with the way it was going. The show was great, the beer kept flowing and the songs were performed deftly live, even the heavily synthesized songs from the eighties, including Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin) which was originally produced by Arif Mardin. After the set we sat in the lounge for a nightcap. I went to the bathroom and snuck a quick cigarette only to find out that I was really drunk. No one in the bathroom as I bounced from wall to wall stumbling.

I went back out to Linda and Alan and stated that I had to leave that I was pretty much three sheets to the wind. I sobered up when we hit the street, both Linda and Alan remarking how I didn’t seem drunk, but I was. It took a lot of strength to keep my head together as I had a ways to go back to Hoboken. It was late and I was not looking forward to waiting in the Path train forever for a ride home.

I did make it home at a reasonable hour and went right to bed, with Green’s voice and songs echoing in my head. The thing about Green and Scritti Politti is he was very much inspired by punk, formed a band and became smitten with hip hop, so much so that a song on the new record, features the song titles of Run DMC’s first album as lyrics. Like myself, I was enamored with punk and was smitten by hip hop when it started. Some friends of mine couldn’t reconcile the two but I suppose Green could and I could. And here we were 20 years later.