Janis Joplin Builds a 'Mercedes Benz' in Westchester County

I got to do a fun story on how the Janis Joplin song "Mercedes Benz" ("Oh lord, wontcha buy me, a Mercedes Benz") was hatched in Westchester County, as Joplin had a beer before playing the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester in 1970, and sang the ditty as her friends banged their beer mugs to keep time, and jotted down some lyrics.

She premiered the song that night at the Cap. A couple months later, she recorded it. 

A few days after that, Joplin died. 

The story goes: 

With time to kill between performances at The Cap, Joplin went to the bar Vahsen’s, a few doors down, on Broad Street. There, with songwriter pal Bob Neuwirth, actor Rip Torn, and Torn’s actress wife, Geraldine Page, Joplin starting singing, “Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes-Benz.” The lyric was inspired by beat poet Michael McClure, who’d written, “Come on, God, and buy me a Mercedes-Benz.

[photo credit: Bob Vita]

Beer Mag Says Yes to My Beer Short Story

The bulk of the stuff I get published is journalism, but I did have a short story published recently. 

"Colonel Sawyer Goes For a Beer" is about a military guy from the late 1700s who is tinkering around in his wine cellar north of New York City, takes a knock to the head from a falling beam, and wakes up in 2022. He goes for a stroll outside his wine cellar, and sees there is a brewery named Colonel Sawyer across the road from his house. So he goes for a beer. 

The story ran in Beer & Weed Magazine, which pays more than the literary journals, many of which had said no to "Colonel Sawyer." 

It was inspired by the brewery nearest my home, Captain Lawrence. 

It is on page 26. 

Enjoy!

How the Piano Man Might 'Fire' Up His Songwriting Skills

With the breathless pace of the news cycle today, including Covid, Black Lives Matter, war in Ukraine and President Trump hardly disappearing on the sidelines, maybe Billy Joel should consider adding another verse to his history lesson of a song, "We Didn't Start the Fire."

That was the theme of an opinion I did for the Examiner newspaper. 

I wrote, "Joel is 73. Good for him for showing up at the Garden each month, keeping those songs alive for old-timers and the next generation alike. I, for one, don’t plan on working much when I’m 73. But if I had a chance to make one of my hit songs more relevant, I’d go for it. The song mentions England getting a new queen. The new verse can respectfully bury her. One more verse!"

How 'bout it, Billy? It's easier than writing a whole new song. 

Scofflaws Frontman Brooks Still Rockin' Steady

 I got to do a fun story I'd wanted to do for years, even decades. 

Richie Brooks was my late-bus driver in high school. He wore a porkpie hat and had installed a cassette player on the bus's dashboard. 

When I was the last one on the bus, he'd invite me to move up to the front, and would play cassettes for me, exposing me to music I did not know. 

Like ska. 

A few years later, we'd go see his band, the Scofflaws. 

Thirty five years later, Brooks is still the frontman for the band--singing and playing an array of saxophones. 

I visited him on Long Island and wrote this. 

A Chat with JGB Bandleader Melvin Seals

I had a fun chat with Melvin Seals, bandleader and keyboard guy for JGB, as the Jerry Garcia Band became known after Jerry died. The story appeared in the San Francisco Examiner, as Seals is a lifelong Bay Area resident. 

Seals said this about Garcia:

You hear the phrase, this guy would give you the shirt off his back. Jerry would give you the shirt off his back. He did things for singers and band members who were struggling that he just didn’t have to do. It wasn’t publicized, no one knew it, but he did it. He really was that guy.

Seals said he figured the Jerry Garcia Band scene would die down after Garcia died in 1995. It has not. 

"It’s not going to die," said Seals. "It’s a scene, it’s a style. It just amazes me how it grows and grows."

Rock Dads Spin Covid Misery Into Album

Every so often, a journalist gets to write what they would consider a "fun" story, and this is definitely one. 

It's about some dads I know here in the New York suburbs. They are musicians and they were frustrated that their rock bands could not play out in the bars amidst Covid, and for the most part could not even get together and rehearse for much of the past couple years. 

So, working remotely, as has become the norm, a couple of them wrote some songs, and reached out to a couple more, and everyone recorded their parts of the song. 

The main dudes are guitarist Phil Went and singer Joe Walden, thus the W2 name, and the side guys are Peter J. Blume and Brian Doherty. 

“We saw an opportunity to do something positive and something healthy,” said Walden. “It’s a chance to express ourselves – what we’re feeling, what we’re going through, what the world is going through.”

The band is W2 and the album is "4 Corners of a Circle." You can hear it here. 

Drawing the Line on "Upstate" New York

Where exactly does "upstate" New York begin?

If you're in Manhattan, you may well consider Westchester upstate. After all, it is north of you. 

But if you're anywhere else in New York--Albany, Syracuse, Buffalo, heck, even Kingston--you'd never consider Westchester upstate. It is, after all, a suburb of NYC, quite close to the southernmost edge of the state. 

I did a story on the topic for Westchester Magazine. I checked in with Mark Monmonier, distinguished professor emeritus of geography at Syracuse University, on the topic, and some other map experts. He mentions late-night host Stephen Colbert, who invented the concept of “truthiness,” suggesting different levels of being factual.

“Stephen might say something like ‘upstatedness,’” says Monmonier. “Westchester County has a relatively low degree of upstatedness. Dutchess has more upstatedness. Albany has a considerably high level of upstatedness.”

Brews That Don't Leave a Bruise

 I wrote about alcohol-free beer getting a bit tastier in the Journal News. 

Here's what happened with what is known as NA beer in recent years: It was bland and bad. Craft beer was exploding, offering hoppy, hefty, tasty IPAs and other brews, and the alcohol-free stuff was, well, O'Douls. 

But it got better. A handful of breweries that do only NA beer, including Athletic and Partake, launched, and traditional craft breweries are experimenting with alco-free brews now. 

“It’s a good way to not only have a new product, but also to speak to different people and different crowds,” said Kasey Schwartz, head brewer at Broken Bow Brewery of Tuckahoe, NY. “People that don’t want to drink alcohol or can’t drink alcohol, and want something refreshing in the middle of the day.”