Favorites: Let me tell you a story about favorites

Focusing on a favorite? I’d have to pick the “Live in London” album by Leonard Cohen. Despite Leonard being reduced to about five notes, his mastery of his voice, the sentiment, and the composition is flawless. I can spend an hour lost in his music easily.

It wasn’t always so. He was an early favorite of a girlfriend in Cambridge, and he grew on me as the romance we had slowly matured into a long-lasting friendship. A friend once quizzed me on my appreciation of Leonard. He preferred Dylan. So that you remember, don’t get into a discussion with me about favorite musicians in a rowdy bar after drinks have been drunk. He didn’t like my response. I’d rather go to the dentist than be forced to listen to little Bobby.

Truth and Consequences

He tried to cold cock me. But you don’t pull that on a kid from Washington Heights, and a graduate of Greenwich Village dives. He was viewing everything like it was all divied up through a prism for a week.

Now, about little Bobby. He screwed over a couple of female friends I knew and was rude to many of my friends without cause. He was not universally revered, except perhaps by the star lovers who couldn’t get his celebrity out of their eyes. In those early days, he tended to kiss up and kick down. If you could help him it was kiss kiss, if not it was the back of the hand or the boot.

My favorite memory of him was the night that Louie Lefkowitz, the great Black Jewish Blues Harmonica player, was coaching us all on a risque version of Mr. Tangerine Man. Dylan walks into the Cafe Rienzi at that moment, and with “a one and a two and three-” we all broke into a three-part harmony version called Hey Mr. Tangerine Man.” Bobby turned and fled.

And that’s my story, and I’m stickin with it.