20 Years in 27 Days: A Marriage in Music | #13 The Moments—“Look at Me I’m In Love”

20 Years in 27 Days: A Marriage in Music

#13 The Moments—“Look at Me I’m In Love”

by Mark Anthony Neal

Driving south on the West Side highway, below the GW Bridge, presents one of the most beautiful glimpses of New York City and New Jersey, separated by the Hudson.   One of the joys that I took from those early days of my relationship with my future life partner, was picking her up from the Butler Houses and driving downtown via the West Side Highway.  It was one early Saturday morning in February of 1988, when we planned a day in the village.  I was in the practice of making cassette tapes for each one of our planned outings, but this time the woman switched things up on me, and presented me with her own tape of music. 

Already pretty arrogant about my musical taste—and what I  thought was the mind of an untapped audiophile, I wasn’t suspecting to hear anything on her tape that would surprise me—and she didn’t.  But one of the gems on the tape was The Moments’  “Look At Me I’m in Love.”  The song had long been one of my favorites—was popular on NYC radio in the mid-1970s when I had my  first crush.  The group even recorded a French language version of the song, that was more than helpful when I struggled through two—God-awful—years of French at Brooklyn Tech.  To have it included on her tape was a sweet surprise—one that led me to take my eyes off the road a little too long, just enough to nudge the car in front of me on a slow moving West Side Highway. 

It was just a fleeting moment in a new relationship, that was getting serious,  but a moment we have gone back to, many times.  I don’t know what it continues to mean for her, but for me it was just a small glimpse into her sweetness and her early understandings of the small gestures that move me.   She has long ceded those kind of small musical moments to my “life of the mind,” where music just becomes the opportunity for me to expound upon more data. 

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20 Years in 27 Days: A Marriage in Music | #12: Luther Vandross —“Wait for Love"

20 Years in 27 Days: A Marriage in Music | #12: Luther Vandross —“Wait for Love""

20 Years in 27 Days: A Marriage in Music

#12: Luther Vandross—“Wait For Love”

by Mark Anthony Neal

In my mind, Luther Vandross The Night I Fell In Love (1985) found him at the peak of his powers; nowhere is that more evident than on the stirring ballad “Wait For Love,” notable for his unwillingness to end the song.  The extended two-minute-plus riff that he does at the song’s closing should be required listening for every wannabe R&B singer, as an example of how you hold on to an audience, by giving the impression that they’ve yet to get your best.   

Too many of the younguns shoot their load in the first verse and there’s little reason to stay around especially if they’re singing badly crafted material.  Part of  Vandross’ genius was in his patience—and he made us all better listeners because of it.

Patience.  I think about that often with regards to the relationship I have shared for nearly 24-years with Gloria Taylor-Neal. 

We had survived out first date, foggy windshield and all, and were going through the paces of a new relationship in December of 1987, getting to know each other, though we had been friends for about 5 years.  The timing of it all meant that Christmas would take on a greater significance than either of us were prepared for, though there would be no family meet-in-greet over the holidays, simply too soon for those kind of perfunctories.   Nevertheless we planned our first Christmas eve together; We’d meet at the Herald Square Macy’s, in "The Cellar" next to the David’s Cookies (can still smell that spot years later) and then head downtown to the Village to dinner at an upscale Falafel spot that she frequented.  Sounds perfect, right?

Knowing how crazy parking would be by Herald Square, my idea was to park at a meter on 10^th Avenue between 33 and 32^nd streets, where I was working for a data imaging company called Downing Data (the dark years).  Popped in my quarters, knowing this would have to be a short turn-around if I was to make to Macy’s and back—with the woman—without getting a ticket (it surely wasn’t the first and wouldn’t be the last—got a few tow receipts  to prove it, but that’s for another day).  In my haste—I locked my keys in the car (it was the first time, and surely wouldn’t be the last. One day my oldest daughter will tell the story of  her father locking his keys in a running car).  This is 1987, ain’t no Blackberries or iPhones. 

So I’m standing on the corner of 10^th and 33^rd trying to decide to I get the locksmith to unlock the car or go get the woman; I chose to get the woman, who was  just prepared to leave, accepting that she’d been stood up, when me and my tweed jacket, and Khakis with no socks, came running though “The Cellar” at Macy’s (was still in my 5K & 10K days).  An hour later, I’m spending my last bit of cash, getting my car keys back—with the woman beside me—as we head downtown to dinner.  Alls well that ends well, right?

So dinner is progressing, we exchange gifts; sigh, I’m way too casual about this. She gives me a Macy’s gift—a sweater if I recall, I give her a box of chocolates—the same box of designer chocolates that I had given out as gifts to lady friends throughout my college years, the same box of chocolates that I got for free from the stationary warehouse that employed me throughout college (Pen & Things, formerly on the corner of Astor and Broadway).  Thank-God she loves chocolate.   

Then come the realization that I have no cash and the restaurant doesn’t take credit.  Sigh, shit, sigh is what I recall trying to figure things out in the bathroom.  In what my wife will suggest is a recurring theme in our relationship, I asked her to bail me out and then asked her forgiveness (remember those tow tickets, and then there’s  the story of the brakes).

That day, I learned that this was a woman that was willing to “Wait for Love;” something that would serve both of us in the future as I tried to figure out what I was gonna do when I grew up.

20 Years in 27 Days: A Marriage in Music | Day #8: Laura Branigan—“Gloria"

20 Years in 27 Days: A Marriage in Music

Day #8: Laura Branigan—“Gloria”

by Mark Anthony Neal

The Butler Houses, named after, Edmund Borgia Butler, a former chairman of the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and former Fordham University Law Professor, are comprised of six twenty-one story apartment buildings located between Webster and Park Avenues to the west and east, and 169th and 171st streets to the south and north. Within those six buildings are 1476 apartments with a conservative (in my mind) estimate of 4,357 residents living in those apartments. “Peaches” was one of them.

In the popular parlance of the day, this was Fort Apache, the Bronx, made famous by the “Bronx is Burning” quip by Howard Cosell during a nationally televised baseball game from Yankee Stadium, and the Paul Newman film, Fort Apache. The natives simply called it the South Bronx—and I knew it well, since I was a product of the place, a few years removed.

170th Street & Webster Avenue

As such I, perhaps, understood why “Peaches’” mom was hell bent on keeping her 14-year-old daughter off the streets—there would be no mid-afternoon rendezvous on Lexington Avenue and 86th Street—a neighborhood that would become one of our favorites when we visited New York after we were married—and I, for damn sure, wasn’t up for any seek-and-find trips to the Butler Houses. The strange dude on the telephone act wasn’t gonna work either—can’t call a number that you’re not supposed to have, to talk to a girl, who’s not supposed to be getting phone calls.

So I was left that summer, working evenings as a stock boy at a Waldbaums in Co-Op City, spending the days playing Strat-o-Matic—like I said I was a major nerd—watching Ryan’s Hope and All My Children (it’s when my now 29-year addiction to the soap began—still watch it most evenings with the wife)—and listening to 101-WCBS FM and songs like Poco’s “Crazy Love,” The Climax Blues Band’s “I Love You,” Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl” and Edison Lighthouse’s “Love Grows.”

The one song that I came to hate that summer was the late Laura Branigan’s “Gloria” for all the obvious reasons; it was a reminder of my lost summer. Didn’t help that it wasn’t a great song, despite being nominated for a Grammy Award in 1983. It would still be some years before I was introduced to another song called “Gloria,” this one recorded by Enchantment, an oft-forgotten vocal group, whose “Where Do We Go From Year,” is one of the great underrated Soul ballads from the 1970s (s/o to Vaughn Harper). It was that other “Gloria” song by Enchantment that was played on our wedding day.

20 Years in 27 Days: A Marriage in Music | Day #7: Quincy Jones feat. James Ingram—“One Hundred Ways"

20 Years in 27 Days: A Marriage in Music

Day #7: Quincy Jones feat James Ingram—“One Hundred Ways”

by Mark Anthony Neal

The funny thing about falling in love, even from the perspective of a 16-year-old, is that music that mattered little to you before, suddenly takes on great importance. Such was the case with Quincy Jones’ The Dude.

Released in 1981, two years after Jones industry changing collaboration with Michael Jackson , The Dude represented the height of Jones critical and commercial powers; it earned two Grammy awards, with Jones also winning for Producer of the Year in 1982. Like many of Jones’ Soul-Jazz-Pop hybrids the recording featured his regular musical collaborators including his God-daughter Patti Austin and a relatively unknown vocalist named James Ingram. The Dude was Ingram’s break out effort, singing lead on Jones “Just Once,” and “One Hundred Ways.” By the end of 1982, Ingram was a fixture on the pop charts with his duet with Patti Austin “Baby Come to Me,” which was cross-marketed via a story line on ABC’s General Hospital.

It was “One Hundred Ways,” that was in my head the morning of June 28, 1982. It was the last day of school and Gloria and I (along with two of her friends) were going on our first “date” after school. So after school we trekked to the McDonald’s across the street from the old Yankee Stadium and Macombs Dam Park (where the new Yankee Stadium currently stands). All I had was fries,  too self-conscious of eating in front of the girl, as we chatted about the summer, knowing that we likely wouldn’t see each other until the following August. Two months is a long time in the life of teen-agers—two months that we would not survive.

Macombs Dam Park

At the time “One Hundred Ways” struck such a chord in me, because it was all about the myriad ways that one can show affection. At 16, I was limited to about three of those “one hundred ways”; in many ways my relationship with this woman over the last 23 1/2  years (including19 years and 10 days of marriage) has been about realizing the full range of those “one hundred ways.” It’s a struggle, but that’s what lasting relationships are all about.

20 Years in 27 Days: A Marriage in Music | Day #6: The Dazz Band—“Let It Whip")

20 Years in 27 Days: A Marriage in Music

Day #6: The Dazz Band—“Let it Whip”

by Mark Anthony Neal

From July 14, 1973, until June 26, 1982, Billboard Magazine published the “Hot Soul Singles” chart every week. The first song to top that chart was Johnnie Taylor’s “I Believe in You (You Believe in Me”; the last song to top that chart was The Dazz Band’s “Let It Whip.” The  “Black Singles” chart debuted in June of 1982 with w the Gap Band’s “Early in the Morning” sitting atop. The shift was a reflection of the increasing tensions about how “Blackness” was going to be represented in the marketplace.

As such “Soul” meant a connection to a past of struggle and down-hominess, while “Black” was the catch-phrase for a Black Middle Class flexing its muscle in the marketplace and at the polls. Artists like Taylor and  Fred Wesley, who preceded him at the top of the “Soul Singles” chart, couldn’t even get played on Black radio stations in 1982. That ambivalent space between holding on to the traditions that Soul represented and Black aspiration found its resonance in early 1980s (electro) Funk; music that was unapologetically Black—even as it was coming from places Ohio and Oklahoma as was the case with The Dazz Band and The Gap Band—yet such a far-cry from the music that Black folk marched and protested to.

In the months after the Billboard chart shift, Wilson Goode and Harold Washington would be elected the first Black mayors of Philadelphia and Chicago, respectively, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley would make a serious run for the California Governorship and Rev. Jesse Jackson would begin his quest for the Presidency of the United States. I didn’t care much about any of this in June of 1982, as I was in love with that lil Brown-eyed gal. Though it wasn’t apparent at the time, what would make this thing with Peaches and I work (eventually), was that we were products of a Black working class world, with parents who shared the same “down South up North” values, but we were also enticed by the aspirational desires of our middle class peers.

20 Years in 27 Days: A Marriage in Music | Day #5: Ben Harney & Sheryl Lee Ralph—“When I First Saw You" (Dreamgirls)

20 Years in 27 Days: A Marriage in Music

Day #5: Ben Harney & Sheryl Lee Ralph—“When I First Saw You”

by Mark Anthony Neal

What I remember most about high school, was that I was a bit of an outsider. Part of it was the Bronx cat traveling to BK everyday but also the fact that I was a nerd.  Being a nerd wasn’t the worse thing to be in a school of future engineers and biologists—always knew that I wasn’t dude in the corner with the slide-rule. My future wife, though, was one of the cool girls. Granted she was two classes behind me, so I got some points for being older, but I’m sure a bunch of her girls were like “really?” when I started showing up on the regular, with my Sperry top-siders, pink polo shirts and matching pink socks. Rest assured weren’t too many wanna-be preppies (as it might have been described then) in my hood.

Nowhere was my outsider status more pronounced than in my taste in music. Still have vivid memories of one of those girls—you know gum popping, bad-ass girls—who were never inclined to pay me much attention, but gave me a little shine one day ‘cause I was listening to my first generation Walk-man. “What you listening to?” Gave her the headphone and while Ronnie Dyson’s “If You Let Me Make Love to You,” played in the in the background, a she blurted out to all who could hear “This is what you listen to?”

Yes, I was that dude, going to school in urban America in the 1980s when all of my peers were listening to The Furious Five, The Funky Four-Plus One, and The Crash Crew (which featured one of our classmates) and I was listening to ten-year-old show tunes. What specifically caught my fancy that spring was, not surprisingly, the soundtrack to the Broadway musical Dreamgirls.

Dreamgirls opened in December of 1981 and I had heard a little buzz about the show from some adults. In fact, I was a little ticked off when my mom got tickets to see the musical and didn’t take me. But she brought home that soundtrack. At the time I knew little about the history of Motown or anything about the fact that the original musical was a metaphor for the marginalization of Gay men in the arts. All I knew was that one song, “When I First Saw You,” sung by Ben Harney and Sheryl Lee Ralph in their roles as Curtis Taylor and Deena Jones. And indeed every-time that song came on I was Curtis Taylor and “Peaches” was Deena Jones.

Years later “When I First Saw You,” would be one of the songs I included, on series of cassettes tapes that I would occasionally give my future bride, each with a detailed, nuanced playlist and a little romantic picture, usually cut out from Essence Magazine, that I placed in the back of each cassette case. Dude was never a player, but you couldn’t tell him that he wasn’t the most romantic cat in the world.

So What is 20 Years in 27 Days: A Marriage in Music?

1989 in Philadelphia, PA

So What is “20 Years in 27 Days: A Marriage in Music”?

by Mark Anthony Neal

Part love story, part social history and part music criticism (like all of my work), “20 Years in 27 Days” is a celebration of a committed relationship; July 27, 2011 marks the 20th Wedding Anniversary of my marriage to Gloria Taylor-Neal.

So for 27 days I will reminisce, through music about our relationship, the worlds we lived in that helped forge that relationship and the radical importance of staying together at a time when so many don’t. 

In short this is the story about a couple of Bronx kids, who group up five minutes from each other, met for the first time miles way in a  Brooklyn high school and managed over time and space to reconnect years later on Broadway and Astor Place, fall in love and raise two beautiful and challenging Brown girls.

Truth be told, I rarely get the opportunity to let my partner know how much this has all mattered to me, and “20 Years in 27 Day: A Marriage in Music” is just my little opportunity to let her know, share it with the world,  and tribute the combined 90-plus years that our parents spent together.

In case you've missed days 1-3:

20 Years in 27 Days: A Marriage in Music | Day #1: Stevie Wonder's “That Girl”

20 Years in 27 Days: A Marriage in Music | Day #2: Secret Weapon—“Must Be the Music”

20 Years in 27 Days: A Marriage in Music | Day #3: The Doobie Brothers—“What a Fool Believes”