20 Years in 28 Days: A Marriage in Music
Day #10: Bilal feat Mos Def & Common—“Reminisce”
by Mark Anthony Neal
The late Benjamin James Moore (BJ) was a childhood friend and one of my favorite interlocutors on New York City baseball; he was a Yankee fan and I the lifelong Met fan. Our friendship was forged over hundreds to walks to the Avenue (Tremont), usually to but cigarettes, milk or any assortment of incidentals for our parents. Two years younger than me, BJ also attended Brooklyn Tech, so at least for my last two years of high school, I didn’t make that four hour trek by myself. BJ also gets, perhaps, the most important hat-tip for what would be the next chapter in my relationship with my future wife.
Though I really wasn’t all that interested, it was who BJ kept me reasonably up-to-date with my future wife’s life. More importantly it was through BJ’s and his job at the Tower Records on West 4th Street (where I spent many, many hours), that he became aware that Peaches was an undergraduate at NYU. At some point, I kind of expected to run into her in the store.
Back in NYC for the after four years upstate and still a little loopy after an unexpected break-up, the last person I was thinking about as I walked aimlessly down Broadway past 8th Street headed south, was Peaches; She called out my name. Twice. She recalls not being sure I remembered her; I recall just simply being caught off guard and generally speechless standing in from of the Benetton that was there for years. A few minutes of quick chatter latter, I made the requisite promise to call and perhaps take her our for a meal. I literally never thought about that encounter again, thinking there was no way that she was single and available.
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| Where that Benetton used to be |
That chance encounter has become part of the mythology of our relationship, perhaps best captured in Bilal’s track “Reminisce” (“Just when I think that I've forgot you/ I hear that dub that we used to rock to/Just When I think I'm gettin' on without you/Somebody Passed and asked me about you”). Few have the opportunity to have a second chance at a first love and to my surprise that chance was set in motion for me.
