What happens when Summertime ends?

For a lot of the Northern Hemisphere it’s turning into the season of Fall. The fact that I’m living in Southern California means that for the most part – I don’t get that season. I miss it dearly. There’s nothing like say the mountains of Utah during this time of year. It’s as if your favorite artist took his paintbrush and dabbed it all over the place with a variety of colors to dot the landscape. In Los Angeles we get one thing, sun. The conclusion that is made is there’s only two seasons in Southern California: Summer Hot, and Summer Rain. That’s pretty much it. Sure it’s great a lot of the time. Though I’ve heard that variety is the spice of life.

Vicarious living is what I tend to do now for certain things I used to take for granted. Take skiing for instance. Not long ago I used to slap on the boards and pound my way through mountains of snow over and over and over. Skiing affectionados determine their dedication to the sport by how many days they power the slopes in a season. Since I had two childhoods and one of them involved a ski town known as Park City, I had the perfect situation of many days to ski in a season. Often racking up probably eighty (80) a year. That’s not overboard, but it’s a lot. Living in Los Angeles I’m currently lucky to get four. To extend my skiing dreams I subscribe to Ski magazine.

I picked up the October issue from my P.O. box two days ago and while eating lunch I was thumbing through it. It’s a larger than normal issue which tends to happen the month before most resorts open. They do a readers poll to find out where people like to ski and why. In the western region 2 of the top 5 were within one mile of my house. Park City was backyard, and Deer Valley was just up the road. Park City is ranked #5 overall, and Deer Valley ranked #2 overall. Not bad eh? To add to the element of surprise to read about your surrogate hometown – see I was born in New York but I call Park City home – there’s a picture from an angle that shows it’s winter beauty and plain as day there’s my house!!! That’s right, I instantly dialed up my mom and said hey, the house is in the newst Ski magazine. How cool is that?!?

I won’t tell you exactly which house it is, but if you get the October 2006 issue of Ski it’s on page 145. I will say it’s one of the houses that has nothing but mountain behind it. The sad thing is, in a few years that will no longer be the case. Some genius feels that it’s a great idea to build a massive complex of condos, hotels, and conference rooms on that hillside. The beauty of that is: as you can see the streets are fucking small. Meaning that traffic will be a bitch because the roads were never meant to accomodate that many people. What’s even cooler about that: There’s so many condos and rooms in Park City as it is – they can’t even rent them all out! What genius planning that is, to build an eye-sore and watch it sit mostly empty. Gotta love that.

And here’s where I turn it back to Brother Love. See how I did that with the word love? I recently heard this song and was floored. I contacted him the moment I heard it. Told him I wanted to blog about the song, blah blah blah. The reality is, I love the vibe. I love the feel. It’s so retro and yet so cool with that slightly modern vibe. It’s exactly where I was taking Practical Insanity. Only I erred on the side of modern. To put it lightly – I want to write with this guy. It would be amazing to see what we might come up with. My next e-mail to him will be asking if he’d be interested in some co-writes.

Brother Love is obviously saturated in the 70’s New York sound. It’s fantastic. The harmonies are sublime and his entire song is a metaphor for being in love. So clever. It’s that fine line between clever and stupid, where most artists attempt the clever and end up stupid. Brother Love never got close to the stupid on this. Not only would I want to write some songs with him, I’d be willing to tour as a combo act, his band, my band hitting the road in my bus! That would be awesome. Our styles are different, but there’s some elements that are similar enough that I think the audience would eat it up.

Buy it! Buy it now! You won’t be sorry.