I'd Have You Anytime

What got spun in Mary's room at 4325 Baltimore Avenue was various. George Harrison's All Things Must Pass was one of her faves. It stands there, after all these years, being, for my money, the nicest music a Beatle ever made, and the most durable. It's also about the idea that, in Mary's room, we could get a timeless ambience going, and make everything we did as festive as possible. The big months in that room were the last four months of 2002. In early 2003, Mary moved down Baltimore Avenue to live in a flat with Abby, while I remained in Logan Square. Those last four months of 2002 were notable, not only because I wrote Ode On Jazz then, but because the whole neighborhood was in a celebratory mood. The first night I spent in the room, early in 2002, the pieces hadn't really come together to make the neighborhood take off into space. The fall of 2002 was a gift given to us, precociously about a vision of cultural Philadelphia taking back some of what it was owed.  The universe leant us a little bit of the sweet stuff, so that the daunting nature of what we would have to accomplish over a long period of time to really redeem cultural Philadelphia, wasn't too cold or intimidating. Almost a quarter of a century later, I do an intense worker bee routine so that our version of cultural Philadelphia cannot be misplaced. And remember George's slide-guitar riffs, and how they sounded on the nights we had everything harmonized and in balance.