You can take the boy out of Jersey, but you can’t take the shore out of the boy. I probably went to the beaches in New Jersey before my family moved to the Midwest, but the visits that made the most impression started when I was still in single digits and they required much longer drives from Ohio. My parents visited my maternal uncles who lived in Sea Girt or I would be favored with a drive to the shore by another relative. At least twice, I was brought by a cherished cousin for a few days respite from my parents and siblings while they languished doing whatever they did when I wasn’t underfoot.

And it was wonderful every single time. With my mind’s eye, I can see that youth in his resilience and patience, swimming in the water, basking in the sun, listening to the waves, and perching on jetties. The ocean always delivered the same message: the tide will return; no matter how large and overwhelming your thoughts, Poseidon is larger; you can be at peace.

The combined myth making of Bruce Springsteen and Jersey Shore have made fresh eyes a rarity on the beaches that I visited before either were carving their stories into public perception. Of course, Springsteen’s art should have the longer lasting impact, but his focus did portray a community struggling to survive more often than not. If you have never actually visited the New Jersey coastline, then your expectations probably skew toward deserted warehouses and rude teenagers. And you can find them… but isn’t that where things go pear-shaped? How can a place so thoroughly portrayed as a trip through the underbelly of America inspire so much?

The power of place can never be underestimated. The boardwalk in New Jersey has no kin anywhere else. The view is mighty fine, but the distance, my goodness, the distance as it seems to run the entire eastern stretch of the state (though, in truth, it was broken up at every inlet). I never saw an end of it no matter how far I went and it carried the eternal promise of amusement and more ocean just out of sight. Asbury Park had faded by the time I came along, but hushed descriptions of my elders of yesteryear pleasures paved the way for those songs that started invading national radios in the 70s. Seagirt was the nice community, planned in the 19th century and part of a row of towns governed by strange rules and blessed with a beautiful beach. Manasquan looked like one room bungalows had dropped from the skies to cover every available inch. And then there was Point Pleasant, with all the bright lights, games, rides, and junk food that could be crammed into a single night.

As the years pass, childhood objects end up in dustbins. Strangely (because I never before looked at it this way), I seem to have saved only three mementos: a radio, a snow globe, and a bobble-head. They were all bestowed on me by my relatives out of their winnings at Point Pleasant. People hover around us, but places haunt us.

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 243 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out are released regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry are posted irregularly. Notifications are posted on Facebook which you can receive by friending or following Craig.

Book written by Jean-Claude Izzo

Fabio Montale is a direct descendant of Philip Marlowe, that original great noir detective. He operates in another coastal city filled with more problems than solutions. In this first book of the Marseilles trilogy, he is a police officer, but soon enough that career is set aside, just as Marlowe had done. We never really know why Marlowe left the force, but Montale’s reasons are all laid out before us.

Izzo started as a journalist and seems to have come to mystery writing later in life, just like Raymond Chandler. While Chandler had little detective experience though a fair bit of experience of the world, Izzo had a wealth of research on European organized crime providing background for his stories.

The repeated introductions in the beginning of the American editions of Izzo’s work emphasize his place as the founding father of Mediterranean noir. I happily admit Izzo’s place in the pantheon of mystery writers, even if his career was cut short by death at 55. I do have to wonder if an author publishing in the 1990s has really created a new branch on the genre tree. Izzo certainly emphasized elements not always at the forefront of previous works.

Montale, like Izzo, is the child of immigrants and the author writes quite eloquently about the experience of the outsider in a new land. He loves Marseilles and its disassociation from the rest of Provence (and the rest of France). The port of first entry for people from all across the sea, Marseilles is marked by repeated waves of new arrivals. The latest are always resented until the next wave blesses them with an air of acceptability.

In his nonfiction, Izzo frequently writes about feeling rootless and being able to call the road his home. He seems determined to convince the reader of his comfort anywhere within sight of the sea, but it always circles back to Marseilles, particularly the cuisine.

All those great French crime films of the fifties were heavily influenced by the Hollywood noir flicks that preceded them. They have their own style and offer their own innovations. Perhaps it is impossible not to see a fresh branch in their creations, one infused with European culture and naturally filled with French images. Their experience of post-war life affects the storytelling as much as Italian cinema reflects their experiences.

So… perhaps Izzo is onto something new. Marseilles is a global crossroads where North Africa meets Western Europe. Raw emotions are on display as the National Front hides its message of hate in a sheepskin of political expediency while allowing criminals to shelter within their party. Montale is not Izzo but they both fight for fair treatment for the disenfranchised. Chandler laced his books with call outs on abuses of the downtrodden by those in power. Marlowe and Montale are knights on the chessboard working for the greater good that can sometimes only be found in le noir.

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 244 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out are released regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry are posted irregularly. Notifications are posted on Facebook which you can receive by friending or following Craig.

Song written by Nathaniel Rateliff
Performed by Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats

This is the the first timeless classic of the new century.

And that changes everything.

Let me explain.

There are thousands of great songs out there- some are really great. But timeless classics are those few golden nuggets that never go out of date, never stop affecting you, and have that wide-ranging impact where you can beat them and twist them and misappropriate them, but they never stop reaching into your spirit and making a home in the deepest parts of your heart.

I’m talking about songs like Soul Man and Got to Get You Into My Life and Blowin’ in the Wind. All right, those are all from the 60s, but others seeped through since then. You will know them by the way they have always been a part of you even on a first hearing.

But our digitally fractured culture makes it exponentially more difficult for greatness to reach a plateau of commonality. With the advent of recorded music and a distribution system that allowed songs to get out there, we had Sing, Sing, Sing and music was off to the races. Sure, we could look backwards, even then. The important thing was the way that everyone, including the musicians, was listening to each other and the world beyond their immediate surroundings. People may have always wanted to stick their heads into the air and look around like a curious meerkat, but the horizon was always too close to offer true perspective. For decades in the twentieth century, technology expanded the channel of information, but we have learned that it is possible to go too big. When you let everything in, the human mind begins to shut down and we filter for convenience, not for quality.

So, the art that breaks through in popular culture becomes that which can most easily be marketed by powerhouses with the most access to the most channels of communication. If you can’t find the ears, then it becomes difficult to become a timeless classic. All art is like that, of course. We will never know what phenomenal creations are lost forever, but such is history. The world is rarely A Canticle for Leibowitz.

But I said that this song changes everything. My apologies, but nothing that I just said has changed. I merely meant that it changes everything for me. You see, countless times on this Earth, I have been in the doldrums and worse. And the one thing that I really need- the one thing I always need- that thing I’ve got to have just to make it one more day is a couple minutes of art that tells me the world is still spinning and joyful and thoughtful and full of connections that might just mean things will work out. Because art is connection. Little Richard and Los Lobos are among those who have done it before for me.

And I was wondering if those moments were still available, not so much for me, but for the rest of the world. Well, I’m here to tell you that I can fade away in peace because Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats have given us I Need Never Get Old and I know again that other friends await on the journey.

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 245 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out are released regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry are posted irregularly. Notifications are posted on Facebook which you can receive by friending or following Craig.