Connie Deming, left, joins Martha O’Connor and myself to close out the song as Dusty Springfield at Hochstein Performance Hall. That’s Brian Williams on bass. Photo by Julie Gelfand.
“How Did We Get Here?”
(A spoken-word duet, male lines in Roman, female lines in italic, with additional lyrics by Van Morrison, Patti Smith and Dusty Springfield.)
Nothing carries a tune like a summer evening.
How’d it go…?
“If I ventured in the slipstream
between the viaducts of your dream
where immobile steel rims crack
and the ditch in the back roads stop
could you find me…?”
I followed those ephemeral, desperate words down the sidewalk,
Past the derelict buildings in decay
past the drunk sleeping in a doorway,
past the religious charlatans who want to show me the way
to the record store,
and that’s where I fell in love with The Record Store Girl.
Oh yes, that was Van Morrison’s greatest album, Astral Weeks. Fiftieth-anniversary edition, from the original master tapes, in 180-gram Irish green and beer-amber colored vinyl. Redesigned in a special gatefold presentation with photos from the original recording sessions and drawings done by Morrison when he was a child growing up in Belfast. With liner notes by Noam Chomsky.
How Much?
Seventy-five dollars and 80 cents.
What’s it about?
Love. Innocence, and the mysticism of love.
I hand over my credit card.
Record Store Girl, how did we get here?
Record Store Girl, how did we get here?
Oh silly boy, how did you get here?
Record Store Girl, how did we get here?
There’s nothing odd about how he kept turning up at the store.
He’s just a kid wanting to learn more.
I showed him Janis and Ella and Aretha and Joni and The Supremes. Jazz by Alice Coltrane, blues by Billie Holiday, the new soul of Erykah Badu. Nina Simone, “Everyone’s gone to the moon.”
And Patti Smith’s Horses, because we’re all searching, just looking for a sign,
“Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine.”
I bought every damn one of those records
just so I could talk to her.
Her in her Joan Jett T-shirt
as she filed those albums in their proper places.
He seems interested in record-store science.
Yeah, she really knew her alphabet.
Record Store Girl, how did we get here?
Record Store Girl, how did we get here?
Oh silly boy, how did you get here?
Record Store Girl, how did we get here?
I confess, I followed her home to her apartment a few times.
She never saw me…
I did. A nice kid. He works at a car wash, but says it’s not a career. He even hung out with us once after work when we were drinking beers in the parking lot.
They had the radio on, loud, and were bastardizing the words, singing “someone left the cat out in the rain.” Weird song, “MacArthur Park,” but everyone seemed to know it. Record Store Girl just smiled, that Mona Lisa way. I imagined her in high-school English class, sitting in the back, dressed all in black, filling her notebook with dark poetry. Words no one would ever see.
They’re not meant for guys like you.
She’s filling my empty places
with lipstick traces.
His head’s spinning at 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Minute.
Record Store Girl, how did we get here?
Record Store Girl, how did we get here?
Oh silly boy, how did you get here?
Record Store Girl, how did we get here?
Nothing carries a tune like a summer evening.
How’d it go?
I follow those hopeful words down the sidewalk.
It’s Dusty Springfield, she says, You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me.
Record Store Girl, are you playing our song?
Record Store Girl, how did we get here?
Record Store Girl, how did we get here?
Oh silly boy, this is as far as we go.
Love songs tell so many stories
and you have to listen closely.
Dusty, Dusty, can’t you see, she’s just like me?
Dusty loved girls!
“You don’t have to say you love me just be close at hand.
You don’t have to stay forever
I will understand, believe me, believe me, believe me.”