Cambridge California

I like songs where people are coming and going. Motion always offers some reason to be cheerful - migration=renewal, expatriation=distanced self-discovery, America=fronter-upon-fronter-within-frontier, etc. In this post-11/2 era, I often think about going somewhere else, not as escape, but just because, like Leon Ware, I want to find a 'free groove' of my own. 'Why I Came to California' is the kind of thing I would have frowned upon as a youth - too much schmaltz, a surplus of boogie and a sax solo so spick and span that you shudder at the imagined glare. But after I got over the fact that the opening toe-dip had been sampled, I began to appreciate the heartening childishness of Ware's trip. Heck, we all want to find somewhere that sounds this happy. Sure, it's not some untouched paradise - 'It gets really strange going through Venice,' they warn - but it's all somehow magical. There are cable cars, fellow make-believers, obscure delights in the valley, stretches of desert, plenty of pretty beaches and 'ancient elders' skulking the forests. Who knows if they ever got there, or if there's some deeper academic reading positing that Ware's 'beaches of Zuma' symbolizes a mound of coke. They at least made it there for four-ish cynic-proof minutes. it's all in the mind - as the great Manny Ramirez sort of observed, we all make our own destinations.

Posted by Hua at November 4, 2004 07:55 PM