[2] FOREVER CAME TODAY Carmen’s friends hook me up a job at Aetna in the Corporate Communications Department and eventually I’m sent out to Los Angeles on a production shoot headed by Topper Carew. He’s hot off DC Cab a big screen comedy featuring Charlie Barnett and Mr T. He later goes on to co-produce the Martin Lawrence show. I learn an economy in production watching his crew at work. Everything is planned. If the script is good and the performers on time it’s magic. Unfortunately the script is not that good and the performers off. Nevermind. I’m in Hollyweird. La la land really does have its own special magic about it once you get acclimated to the smog. That takes about two days. I’m there for nine. Seven days to sin in the sun. My boy George is living in LA and we hit the town. Today he’s born again. But at that time, we can outsmoke Cheech and Chong at their height of infamy and Georgie delivers this crystal green sin semilla happy weed that has us tearing down Normandy Avenue with a quickness in a rented Lincoln. We pull up on a guy and ask for directions. He walks over to the car and with the accuracy of a casino card dealer he unzips his pants and spreads the zipper opening. “Wellllllll, are you going to point with that thing … we just want directions.” “Oh, where you headed?” lingering on the head part. “This nightclub called Candilejas.” His crotch still spread open, “Oh that’s up a few blocks … Hey, nine cut.” “No thanks dude I like to eat at the Y.” Candilejas has a kicking Salsa houseband. They’re smooth as cocoa butter. And the crowd is there to dance – a west coast version of The Corso but with a breezier cool ranch feel to it. The last piece of significant Latin Caribbean music in Salsa circles I hear is created by Batacumbele in 1981 – a group out of Puerto Rico exploring a new Cuban rhythm called Cha onda. But they twist it a little. The trap drums accenting the conga breaks in Batacunbele’s music anticipates what electronic DJ’s attempt to create fusing samples of Latin and Funk music in the coming years. The Candilejas DJ plays a couple of cuts off Batacumbele’s first album and everyone in the place is soon exchanging Cuban, Puerto Rican, Mexican and even Hawaian steps to the beat. Los Angeles is a brown town and it likes to mix its salsa. What amazes me is that the house band begins playing with the mix and takes over live. Simple enough. I witness that at the Corso but they don’t just keep on playing the recorded song. The band transitions into Willie Colon’s No Me Llores Mas and gives it the cha onda treatment while refining the original horn lines with jazzier licks. It’s a moment I see a group of artists transcend Salsa beyond where Eddie Palmieri takes it in New York and dance with a Hawaian woman whose just spectacular. She’s the most attractive woman I ever have an affair with. I feel like I’m losing my virginity all over again. I can’t for the life of me figure out what she sees in me. Maybe I’m a mercy hump. But I think it’s the way we dance with each other that seals it. As I’ve said before, Salsa dancing is like making love with your clothes on. And if nothing else I can dance. I’m not running From But To A scorching heat A passionate scene That’s you Sixteen days I’ve been praying in the desert Thinking all the while Of some guilty pleasure Mind is strtaight And I’m looking for a sign This time baby Take me on the sly Come along triguena And walk this line And Seduce me She whispers in my ear Captured souls In this universe Come with passion Then they burst Laughing rivers of slow pain Liberated hearts its all the same We spend the next few days together at the Beverly Hills Hilton and it gets me to thinking. “This marriage thing can’t be working right.” Einstein describes his first marriage as a doomed attempt “to make a lasting moment out of a singular incident.” I’m no Einstein but I understand exactly where he‘s coming from. I’ ve been married twice and wonder how either woman survived the experience. I guess you’ ve figured out by now I’m not the settle down home type. God knows, I tried. But it’s exhausting. I leave Aetna when I get back from Los Angeles in 1982. The Aetna department manager and I agree I had too much fun in LA. I’m only supposed to stay 3 and a half days. Oh, well. Where’s that Broadcast Magazine want ads section? Carmen and I split in February of 1983. I head for Ohio to work as a live TV producer and see a whole other life -- Puerto Rock and Rican Roll U.S. Style. |
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