Dog poem

That old dog
every morning trod
the same worn path
out into the yard

Again, Chris Levine

It’s easy to imagine baby Chris, crawling to the stereo cabinet beneath the swag lamp, getting into the LPs. He pulled them down and began sliding them around on the shag carpet, a precursor to actually spinning platters. The records would have included “Sketches of Spain”, “Spiritual”, “Astral Weeks”, and “Greetings from Asbury Park.” Baby Chris cooed and giggled.

As a boy he stood in front of the stereo from whence “Boogie Nights” played. He shook his hips and stomped his feet, leading the band, singing out all the words to the song that he knew and all the ones he thought he knew.

As a teenager in Los Angeles, Chris surveyed firsthand the wasteland wrought by X and Lydia Lunch and the Go-Gos. Then, rising from the Pacific Northwest, a different nihilism, and Chris intuited that the path to true individualism lay elsewhere.Adult Chris, living in the valley, in a swank pad with the missus, hosts another Hukilau party with torches and potent fruity drinks and Hawaiian shirts, loving it all without irony.

It’s almost like a superpower - like the stereo was radioactive and it somehow infused 100 years of pop music into the young hero. As a result he can explain the mathematics behind “Take Five” as well as social importance of Dr. Dre and how everything that we are musically came from the recombinant DNA of Louis Armstrong and Hank Williams.

Chris doesn’t make a mess on the floor with music anymore, and he’s more discreet with the hip shaking, but he’s met some interesting people and developed some exotic new tastes. He’s been some places, he’s done some stuff, and now this cultural repository is sharing beyond those sitting around his patio. He's found most regularly at www.thespacelab.tv.

Enjoy.