New York Stories

John the Baptist of Times Square

Unique Recording NYC is at 7th and 47th a couple steps from Times Square, inside a ten story NYC brick building right across the narrow street from one of those new forty story hotels. It has a rich history.

In the early sixties they made commercials in the studio that was there but hipsters like Patricia Morrison used it for their own counter-cultural purposes. It evolved into the place where Stevie Winwood recorded. Then it disappeared until a new owner took over the old space and opened a rehearsal studio that evolved into Unique Recording.

Biggie Smalls recorded there. Tupac, too. Those old analog machines make a warm thunder. Ronnie became a fixture in the tenth floor window, sitting on the ledge like a cat, playing an unplugged electric guitar, accompanying the noise of Times Square and the nightly echoing trumpet of a street musician. As Ronnie tells it:

"I wanted to meet the haunting horn player so during a break one after midnight I followed the music till I stood before an older black man in a Yankees cap. When I stopped in front of him he immediately started explaining and demonstrating the difference between the jazz boogie of the thirties and the rock boogie of the fifties. Then he asked me if I knew about life after death. I said: "Yeah, I know a little somthing about that." He looked deep into my eyes and smiled, "I believe you do," he said. He explained he comes to Times Square to fight demons: "A man takes his family to a nice steak dinner, he stops at a light, rolls down his window for some air. A criminal steps off the curb, puts a gun to the good man's head, robs him, shoots him right there in front of his family, leaves him for dead. What kind of human being could do that to another human being?" the horn player shook his head: "No human being would, only a demon could. I play my trumpet to fight those demons. A moment of listening and maybe the opportunity for a crime passes." Now I'm no Christian, and I don't believe in hell, but I knew what that horn player was talking about it. I could feel the the locusts of Times Square watching in shadow.

"Your skin," he touched my peacoat, "is like these clothes. It just drops away when the real you is set free. All this here is like a dream, a play, all of us acting like it's real." He rubbed his chin, pondering. "Freedom. Free choice. God makes us free, so we can choose, because who would want to be a robot? And that's how evil gets in, because you gotta have a choice! But God made evil, too. So evil must serve God's plan. See, we're all children of God." His eyes were shining. "Ain't it beautiful?"

It is beautiful. Different times and places have used different words to describe what he was talking about, but they were all describing the same mysterious knowledge. I tossed a few bucks in his trumpet case and walking away said: "Blow your horn, Gabriel." Sounding irritated, the horn player shouted after me: "Gabriel? I ain't no angel! I'm John the Baptist crying in the wilderness."

Nitebob and Mike Barile were feeling sorry for Ronnie and Tamra, they'd been in NYC for days but really all they'd seen was the inside of Studio D. Mixing for the day ended at 3 AM. Everyone agreed this would be the ideal time for a couple native New Yorkers to show a couple of native Angelenos around the greatest city on earth.

Marveling at the beautiful buildings: the Gretsch guitar factory, giant brownstone home of so manygreat instruments; quaint church spires; the giant cannon that fended off British ships during theRevolutionary War; Statue of Liberty green in the distance. From underneath the intersection of the great bridges, the Manhattan skyline is doubled: a glittering forest of towers shimmering in the glossy East River.

But Coney Island after 3AM was a wonderful haunted silence on the edge of the Atlantic. The clapboard wooden buildings and painted signs on the deserted street. The Cyclone Roller Coaster, Barile swears he's seen bolts drop off it as the cars go screaming by. Even vegetarians can be tempted by the World Famous Nathan's Hot Dog open all night. A couple preoccupied gangstas and a gangsta girl mind their own business, munching the famous dog with lots of mustard, using dainty red plastic forks to spear tasty fries in paper sleeves.

On the way back from Brooklyn, Barile chomping a cigar points out the white washed windowless door without markings where the best pizza in New York City is served daily, what time they close depends on when the owner gets tired of making pizzas. Japanese racing bikes gathered on the old short bridge. One of every kind of person in passing cabs. The big American car ripping over the narrow streets, breaking out onto the broad boulevard into a wide world of signs, lights and new sights. Sleeping Luna Park, the silent rides of Coney Island, the flowers outside the all night markets, the sudden apparition of pedestrians on a deserted street, music somewhere in the dark, a glimpse of neon in what seemed abandoned, the blue frost moonlight of the bridge lights rippling in the water...