23 Days To Dudes: "Jonathan Barnum, Talk Of The Town"

I loved Woody Allen long before I ever saw one of his films. At the tender age of 10, I purchased a GQ magazine that featured his horn-rimmed visage on the cover. After spending far too long absorbed in an article about cunnilingus techniques, I read the piece about this tiny man who never left an island called Manhattan. About his relationships with actresses bearing exotic names like Keaton and Farrow. I didn’t understand why he seemed to dislike himself so much. I assumed he was not familiar with Step #8 of "Ten Things She Wants You To Do In Bed But Is Afraid To Ask."

Creating alternate universes is a vital part of writing. Oftentimes, these parallel existences are not original ideas as much as lovingly distorted mirrors of their author’s existence, fictional worlds that feature rearranged elements of the author’s own reality that become moralistic obstacle courses for his characters to navigate. This offers the author multiple options by which to test out various solutions to his own problems. Kind of like an existential focus group. Or a Choose Your Own Adventure novel.

Charles Dickens was a master of this. Woody Allen is pretty good at it, too.

I guess we can’t help but become a little bit like our idols. We love them because their achievements give us incentive to imitate them, anticipating similar results. If Ernest Hemingway and Hunter S. Thompson unknowingly encouraged my headlong charge into alcoholism, Woody Allen most certainly demonstrated for me the terrible power of passive/aggressive writing, unwittingly giving me permission to take my own life, apply the slightest of twists and call it a pop song.

“Jonathan Barnum, Talk Of The Town” is basically a 23 year-old’s thinly-veiled cry for help, a not-so-tall tale in which I get to leave town, abandon my relational responsibilities and be discussed in favorable terms afterwards. Oddly enough, this is exactly what I ended up doing a year after it was written, minus, most likely, the afterglow regarding my departure. As to why the musical version of these events ended up sounding suspiciously like the closing number of a Liza Minelli revue, I still have no idea.

Like more than a few of my original demos for The Luxury Of Time, RCA considered “Jonathan Barnum, Talk Of The Town” to be too Broadway for a debut major label release. I remember my A&R guy saying that it sounded like a 70’s television theme. He was not wrong. This being the case, I’m not really sure how it ended up being properly recorded at all. But I am glad it was. I appreciate its bombast, and I find Peter Collins’ suggestion to modulate all the choruses up a whole step very endearing. It also features a mind-bending guitar solo from Joe Pisapia, the indefatigable leader of my former band, Joe, Marc's Brother.

I wish I could make a video for "Jonathan Barnum, Talk Of The Town" featuring Woody Allen and Hunter S. Thompson chasing Mia Farrow through the streets of Manhattan on tricycles.