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In the Magic City Birmingham Jake Adam York
The needle floats over and over the end of Coltrane’s “Alabama,” channeling in the rush of feet, of tires wearing down into the asphalt and the browning air the static that backs the horn when I start it up again. Tyner almost sweats what he keeps just out of time, what Jimmy’s talking from the strings like something’s coiled up there, a static even Elvin never shakes. Or maybe what the needle thinks, some Old South air trapped in ladled steel, a space that quotes the ridges and their empty veins, old Sloss filling up with fire or Cherry’s heat opening 16th Street into the space Coltrane fills when he feeds his tenor, what Sun Ra kept opening out for anything more than George Wallace’s crossroads deal, the static in Clifford Gibson singing Keep your windows pinned as storm winds thrill Sloss’s tunnels and flush its ghosts out over the city where Vulcan’s torch goes red, Coltrane raining down his “Alabama” like white-hot iron, like stars that draw from the dark as they spin Maubilla and Horseshoe Bend the way Elvin works the cymbals into distant crowds. And when it ends again I step out and through the blocks where you can hear the quartets warming up through the nightclub chatter and hope tonight, in one of these joints some DJ breaks all his needles, some combo plays harder than they’ve ever played, that someone, that anyone will work just hard enough to shut the city down and groove the night again. for Chris Campagna
and Sascha Feinstein Originally appeared in Brilliant Corners
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