Aerobic rhetoric

"The only thing that happened to me, was my blue hat got dirty." Wesley Autrey, “Subway Superman,” on "The Late Show With David Letterman."

Tonight I'm heading out to the Tarrytown Y, that four-story brick marvel on Main Street in Tarrytown, for a quick workout. Care to join me?

The grand old Y is a far cry from the small basement facility that is Mid-City Gym on West 49th Street in New York City. There I shared sometimes-cramped quarters with actors, actresses, bodybuilders and dancers, gay and straight, known and unknown, as well as regular joes and joannes, for most of my 7 years in Hells Kitchen. Tossing the bull with Scotty, Jeremy, Anthony and the rest of the Mid-City staff was always a gas. My one bad memory of the place: almost no one wiped down the equipment after using it; that job was routinely left to the floor help or to the rare germophobe like me. It was like no one dared stoop so low, or so it seemed. Don’t let anyone tell you a certain snootiness doesn’t pervade the Big Town, and I won’t tell you I was immune.

At the Y, one difference I noticed right away is the well-worn equipment is cleaned by almost everyone using it. Every 5 minutes someone heads for the electronic paper-towel dispenser and spray bottle. Students, 9 to 5ers and blue-collar types of all shapes and sizes crowd the main exercise room most evenings. Unlike Mid-City Gym, the Tarrytown Y also has lots of kids. Afternoons they gather by the indoor pool and exercise their imaginations in supervised classrooms. Crayon-drawn and other artworks decorate a main corridor--the Y's equivalent of refrigerator art--and every time I walk down that hall I just have to grin.

You say you’re not up for a workout? OK, then climb into my head, relax and listen with me as I pop in the earphones, put the iPod on Shuffle Play and pass time with the rower and spin cycle. It's time to shut out the mean old world for an hour or so. (Actual Shuffle-Play sequence during last night’s workout, with accompanying random thoughts, follow.)

As I plop on the rower the first digitally recorded sound we hear is a piano hammering out the opening bars of

Invitation to the Blues, Tom Waits
Waits growls, "She's a moving violation from her conk down to her shoes," and I picture him singing with a Band-Aid on his forehead as I settle into a steady rhythm on the rower.

Rock the Casbah, The Clash
It's 1982 and I’m in the SUNY-Binghamton gymnasium watching the Clash close out a sold-out show. The band was very good, but Squeeze stole the bill—“If I Didn't Love You," "Tempted," "Annie Get Your Gun" (which was brand new), "Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)." Need I say more? Opening was Flock of Seagulls, launching "Space Age Love Song," “I Ran” and other rocket anthems. My ears ache to think about it.

You Can't Do That, The Beatles
Forget "Imagine." I'll bet that if John Lennon were alive today he'd be closing out his shows with this early Beatles' rouser. And why the heck not? The primitive and frantic guitar solo might be John's best as a Fab. It's funny, as a kid I remember my older brother and sister playing Beatles' records on their bedroom phonographs, but I don't remember hearing "You Can't Do That" until I bought The Beatles' Second Album for myself years later as a teen in the 1970s, not long after the group's demise. Just as well. I don’t think I’d have appreciated this blistering rebuke to a fickle girlfriend as much at 7 or 8.

Peggy Sue, Buddy Holly
Rock 'n roll really is dead. Nowadays the world is just impossibly cynical for someone to write an unabashedly rollicking love song like this and be taken seriously. I like irony like the next guy. But what I really like is the genuine article, and that was Buddy Holly. Pity.

When the Wind Was Green, Frank Sinatra
I thought Frank was an old man in 1965 when he recorded September of My Years, the album from which this deceptively winsome ballad comes. He was staring at 50, just like I am today. Who's the old man now, Bones.

Pennies From Heaven, Frank Sinatra
Frank from the '50s, his best period. This is from the album Songs for Swingin' Lovers, a record that swings like crazy. I think of my late Uncle Tommy. Tom was a painter and paperhanger who as a young man won dancing competitions at places like Roseland Ballroom before going off to serve with the Seabees in the Pacific Theater during World War II. One of my fondest memories as a musician involves Tom. After jamming a bit in my parents' basement on an unseasonably balmy Easter Sunday afternoon in 1980 or so, my brother Paul and I decided to take our instruments outdoors. We set up in the backyard and were improvising on a chord progression I'd made up when all of a sudden the short, stocky, 70-something Uncle Tom saunters out the back door, moving about the patio like a medicine man in a trance. Paul kept drumming and I kept strumming a steady rhythm, and we just laughed.

Gonna Make You Sweat, C&C Music Factory
I finish up on the rower with this urban dance track. I uploaded it to iTunes several years ago from a CD my ex-fiancee had; but while other songs will remind me of Maureen, this kinetic number remains inextricably linked to that hilarious 1997 episode of The Simpsons, “Homer’s Phobia.”

OK, enough work with the arms on the rower; it’s on to the spin cycle where I can get the legs going and get a better look at that cute gal’s midriff. Yeah, I know; getting old and still a pig. As if on cue, Shuffle Play selects “When I’m Cleaning Windows,” recorded by uke-playing comedian George Formby, a legend of the English music hall scene, in 1936:

Now I go cleanin' windows to earn an honest bob
For a nosy parker it's an interestin' job

Now it's a job that just suits me
A window cleaner you would be
If you can see what I can see
When I'm cleanin' windows

Honeymoonin' couples too
You should see them bill 'n coo
You'd be surprised at things they do
When I'm cleanin' windows

Following that voyeuristic ditty is

Know One Knows, Badfinger
This somewhat elliptical rocker about finding carnal pleasure with one's mate is but one of several great but not well-known songs from what I consider Badfinger’s best album, Wish You Were Here. “Know One Knows” was penned and sung by Pete Ham. Near financial ruin in 1975 after a royal screwing by the band’s manager, Ham went off to his garage and hung himself 3 days before his 28th birthday. If only he had recognized his own considerable talent superseded any money worries he could have. “Without You,” co-written by Ham with Tom Evans, another suicide victim, is today an established pop standard. I’m sure it continues to pay handsome royalties to the co-writers’ respective estates. Harry Nilsson, who played a big part in sending "Without You" to the pop stratosphere, won a Grammy for his compelling vocalization. When he first heard it Nilsson thought it was a Beatles tune. Personally I’ll remember Ham for the gorgeous power ballads “Day After Day,” “Baby Blue,” “Name of the Game” and “Dennis.” Hearing a Pete Ham song is, however, a bittersweet joy; for me it’s a lot like listening to Karen Carpenter.

Apeman, The Kinks
As my legs spin round and sweat runs down my limbs and on to the floor, I return again to the early 1980s, this time to the Pot Belly Pub in West Hempstead, Long Island. For the soundtrack to our smoking, drinking, and pinball, my pal Hank and I would pump quarters into the jukebox and punch letter-and-number combinations for songs like “Apeman,” “Vicious” (Lou Reed) and “Desperado” (Eagles). It’s reassuring to know I’m much happier today than I was during those fond and lonely nights. I can’t thank old Hank enough for living them with me.

Quem Cochicha O Rabo Espicha, Caetano Veloso
I have no idea what the title means, but anything by Caetano Veloso puts me back on West 49th Street, where I moved after splitting with Maureen in 2004. There I battled bedbugs and became a huge fan of Latin music. I let this song play out, but my favorite Veloso tune is “O Leãozinho.”

I Believe in You, Neil Young
Neil Young’s body of work is so prodigious that I can’t possibly dismiss it entirely. "Powderfinger" is one of the best songs about an ill-fated youth I've ever heard. I'd still pay to see him playing electric guitar with Crazy Horse. But the Martin-toting Young has not worn well with me over the years, and this song just sounds whiny and grating. Let’s fast forward to

I'm Not That Kat Anymore, Doug Sahm & the Sir Douglas Quartet
Ah, the late great Doug Sahm, musical virtuoso and father of Tex-Mex, playing with his largely Mexican hippie band over 30 years ago. Much better.

Lay Your Hands on Me, Peter Gabriel
Favorite line: "Working in gardens, thornless roses, fat men play with their garden hoses."

We're nearing the end of the workout, and my 3-year-old iPod's battery just went dead. I only get about an hour of music with each charge these days. Oh well. Thanks for listening.