Hi Ladies. Ric here with the annual New Year's article.
Everyone knows I don't write my last piece of the year with some lame "best of" bullshit filler. I use the time to answer a personal question about myself, and hopefully enlarge my own myth in the process. I like to give my readers a glimpse into the world of Ric Befara, so that they might appreciate me more and understand why I do what I do. And also why I see a therapist every other day.
I want to answer a question that always pops up every year at this time: "Ric, what's your favorite new year's song?" or as one of my avid fans, Donald, put it, "Ric, what song do you get down to at the new year? what do you recommend I play at my New Year's party?"
My favorite new year's song has been my favorite since 1982, a banner year for me. I dated this beautiful and witless blonde named Wendy Haverd that year. And what a woman she was. She may not have been the sharpest tack in the drawer, but there was something special about her. For one thing, she had these giant breasts and this tiny waist... She dumped me for the lead singer of this shitty band called the Jackrabbits.
That was also the year I worked for one of the greatest editors I have had the pleasure to write for: Harvey Schwartz. First time I met Harvey he was passed out at his desk at 9 in the morning with a flask in his right hand. I can still feel the whiskey hanging in that room like a fog. Shwartz died when he was 39, but not before he taught me how to pursue my writing with reckless abandon, like I might die tomorrow. There was no middle ground with Harvey, I had to either rip a band apart or exalt them into the musical heavens.
But getting to the point, that was the year I heard a song by the Zombies at a New Year's party that blew me away. Yeah I had heard their shit before, but something about that moment and this particular song that really did it for me. I can still see it clearly: There I was, drunk out of my mind, holding a joint in my left hand, Wendy's ass in the other, and this phenomenal, inspiring song ringing in the air.
So every year, right after the new year I put the Zombies "Odyssey and Oracle" album (from the box set) in the player and put it on song 27: "This Will Be Our Year."
Don't even pay attention to Colin Blunstone's outrageously mellifluous voice, forget about the piano hook, you've got to listen to this song on a different plane. Actually, don't even listen to it. Just feel it. Float with it. Make love to it, just like I made love to the magnificent Wendy Haverd that night back in the glorious year of '82; the song playing in my mind on an endless loop.
And have a grand, colossal fucking new year while you're at it. Ric Befara loved you in '98, and he'll love you in '99.
USOUNDS | 12.31.98
