(And so it was
Three left lanes to the shore points
All roads lead to the shore points.)
Well, we heard it on the highway
On our way down to the shore
It was broadcast with the immediacy
of a cannon blast from a battery
of the coast defense artillery
that exists no more.
Down the turnpike, down the parkway
In the lazy lethargy of an August day
Through all the towns on 36 along the bay
We set off to explore.
Keyport, Keansburg, Leonardo
Jettisoning all our baggage and extra cargo
Through Middletown and into Atlantic Highlands
Headed for the shifting sands and barrier islands
Atop Mt. Mitchill looking down at Sandy Hook
And across the bay at the oppression we finally shook
Exit 117
All roads lead to the shore points.
Up the twisting, winding road to the Twin Lights
Looking down at the Navesink and Sea Bright
With the wide-open ocean over open sights
Dazzled by the diamonds of the morning light
And on through Rumson and Red Bank on a side trip
Through the land of the hopelessly rich and terminally hip
Exit 109
All roads lead to the shore points.
Monmouth Mall, Monmouth Park, and Monmouth Beach
Filling the void, stepping into the breach
Long Branch, West End, and Elberon
For a brief sojourn before moving on
May all the SYs in Deal get a clue and get real
And may Loch Arbour and Allenhurst be spared two opposing worlds’ worst
Exit 105
All roads lead to the shore points.
The wreckage of what once was lies hard and stark
What can be only gets a fractional start
Born to run, glory days, and dancing in the dark
Everybody here has got a hungry heart
Waiting for the fire to be lit by the spark
In the struggling city of Asbury Park
Exit 102
All roads lead to the shore points.
A retreat from the profane for which its vaunted founders strove
Where the state was restrained and the church bloomed and throve
Now is it the Lord’s Square Mile and a spiritual trove
Or the land of fruits and nuts, that Ocean Grove
But don’t blink too fast or it’ll all be gone
And you’ll be comparing and contrasting in Bradley Beach and Avon
Exit 100
All roads lead to the shore points.
Belmar, a party town tries to shake its image
Locals and bennies locked in a line of scrimmage
Bennies don’t want to give up their summerlong spring break
Locals are envious of their neighboring Spring Lake
Manasquan, with a bit of both, can go either way
Sea Girt and Brielle stay well out of the fray
Exit 98
All roads lead to the shore points.
All boiled down, this shore point town is the region’s quintessence
Fun and thrills, for over-the-hills and pre-pubescents
The same five bands, the DJs canned, playing to post-adolescents
Newly legal, pheromonal and adrenal, in beer-buzz luminescence
The rides and games, the owner’s name, its omnipresent reach
You can wonder only who really owns Point Pleasant Beach
Exit 90
All roads lead to the shore points.
Strung out like beads along southern 35
Where in unexpected moments our love came alive
Jumped off from Bay Head and Mantoloking
In winter cruise through, in summer traffic choking
Chadwick, Normandy Beach, endless tackle-box rows
Lavallette, Ortley Beach, and so it goes
Exit 88
All roads lead to the shore points.
Amusement piers in ethereal lights
Orbit through the summer like satellites
Droves of nascent heavy metalites
Wander the planks in search of noisy delights
To satisfy long restless reckless nights
In the endless parade of Seaside Heights
Exit 82
All roads lead to the shore points.
Running parallel along Rt 9
Wandering mesmerized and spellbound through the pines
Beachwood, Bayville, remember that time
The gasket blew and sent our temp over the line
Toms River through Forked River, on through Oyster Creek
And its unsteady deadly power, know not of what we seek
Exits 80 and 74
All roads lead to the shore points.
They say that if you go into those pine barrens, you don’t come out
The dark woods will swallow up your cries and shouts
So you unintrepid souls would do best to heed our words
Stick to the roads and follow the sound you’d not expect to be heard
In Waretown tonight at the Royal Piney Hall
And fight the urge to follow your primeval call
Exit 69
All roads lead to the shore points.
Barnegat (Light) and Loveladies, sea and sky
Harvey Cedars and Surf City, rent or buy
Ship Bottom and Beach Haven, both low and high
The parties are never in short supply
It lives for summer, that no one can deny
Long Beach Island, alias LBI
Exit 63
All roads lead to the shore points.
The Manahawkin halfway point, we’ve come this far
We plowed through Tuckerton down Great Bay Blvd.
Past Mystic Island, following the glow on the horizon
Where we could see the casino lights eerily rising
To the ends of the road, where we’ll again renew our vow
Now as forever, forever is now
Exit 58
All roads lead to the shore points.
And though the lights beckon from a point so seemingly near
It’s back around the long way ‘cause we can’t get there from here
Through the woods and over the rivers, Bass and Mullica we go
Ignore ye olde historick touriste trappes out only for our dough
And on into the AC bedrooms of Absecon and Brigantine
Where we’ll pause and prepare for the next big scene
Exits 50, 48, and 44
All roads lead to the shore points.
Gleaming, polished up, and pretty
Bumps butts with the down and gritty
Successful take-your-chancers all giddy
Thinking they beat the regulating committee
Oh Lord, on the losers have pity
Hypnotized by the lure of Atlantic City
Exit 40 and 38
All roads lead to the shore points.
Headed on south through Ventnor, Margate, and Longport
Elephants and cheesesteaks, high hopes that fall short
Glided gracefully across the bridge over the Great Egg
On through Ocean City on the next leg
Strathmere, Sea Isle City, Avalon, Stone Harbor
The Ocean Drive in all its splendor, regarded briefly but with ardor
Exits 37 through 10
All roads lead to the shore points.
Five mile beach with distractions aplenty
Like the above-named Seaside multiplied by twenty
All tacky and seedy and junkfood America
In sunbeaten libidinous never-neverland hysteria
A honky-tonk Shangri-La going back to many lost childhoods
In the doo-wop cheeze and boardwalk sleaze of the Wildwoods
Exit 4
All roads lead to the shore points.
At the very end of the GS Parkway
Where the ocean meets the mouth of Delaware Bay
On the southern tip of the state, there lay
A paradise of candyland palaces painted pretty and gay
Watch the brilliant sunset at the end of the long day
Drawn to the spiritual magnet of Cape May
Exit 0
All roads lead to the shore points.
Where do we go once we’ve reached the end
Once we watched the sun go down at day’s and land’s end
Can’t just turn around ‘cause of needs to tend
Can’t forever stay no matter how much we pretend
Come here to transcend but can’t comprehend
The road is paved with what we intend
No more exits
All roads lead away from the shore points.
We’ve taken this journey, now what does it all mean?
Is it all a blowing wind or a fleeting dream?
In a time when fear and terror dominate the scene
And the Great Creator’s name is co-opted or blasphemed
Such quests of the spirit are sure to seem
Superfluous, meaningless, and not worthy of esteem
No more exits
But
All roads lead to the shore points.
So here you have it—127 miles of strand
Vying for the position of this side’s holy land
A trek, a pilgrimage, was what was called for
To survey and claim this place we call the Jersey Shore
We’ve reached the land of dreams, with the help of The One
We can end the song, close the book, now the epic is done
Exits 11, 9, and 2; 117 through 0
All roads lead to the shore points.
©2024 The Hesh Inc.
I am breaking a cardinal rule here by posting a lyric that has yet to be recorded and is not, strictly speaking, an outtake. This is intended to be the epilogue, the grand finale of the Soul In Exile magnum opus, which will hopefully be recorded and released while I am still in this decade of my life. Question is, will it be recorded in this sprawling form, or will it somehow be edited for length as well as timeliness.
See, I first wrote it in the early 2000s, when I was still living at the Jersey Shore and still very much considered myself part of its fabric. Its issues resonated and each place had some sort of significance to me. I had moved there in 1990, remember, and I had wanted to live there long before that. When I finally did, I made the place mine by traveling its highways, municipal streets, and back roads, until I knew many of its holes in the ground—literal as well as figurative. (Working as a limousine driver in those early days, as much as I hated the job, went a long way toward familiarizing myself with much of the state, not just the Shore area.) Mind you, this was all before I ever imagined myself moving across the country and taking a fancy to Southern California, which turned my perception of many things upside down and inside out.
Its length is due to the fact that I wanted to say something about every little spot along the shore, starting from Sandy Hook Bay and ending in Cape May, with several detours inland. I wanted to catalogue my travels and perceptions and have it be the crowning jewel of the entire work.
But it has an even more interesting source of inspiration: The liturgical poems that are focal points of the Jewish High Holiday services, specifically "Melech Elyon" ("The Supreme King") and "Maaseh Elokaynu" ("The work of our G-d"). Each of these has the following features:
a brief preamble at the very beginning,
stanzas containing several rhymed lines, a line leading into the refrain, and the refrain itself, i.e., the title of the poem,
each stanza describing another magnificent divine attribute, which we mere humans cannot begin to fathom,
several stanzas toward the end questioning the whole thing,
and a final, uplifting stanza, bringing it all home.
For years, during the era in which I was conceiving of Soul In Exile, writing and performing the songs, and recording them when I had the chance, I would attend services during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, reach these poems in the service, and wonder whether I could compose something similar but related to the themes in my work. But then the holidays would end and my attention would be taken up by other things. Every now and then my thoughts would come back to it, and I had sketched out several verses—those of Asbury Park (of course), Seaside Heights, Atlantic City, and Wildwood. And that's the way it stayed until 2002, when I took a crack at fleshing the rest of it out. It all came tumbling out in one huge paroxysm of writing that lasted several days. A few tweaks here and there, and it was done.
But what to do with it? It is so huge that it could take up an entire CD. It makes Bob Dylan's "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" look like a Ramones tune. I knew I wanted it to be the big finish to the entire opus, and I was not ready to record it yet. And as of this point, I am still not. The next phase of recording will probably commence sometime later in the 2020s, and there are about a dozen other songs to be recorded beforehand.
HOWEVER, the song made its live debut at my farewell to the East Coast show at The Saint in Asbury Park in January, 2010, the last song in an hour-long set. Musically, it was based around the "Green Onions" groove, but rather than a 12-bar blues, it was stretched out to a 16-bar blues:
1-1-1-1-4-4-1-1-4-4-1-1-5-4-1-1
E-E-E-E-A-A-E-E-A-A-E-E-B-A-E-E
The song wowed the crowd, if I may say so myself. One notable member of the audience was Glen Burtnik, stalwart and veteran of the New Jersey music scene, former member of Styx, founder of The Weeklings, and in-demand sideman for international acts such as The Orchestra (ELO sans Jeff Lynne) and others. We chatted for a bit after the show and he told me he had been impressed by the size and scope of the song, as well as the playing. Compliments such as this don't come that often.
When I finally commit this song to fixed form, it will probably retain its 16-bar-blues structure, but rather than "Green Onions," it will probably employ as its base "Boardwalk Blues," an instrumental that I composed on the piano when I was 15 years old, living in Israel and dreaming of the Jersey Shore. AND, I probably will use the version I edited for brevity, although it is still an epic by my own standards. I may also update the subject matter somewhat so that the issues are less anchored to a specific era.
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