Story & Photo by Pete Brooks

Author's note: Originally intended as my swan song at Gazette Newspapers, the following piece was deemed too incendiary for publication in Long Beach's Favorite Community Newspapers. I post it here to allow you to judge for yourself. Thanks to Harry S. for editing it into a better-reading piece. He's definitely one of the good guys, and always has been.

My first thought was to have this final column be all about me -- all about MY time in Long Beach, MY thoughts, MY opinions -- until someone pointed out to me that's what every other column up to this point has already been about.

So I decided to try to do something novel this last time out, and write about the one Long Beach singer/songwriter I'd never featured before.

Hard to believe I've missed anyone in all this time. You already know all the Big Names: Johnny Jones. Wink Musselman. Zach Malner, the Fauntleroys, that guy named Joe I didn't like, Mike from Mention whom I did, Craig Jackson...

Especially Chris Hanlin, who offers to buy me a cocktail every time I see him, even though I've been sober for three years now and tell him so every time. "Smithers, who is this man?"

But you've never heard me mention Mario Barmosca, my next door neighbor, and one of the busiest full-time working musicians in Long Beach.

For one thing, I thought it might be a conflict of interest to write about the guy who lives next door -- think about the access he has. "Pete, you need me to walk your dog for you while you write that story about how great I am?" No thanks. Not going there.

But he won't be my neighbor soon, so all ethical dilemmas are resolved. I may continue to call him "neighbor" (it's warm and impersonal all at the same time!), but he won't actually be my neighbor.

Who is this mysterious Barmosca then, somehow both inextricably fundamental to the local music scene, and yet strangely apart from it? What dark powers does he wield, to so cloud the minds of men?

Just one: Candor.

Some people see it differently, of course. The distaff view about town is that he can be blunt, abrasive and uncompromising.

Of course he is.

An iconoclast in a scene full of politicians and diplomats, his candor makes him the most dangerous man in Long Beach. At least to himself.

The only 'name' on the Long Beach scene not quoted in a recent O.C. Weekly article on what a genius Hanlin is, Barmosca's history of faux pas runs long, wide and deep. Repeatedly the first guy to get booted off his own personal "Survivor," Barmosca has played with and parted from more southern California bands than I have room to list here.

But he lands on his feet most of the time, usually by simply working harder than anybody else. Again, in a city full of mutually assured geniuses, Barmosca's gotten to where he's gotten to by rolling up his sleeves, getting in behind the plow at sunup and pushing like his life depended on it.

A long-time songwriter and stand-up bassist, he's currently in L.A.'s Speedtwin and fronting Long Beach's own delta blues veterans, Bourbon Jones.

But as his next door neighbor, it's the music he's written that'll stick with me most vividly. It's been a genuine pleasure to listen to songs by turn poignant and bitter, reflective and revelatory through these cheap apartment walls. I listened as they were born, evolved and grew into the resonant beauties they are today.

His songwriting is unique among his contemporaries. Deep, grave and often somehow simultaneously joyous and mournful, it throws back to a purer, more straightforward tradition in American music. It's a tradition where the song is about the music and melody, where the song moves you, not happy meals at the Taco Bell.

A big personality and a natural leader, Barmosca is limited perhaps only by his irritable impatience with the slow-moving apparatus of success, not to mention day-to-day life. On the other hand, it's that very restlessness and drive that is at the core of his most stirring compositions and compelling performances.

Most people think they want the truth... until it turns out -- just like the saying goes -- they really can't handle the truth.

But that's all right with Barmosca ‚ he doesn't want to be handled.

This guy's in a class by himself. And that's just the way he likes it.

You can catch Bourbon Jones Sunday afternoons on the patio at the Blue CafÈ downtown, as well as Friday night, August 11, at the same venue opening up for national recording artist John Hammond.

Thank you, Long Beach. Good night!