Summer is the season of cheap tunes, boardwalk or bandstand blare, warm night air after the club's din. In the old days you could start drinking daiquiris, caipirinhas, Cuba libres, margaritas, screwdrivers, champagne cocktails in mid-May and not let up or touch the ground with any serious intent till early September. Whole summers would drift by boozily, amorously. These days I work like a dog. Even Jasper the Wonder Dog, on the receiving end of the foregoing simile, has to practice his tricks, and not just lie around in the heat, snapping at flies.
Music is distraction.
Early summers in Key West where I spent the mid-80s you could anchor maybe 500 yards off Mallory Dock, watch the crowds waiting for the sunset, listen to music from the carny types panhandling. One evening the crowd could see a fellow in some sort of a rumble or tumble with a girl in a boat. Turned out he was killing her, but no one could hear her cries. A musical cover-up, you could say. Hear it half a mile away, a kid with his amped-up car stereo, replete with modish monster cable.