Pure unadulterated randomness

Random thoughts from a random person SHOULD MEAN random thoughts from a random person, right? So it’s time for another installment.  Get ready…this stuff is REALLY random.

-As I write this, my daughter, Carly, is taking her voice lesson. She has a dynamite voice and a dynamite teacher.  Plus Carly is one of the wittiest people I know. One day, on the way home from church, we saw a homeless person with a cardboard sign asking for donations of money or food.  She looked over at him and said, “I can understand where homeless people get the cardboard, but where do they get the sharpies?” Great stuff.

-Speaking of church, lately our pastor has been talking about poverty and how it’s hard to understand, in our wealthy society, why there are still starving people on the planet. In fact, the subject of the sermon the other day was “What’s wrong with this picture?” He would show pictures of starving children and say “what’s wrong with this picture?” While listening to the sermon, I was in a multi-million dollar church building complete with huge screen monitors, flat screens all over the place, a huge room just for teens to “hang out”, and we’re currently trying to raise $4 million for a new addition to add a sports facility. What’s wrong with THIS picture?

-Did a thought ever come into your mind, and you couldn’t decide if it was something that really happened, or just a dream you had at some point in time? It happened to me yesterday, and I still can’t decide if it was real or something I dreamed. Who knows…maybe so much has happened to me in my life that I really can’t distinguish truth from reality any more.

-You know how there are certain things that you hated when you were a kid, but you really like them now? Lima beans fall into that category for me, and so does Bruce Springsteen. I always thought he was just OK, and then “Born in the USA” came out and I hated him for quite awhile, just because I thought he really sold out. Now I not only love his music, I have a huge amount of respect for him as an artist and performer.  I can listen to “Born to Run” and exclaim “What a great f*ckiin’ song!” And when I saw him perform on the Grammys a few weeks ago, I was so grateful that we “have seen the future of rock and roll, and it is Bruce Springsteen.”

-And lima beans have become my favorite vegetable.

-I was talking the other day with some friends about a person who had committed suicide by stabbing themselves repeatedly.  What a horrible way to go about it. Haven’t we all, at some time or another, whether we were serious or not, thought about how we would commit suicide if we ever got to that point? For me, it would be running the car in the garage…no contest.

-I love to talk to college and high school students about what they want to do with their futures. I always try to impart to them the importance of finding a career that you LIKE. Don’t even think about what it pays, because once you start working for the pay that you get, it sucks you in and you can never leave…because you get used to having that income, and it’s so hard to go back to apartment living. If you talk to someone who really loves their job and someone who makes a lot of money at their job, guess who’s going to be in a better mood.

-Why on earth do I think that other people really want to read my random thoughts? What an ego trip.

-I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating…I have the most caring, most awesome friends in the world.

-Finally, a question for everyone reading this, but mostly for my music-head friends: who is your favorite producer?  Producers can make a good song sound great, and can make a great song a religious experience. SO many names come to mind: Chips Momens, Phil Spector, George Martin. For awhile now, if anyone asks me about my favorite producer, I would probably say David Axelrod. David is probably best known for producing the great body of 1960’s output by Lou Rawls, but he did some solo sides as well. Here’s just a taste of a simple melody that he made into a symphony.  I don’t think anyone has ever implemented drums into music as well as Axelrod. Genius is a word we throw around a lot, but I’m not so sure it doesn’t apply here.

I dreamed about Del Shannon the other night

There are dreams that are just plain dreams, and some that seem really vivid. For me, those vivid dreams usually occur right before I wake up, and I usually lie in bed for a little bit thinking about how real it all seemed.

Monday morning was one of those mornings. Right before I woke up, I was sitting in an old fashioned living room watching a black and white TV (most people claim that dreams are black and white, but I’ve never made the distinction). On TV was Del Shannon. He had just finished a song with a band behind him, and there was a rather plain white backdrop decorated with a few faint trees. Del was wearing black slacks, a white button down shirt that was open at the top, and a kind of herringbone sportcoat. And of course, he had his semi-hollow body Gibson guitar around his neck. He looked GREAT. His hair didn’t have that signature semi-pompadour, it was more parted to the side like he wore it in the mid-sixties. Like I was saying, he had just finished a song, and the host of the show was coming out onstage to chat with him for a bit. Del had a big smile on his face, as the studio audience was still cheering his performance.

Then I woke up.

Why did I dream about Del Shannon? There was no “anniversary” that made me think of him (he was born in December and died in February). I hadn’t been listening to a lot of his music, although I do listen to him quite a bit. But after I woke up, I felt so GOOD for him, as if I were witnessing him at his peak. I know this sounds crazy, but it’s almost like I felt a little bit of his spirit was with me.

Wanna hear something REALLY crazy? I’ve always believed that, in dreams, our minds take us to some sort of parallel universe. Think about it…how many times have you had dreams about your everyday life, or something that has happened in the past, and things were ALMOST the same, but just a little bit different? I remember having a dream one time about travelling down a stretch of highway that was near where I grew up. I swear, I know just about every inch of that highway for about a 20 mile stretch. But one night, in a dream, I was travelling that stretch of highway, and everything was the same…except for a patch of trees and, further down the road, a house that had never been there in my memory.

At this point in my life, I’ve experienced enough that I rarely question anything. As long as someone can give me a somewhat convincing argument about something that they believe, I don’t discount it. I’ve shared my thoughts about dreams with other people, and they didn’t look at me like I was an alien on crack…they know that the mind is an amazing thing that has capabilites that mortal man cannot even fathom.

Back in junior high, my friend Scott had read somewhere that if you write your dreams down every morning as soon as you wake up, eventually they all start becoming intertwined with each other, to where it eventually tells a story. And we weren’t even smoking pot yet! Of course, Scott also had the famous dream (in high school) that the Nazis were invading the small town of El Paso, just 10 miles south of our hometown. I’m sure the Third Reich had big plans for the IGA and the Dairy Queen.

When I worked in radio, I would occasionally have what we in the business call “DJ nightmares,” and they were VERY real. This was back in the days when we actually played music from vinyl albums that had to be “cued up” in order to start at exactly the right time. Sometimes it took a little bit to find the right album, the right song, and still deal with everything going on. In a DJ nightmare, you would be working feverishly to cue up a song while the previous song was fading. You would get the new song started just in time, and guess what? It would start fading almost right away, before you have a chance to even LOOK for the next song. And the phone was ringing off the hook, and you would have to get ready for a break and NOT be able to find any of the commercials you were supposed to play. All the while, your biggest worry was dead air. It could make you wake up in a cold sweat.

So have you ever had a really vivid dream? Vivid enough to make you wonder if it really happened when you visited a parallel universe?  Was it so crazy that you woke up thinking “wow, that was SO crazy” ?  Maybe you felt the way I did a couple of years ago when I dreamed that my wife and I went to a play starring John Travolta and his wife, Kelly Preston. Before the show I was just hanging out in the lobby, and John Travolta comes walking up and starts a conversation with me…and no one else even recognizes him! We talk about cars, and I mention that I have to go out and get something from my car…he says that he wants to come out with me and check out my car. Just then his wife comes up and says that they have to go backstage to get ready for the show. He says that he wants to talk to me some more, so Kelly writes down a phone number and hands it to me, saying “this is our private number…call after the show and we’ll get together.” Kooky.

Don’t be afraid to share your thoughts, or your dreams for that matter. I’d love to hear other speculation on what causes us to dream what we dream.

Maybe this tune can get you started.

“What death means to me” by Groovyrick

I’m going to talk about a subject that may make some of you uncomfortable. I’m not even that comfortable writing about it, but it’s a part of everyone’s life.

Death.

There, I’ve said it. Yep, we’re all going to die. And I, for one, wish that I was the type of person that could stare death in the face and laugh ha HA…but unless I have one of those “never knew what hit him” kind of deaths, I’m probably going to be scared to death (ok, that was kind of funny…seriously, I wrote it before I even realized what I was writing).

Don’t get creeped out, but death has always been a bit of an odd obsession with me, maybe because I was introduced to it in a big way at a very young age. My father and my uncle, who was pretty much like another father to me, both died when I was 7, within about three months of each other. After experiencing that kind of trauma at such an impressionable age, other family deaths just kind of mildly phased me, some more than others.

You know how you sometimes do dumb things in junior high just so you can tell people about it? One summer afternoon, I was at the baseball diamonds with a few other neighborhood guys. We didn’t really have enough players for a game, so we were just batting the ball to each other. Right across the street from the ball diamonds was a cemetery. There was a funeral going on right at the edge of the cemetery so we paused to give the family a little silence. As soon as they all left, we walked over to watch them bury the guy. We asked if we could help. It was just manual labor to the guys with the shovels, so they quickly granted our request. I’ll never forget watching them lower the vault into the ground, and then hearing, “Ok fellas, put those shovels to work!” We couldn’t wait to tell our friends.

Celebrity deaths always fascinate me, too, just to see how the world reacts…and we’ve had quite a few high profile ones so far this year (just wait until we see the “Tribute” section of the year’s last issue of People!). The death of Davy Jones last week caused more of a sensation than I thought it would, and my blog about it generated some very flattering comments (thanks again, everyone). I guess losing a celebrity, especially one that has had a large impact on your life, is a lot like losing a family member.

Tonight, I looked at death from a couple of different perspectives. I didn’t plan my evening around it, but it just happened. First, I watched a movie that we had rented called “The Five People You Meet In Heaven” starring Jon Voight. Based on a novel by Mitch Albom, it follows an old amusement park maintenance man named Eddie who gets killed trying to save a little girl’s life when a ride at the park malfunctions. He wakes up in the hereafter, only to learn that he will meet five people who will help him understand some of the events that helped shape his life. Eddie had always planned to be an engineer, but he ended up taking his father’s job and never leaving Ruby Pier, where he and his father had both worked on the rides. He felt like his life had been pretty much a waste. I’ll have to admit, it was a very heart-warming movie that brought a few tears to my eyes at certain points, especially at the end (don’t worry, I’m not going to spoil it). The writer’s image of a heaven in the afterlife could only be described as paradise.

After the movie was over, I went downstairs to work out, like I do every night. While I work out, I watch TV, usually Family Guy or Big Bang Theory. Tonight, on the second Family Guy episode I watched, Lois wanted Peter to spend the day with her on their anniversary, but instead Peter tricked her so he could spend the day golfing. At the golf course, he was struck by lightning, and Death showed up. If you’ve never seen Family Guy, Death shows up about once per season. He is depicted as the Grim Reeper, but is kind of a regular guy (it was originally voiced by SNL alum Norm McDonald, then later by a guy named Adam Carolla). In this episode, he wasn’t going to take Peter because he was just having a “near-death experience”. As it turns out, Death is tired of living alone with his mom (“I wish my dad was still dead”), so Peter tries to find him a girlfriend. Yes, sometimes Family Guy is very irreverent, but shouldn’t we consider it someone else’s view of the afterlife?

Which one do you suppose is closest to the truth? I’m not even going to get into that whole argument, because that even creeps ME out. My mom was clinically dead during surgery for a couple of minutes, and she describes the place that she went as more the paradise-type place. I sure hope she’s right.

But I’m also going to get a chill if I suddenly hear a guy that sounds like Norm McDonald behind me.  

Cheer up, sleepy Jean

What a day. What a depressing day.

Davy Jones died today.

I know what you’re all thinking: “Get a grip, Rick…it’s Davy Jones…it’s not like it was anyone big.”

And you’re all wrong. Davy Jones was very big. He had a big life. As a child, he trained to be a jockey. As a young man, he performed on Broadway. In his 20’s, he became a fixture on television and in the music industry as a member of the Monkees. You can make fun of the Monkees all you want, but they did some damn good songs. They got a lot of heat at the time because of the unconventional way they became a band. Critics slammed them because they didn’t play their own instruments on the first two albums. Guess what…most of the biggest groups of the time didn’t play their own instruments on their albums. They were passed off as bubblegum music for teenagers. Personally, I would put “Headquarters” or “Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, LTD” or “The Birds, The Bees and the Monkees” right up there with some of the best albums of the 60s. In fact, I often list “Pisces” in my top ten albums of all time.

Davy Jones was an important part of pop culture. But I’m not depressed because I feel that the world lost a great performer. I’m bummed because I lost a voice that could instantly take me back to an important part of my life.

It was small town living at its best. My entire world was anyplace I could get to on my blue stingray. I wasn’t scared of anything, because I felt like every single person in that town was looking out for me. My biggest decisions were what I would do with my dollar allowance that I received every Saturday morning…and that my brother and I had spent by Saturday afternoon. The dilemma usually boiled down to one thing…would we each spend our dollar to buy a record (we had a huge 45 collection) or would we put our money together to buy a model car? Big decision, right?  Many times, that allowance money went toward buying Monkees records, because we watched the show all the time, and each week the show would feature a new song.

Tonight, when I got home from work, the kids and I watched a few Monkees episodes after I told them the news (yeah, they’re fans, as you’ll see in a moment). It immediately took my mind to an image of our living room on Mary Street, and our black & white Admiral TV in the corner. I could see my brother and I sitting on the gold sculptured carpeting, laughing out loud, and wondering aloud which one of the Monkees we would want to be. There was no job stress…no worries about paying bills…no concerns about kids and whether I’ll be able to put three of them through college…no outrageous gas prices…no health concerns…none of the things that currently plague my mind on a daily basis.

At that point in time, it was just Davy, Mickey, Peter and Mike playing music, acting crazy, and making me laugh.

I saw Davy perform a couple of times, in the early 90’s with Mickey and Peter, and at a solo gig just a few years ago. That night, we met Davy after the show. He was very friendly, very outgoing, and was gracious enough to chat with fans and sign autographs. The next day, my wife was at the mall with our kids, just doing some random shopping…and there was Davy Jones! She introduced herself, said she had been at the show, and introduced our kids. Again, he was very friendly, shook hands with each of the kids and even gave my wife a hug. He knew that he wasn’t a McCartney, or even a Ringo for that matter. He was just Davy Jones.

Even though he was 66 when he passed today, I think most of us will always picture him as a young Monkee with the long hair and British accent. I’ll always picture him on my black & white TV in my house on Mary Street, with my brother and me singing and laughing along with him.

For those memories, Davy Jones, I am eternally grateful.

I’m puzzled by life

My son got a Barnes & Noble gift card for Christmas, and one of the things he bought was a Beatles White Album jigsaw puzzle. It’s pretty cool…500 pieces, and on one side, if you’re a real masochist, you can try to piece together the cover of the album. If you’re like most normal people, you will try to put together the side that has all four sides of the LP.  Still, that’s no easy task. As you can imagine, my son got bored with it pretty quickly, so I decided to take on the project myself.

It was pretty easy at first, piecing together the labels. I already knew the songs on each side, and of course, there were two green apple sides, and two “sliced” apple sides. The border around the outside was a little more challenging, but as I pieced that together, the outside of the LPs started to take shape. Now I’m to the pieces that are just vinyl. All the pieces are black, so I’m going mostly by shape. I hope to have it done by the end of the week.

 

But I’ll get back to that.

I have to admit that I was pretty shaken by the death of Whitney Houston. I was never a huge fan, but I played a ton of her music when I was at WBNQ.  It was a perfect soundtrack for that time period. It was up, it was well-produced, and her voice was amazing. Seriously, it was just incredible. Very strong, very confident. And as a friend of mine who worked with me in those radio days remarked on Facebook, at that time she seemed like the most beautiful woman on the face of the earth. She seemingly had everything it took to make her a superstar for years to come.

Then it all started to unravel for Whitney. She started becoming tabloid fodder…bad marriage, rumors of alcohol and drug abuse, and her voice and image started to fade. And over the weekend, she joined the class of incredibly talented people who never made it to see their 50^th birthday, either due to a fast, deliberate suicide, or a slow, painful suicide.

I tried to explain to my kids how popular this person was at one time. It was hard for them to grasp, since she had tried to stay out of the public eye pretty much since they were born. They couldn’t understand why someone who seemed to have all the elements of a great career would throw it away to drug and alcohol abuse. I didn’t have an answer for them, because I don’t really understand it either.

It started me thinking about those who seemed to have great careers, but decided to end their lives at the point of a gun or at the end of a rope. People like Don Cornelius, Kurt Cobain, Del Shannon (one of my musical heroes) and others. Maybe they just achieved too much too quickly, and couldn’t deal with the downside of a career. I have no answers there either.

Reading my last few blog entries made me feel like I was reading the rants of a crotchety old man who was determined to live in the past and felt out of place in the present. I guess when you get to be my age, you start getting resentful that there are elements in life that you just can’t keep up with anymore. Music starts to pass you by, not to mention technology. Man, I used to be on the cutting edge of all that…in radio, you had to be up on everything new and relevant. But I guess I have too many other things to worry about these days…knowing every artist that puts out music these days just isn’t at the top of the list like it used to be.

Then I went back to work on that puzzle. And it made me realize (prepare yourself for the profound point to this whole story) that life is a lot like a jigsaw puzzle. It starts off kind of easy, with pieces falling together quickly, and a form starting to take shape right away. You think “What’s the big deal? This is easy!” Then, the puzzle starts to get a little more difficult, but you still have a pretty good handle on things. You start to get a little cocky, but then you grab a piece that looks like it will fit into a spot perfectly, and when you try it, it just doesn’t fit perfectly…so you put it aside and move on to find another piece that looks like it will fit. When you find a piece that DOES fit perfectly, you get more of a sense of accomplishment than you did in the early going. You appreciate it more for some reason.  Soon, all the pieces that are left have trouble fitting in, and at times you feel like just giving up. Yet, you’re determined to see it through so you can look upon your finished product and admire the time and effort it took to get to the finish line.

Don’t worry friends…I’m not down, and I’m certainly not looking to take the “Hemmingway” out.  Just getting a little philosophical on yo’ ass, that’s all. However, I DO want this post to end on a happier note, so here’s a great musician joke a friend told me:

What outlook calendar does a jazz guitarist use to keep track of his gigs? DECADE AT A GLANCE! 

I love that one.

Is the world getting younger?

A couple of events have happened in the past 48 hours that have made me wonder if the world is just getting younger, or if it’s just plain uninformed.

1-Like most ofAmerica, we were watching the Super Bowl the other night. I didn’t really give a rat’s ass who won, because I hate both the Patriots and the Giants, and I usually don’t buy into all the “Super Bowl Commercials” hype. But this year, I decided to actually pay attention to the commercials. There wasn’t anything that really blew me away, but when my daughter came into the room and said, “How are the commercials? Any really good ones?” I thought for a minute and said, “Well, the patriotic shot-in-the-arm that Clint Eastwood just did for Chrysler was a little cheesy, but pretty compelling I guess.” I was taken aback at the next words out of her mouth:

“Who’s Clint Eastwood?”

WHO is Clint Eastwood? My mind was racing, trying to find a frame of reference for her. Rowdy Yates from Rawhide? Nope, that’s almost before MY time…The Good, The Bad and the Ugly? A Fistful Of Dollars? Hang ‘Em High? Nope, she’s never seen a spaghetti western…Dirty Harry? Nope, I don’t think she’s ever seen a cop movie…Every Which Way But Loose? Nope, I would never subject her to that. I finally mentioned “Gran Torino”, but that didn’t even register with her. All of a sudden, it made sense. Why on earth would she know who Clint Eastwood is? Sure, he’s been acting for 50 years or more, but he’s never done a Disney movie, and hasn’t been on TV for years.

2-Every morning at work, we get our creativity going by playing an ongoing game of Family Feud. Yesterday morning, the question was “name a rock band with a single word name”. There were several good answers: Rush, Yes,Chicago (the number one answer was “Beatles”…guess the people who took the survey don’t consider “the” a word). My answer was “Genesis”.  I was taken aback once again when a member of our group in their early 20’s said:

“Who is Genesis?”

I said, “You know, the band…Genesis…Phil Collins? Mike Rutherford? Tony Banks?” She responded that she knew Phil Collins from doing a couple of Disney soundtracks. I started in on what a sell-out I thought Collins was, and how Genesis used to do great music, especially when Peter Gabriel and Steve Hackett were still in the band, but it was no use. She associated Phil Collins with Disney, and try as I might, I would never convince her that “Trick of the Tail” was probably their last great album. It was recorded about 15 years before she was born.

We need to do a better job. The youth in this county have to be educated. Remember, those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. And nobody wants another Dexy’s Midnight Runners, right? So find a young person, sit them down, and right some wrongs. These quick tips will give you a head start:

-Ozzy Osborne wasn’t always a dimwitted reality show star. He was the lead singer of Black Sabbath, one of the coolest metal bands of all time, before embarking on a controversial, yet awesome solo career. If you need an example, make them listen to “Black Sabbath Volume 4” and turn the volume up to 11. Nuff said.

-The word “cool” was invented to describe Steve McQueen. Although he never made any really GREAT movies, he was a good actor, raced motorcycles, smoked pot before hippies made it trendy in the late 60’s, and hung out with gorgeous women. If you need an example, make them watch Bullitt…if for no other reason than to watch the best auto chase scene of all time.

-Clint Eastwood was not always an old man whose voice was so raspy you could hardly understand it. He was a tough guy in the movies, but you always wanted to be on his side. Have them watch a Dirty Harry movie (The Enforcer is my favorite). You’ll soon hear them throwing out catchphrases like “Do you feel lucky? Well, do you? Punk?” or “Go ahead…make my day”.

-If they think Adele is soulful (I’m not knocking her…I like her stuff), have them listen to an Aretha Franklin or Etta James album. Yes, ALBUM. They should hear that music the way it was meant to be heard.

-Steven Tyler should never sing the national anthem. Why? Because he’s a wanker. Those two country hacks the other night at the Super Bowl should never sing the national anthem, nor should Katy Perry or Kelly Pickler or any current flavor of the month. Why? Because they suck. Instead, hop on YouTube and play them Marvin Gaye’s Star Spangled Banner from the NBA All Star Game…or better yet, give them a taste of Hendrix at Woodstock.

That’s a good start…I’m looking for more suggestions, so please feel free to submit them. It’s up to all of us to educate the youth of America…our future depends on it!

That was an AWESOME concert

Quite a few people commented on my post last week concerning awkward concert moments, and it stirred up some good conversation. So that begs a question from the other end of the spectrum: What was your FAVORITE concert or concert moment?

Even when you’re going to see one of your favorite artists perform, there are so many intangibles that can affect your concert experience. So when you come away from a GREAT show, that means that all the stars were aligned just right to make the entire experience a memorable affair. For instance, a couple of years ago, my friend Autumn went to see Coldplay in Chicago. Her sister was taking her as a birthday gift. I asked her the next day how the show was, and she replied, “It was the best concert I ever saw!” Now granted, after show euphoria is quite common, but she followed it up with sound reasoning. She said that the whole day was great. She and her sister got to the city early and did some shopping together, had a great dinner, and both really enjoyed the show.  Thus, the entire experience was memorable.

Last night, my friend Melodie went to see Lenny Kravitz. When I asked her today how she liked the show, she said that it was the best live performance she had ever seen in all the years she has been going to concerts. It was at the Chicago Theatre, which is a great place to see a show, and she is a pretty major fan, so again, all of those factors combined to create a memorable event.

Some of the concerts I have attended have evoked some incredible memories: watching Sting joke with my wife backstage, talking with John Fogarty about how much we both love Delbert McClinton, hanging out with Def Leppard before and after their show and allowing me into their “private” backstage area so we could listen to the new AC/DC album, seeing Ben E. King sing his immortal “Stand By Me” and listening to women swoon as the great Jerry Butler sang “For Your Precious Love” and shaking hands with Butler after the show, being glued to a young Stevie Ray Vaughn in a small club and being literally astounded by his talent, and watching Paul McCartney cover his musical career in one night.

So here goes. From the hundred or so concerts that I’ve seen (hey, I worked in radio back when they would give you tickets for just about any show that came to town), I’ve tried to narrow it down to my:

Top 5 Concert Experiences So Far

5-Todd Rundgren at the Vic/Chicago-1990: This was one of the first shows my wife and I went to, right after the release of his “Nearly Human” album. It was a Friday night…we got to the theatre early and were able to park right across the street. As we were getting out of the car, a big tour bus pulled up. My wife said, “I wonder if that’s Todd’s bus.” I made some remark like “I doubt Todd’s travelling by bus,” but just as I said that, Rundgren came down the steps. I yelled and waved, but he was understandably in a hurry to get inside the venue. I’ve seen Todd more than once, but this show was certainly the best.

4-Grand Funk Railroad at ISU’s Horton Fieldhouse/Normal-1974: I HAVE to mention this one…it was my first concert, and what a show! I was (and still am) a MAJOR Grand Funk fan, and this was when they were hot! It was the “Shinin’ On” tour, and my brother and all of his buddies were going. I begged him to go, and when he said I could come along I gladly sprang the $3.50 for a ticket. When I bought the album, the inner sleeve listed all of the dates on the tour. Sure enough, there it was: “March 23 – Illinois State University, Normal”. Plus, their next album, “Caught in the Act”, was recorded during that tour, so whenever I listen to that CD, it takes me right back to when I was a young man wondering what that funny smelling smoke was.

3-Alice Cooper with Tesla at the Peoria Civic Center Theatre/Peoria-1987: This was my first Alice Cooper show. He was just getting back into touring with the guillotine and his whole act (he had just sobered up), and I couldn’t wait. I went with my friends Scott Robbins and Scott Sprouls, who were also major fans. Before the show, we hung out backstage with Tesla, who were young up-and-comers at the time, and they invited us to watch their set from the side of the stage. Right after they were done, we were hanging out talking with them, and I happened to catch a tall, dark figure out of the corner of my eye. It was Alice, and he was about 6 feet from us. He was pacing, and had his game face on. I nudged Robbins. As we both stared, he finally said, “Think we should approach him? May be our only chance to meet him.” I said, “I don’t think now is a good time…he has a pretty intense look on his face.” Years later, Scott and I were both able to spend time with Alice. We told him the story, and he jokingly said that he probably would have killed us if we had approached him (at least I think he was joking). After the concert, we went to a strip joint and the Tesla guys joined us there. What a hoot!

2-Brian Wilson at the Chicago Theatre/Chicago-2006: I was always a little reluctant to see Brian when he started touring again. Quite frankly, being the fan that I am, I just didn’t want to be disappointed. But when he and his uber-talented band finished the legendary “SMiLE” album, and he was playing it live in it’s entirety, my friend John and I knew we had to go. The first part of the show consisted of the band playing several Beach Boys favorites, then there was about a 20 minute intermission. When they returned to the stage, they played SMiLE from front to back. I had chills. I seriously could not believe that I was listening to a complete version of an album that was started clear back in 1966…and it was finally complete. Many of the bits and pieces I had heard over the years didn’t seem to make much sense…but when it all came together, it was magical. John and I saw the same show in St. Louis the following year, and since I knew a couple of the guys in Brian’s band, I was finally able to meet my idol face-to-face. It was a surreal experience, and almost worthy of it’s own blog entry.

1-Stevie Wonder at the U of I Assembly Hall/Champaign-1986: Stevie Wonder is a freakin’ legend in my eyes, and I couldn’t believe that he was touring. I got tickets right away, and they were pretty good seats. It was one of those situations where everything was in perfect alignment, and the entire experience was a memorable event…the people I was with, the buzz that I got on the way there (and on the way home), the events that occurred after I got home…everything came together to make it my most unforgettable concert memory. I have chills just thinking about it.

Well, you know what’s next. I want to hear about YOUR most unforgettable concert, or list your top five if you would like! I can’t wait to hear your stories.

On a final note, farewell Don Cornelius…a very talented man with great vision and a voice like no other.

May you rest in peace.