Music...it always tied things together for me. My parents were into Broadway musicals and I grew up hearing "Ain't Nothing Like A Dame" and of course, the whole "Sound Of Music" album, but that was not my music. This does not mean, you will never catch me humming "Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets", but I always lean towards harder rock. I'm pretty sure my introduction to this was when my dad was driving us to Florida for the last time, and somehow the radio station in the Buick was set on, started playing "House of the Rising Sun" by the Animals. That was the moment I knew I was separate from my family.
It's funny how the siblings in my family all have their own likes. I think Cindy pretty much still like what my mom and dad played. Paul, somehow got into what we would call New Age music now. And I remember how that happened. First it was the Tangerine Dream soundtrack to the movie Thief and then we found the band Aorta...suddenly, I wonder if Lee Mckee's older brother with the fancy stereo had something to do with that introduction. Last but not least, is Steve, who is still back in the disco days. He loves to play that music while riding bikes. Right now, "Rolla Costa!" is looping in my head. Unlike the rest of us, Steve came up during disco, and learned to dance, while I was curling my upper lip at this non-music. Truthfully, I like it better now than I did back then.
A strange thing is, I married a girl that came from Winter Park High, and she is only a week older than me. I still remember the days at Colonial when we thought, man Winter Park gets everything, and we get nothing. Fancy cars, at pool at the school! And we were jealous of the girls as well. Pam's life was very different than mine, and maybe more like yours. She grew up in the same place and knew all the kids from kindergarten all the way through high school. We met while in college, but it wasn't until years later that we started realizing something...we almost never met.
There is an old song by Martin Mull, titled "They Never Met". He's mainly known as a comedian and the song is funny, because it sounds like a romantic ballad, but it's about two people that were perfect for each other, and passed like ships in the night, never meeting. It wasn't a sad song, it was a tease, giving you the opposite of what you expected in the chorus. It's odd to think about how much chance plays in how your life works out. Sometimes I think our main job is to just not screw it up.
Pam and I met while in History class, me chatting up her best friend, who was the talkative one of the two. It's kind of hard to remember Pam as being a very quiet person, but around her friend, she was. They must have played Rock/Scissors/Paper..because her friend wanted nothing to do with me, but Pam did...and maybe I started doing all the talking...but that didn't last forever!
Thing is, we grew up in the same town and went to the same concerts! We both remember going to the Colleseum on Orange Ave and seeing Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels and the Young Rascals. There were many other shows out at the Place in Union Park, where they had Pro Wrestling. I can still remember that one time I went all excited about Jimmy Buffett, and they cancelled the show because he was pissed about the PA system. Another time, I stood transfixed, watching the bass player from Cactus do a solo intro for the song Parchment Farm. Pam was at those same shows! Did we bump into each other, and she goes "what a dweeb!" or "wow, I wish I knew that guy"?
Maybe our life was more like "When Harry Met Sally"?
Music...as much as I love it, reading has been the longer passion, and if there is one thing I'm truly grateful for, is you taking the time to read all this stuff. Everybody says, we have no attention span, AI is taking over, and Idiocracy is almost in place, and you are flying in the face of that, spending more time than anyone could predict to read the ramblings of some old guy...with no axe to grind, and no clicks to bait....by. the way come back tomorrow for 10 things you must do right now before you drink your second cup of coffee! and make sure you hit subscribe!
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