The Wild West of Rock and Roll

    Many years ago I met a man who claimed his grandfather grew up in Tombstone, Arizona. One day his grandfather, as a child, stood outside the General Store waiting for his mother who was shopping and heard what sounded to him like firecrackers going off down the street. A few minutes later the town marshal and his brothers came walking down the street from the sound of the firecrackers and a shop keeper came out and called to him; “Hey Wyatt, what’s all the commotion about?”
    The marshal’s reply was, “Just shootin’ skunk.”
    This guy’s grandfather was a witness to the gunfight at the OK Corral and it was a story he told for the rest of his long life.
    I often think of this story and imagine a kid growing up among the real legends of the Old West, seeing them become the larger than life characters they became through the publication of newspaper stories, dime novels and later in motion pictures and believing that it wasn’t just possible to grow up to join their ranks but actually probable.
    I imagine being a kid dreaming of carrying a Colt Peacemaker, riding a horse wherever you went and being a “Cowboy” when you grew up and then the crushing disappointment when a mere twenty years later the West as you knew it is dead and so are your dreams. Not only your dreams but also the years of training and practicing as a quick draw artist and as an equestrian. The streets of dust and horse manure are now paved and polluted by the exhaust of the Model A Ford and carrying a hand gun in public is no longer socially acceptable.
    These days I feel like that kid in Tombstone. Growing up in the West San Fernando Valley my next door neighbor was the bass player for the Strawberry Alarm Clock and his next door neighbor and best friend became the guitar player for Oingo Boingo. Steppinwolf were called Sparrow back then and I’d see their psychedelic bus driving around town. The Iron Butterfly had a rehearsal hall in the Valley, Buffalo Springfield were getting busted in Laurel Canyon where friends of my folks lived and complained that two of the Monkees rented the house down the street and would skinny dip with teenage girls late at night (their pool was in the front yard), and a kid I jammed with became a successful Christian Music star before dying tragically with his sons in a plane crash. It was an “Industry Town” and show business wasn’t just a dream but an entry level position.
    But it’s all over now. I said recently to my partner in Director’s Clip, the music video sponsorship site, “All the dreams I grew up with are yesterday’s news and now I just feel like a failure.”
    “You’re not a failure he said.”
    “Yeah? We’ll so are you,” I replied to a guy who once toured as a working musician with Elvis Presley and later owned a successful video editing business.
    “We’re not failures,” he insisted. “You were a successful TV director and I owned a multimillion dollar editing facility. We’re not failures, it’s just that our time has past.”
    Thanks. I feel so much better.

Friday Funnies


1 comment:

  1. Do you remember the noon concert Keith gave at ECR before he graduated? On top of having a great voice and being an excellent piano player, he just had a presence. Losing him was such a tragedy.

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