So it goes...

These past couple days have been one of connecting with an old friend, Pat. I've talked about him in the past. He and I were best buddies in high school and much of our college years. He was in my wedding in New York, and I was in his in Tulsa. Over the years, as we were growing our families and living our lives we dropped out of touch. There was an occasional letter, and then an email, but for the most part we drifted. This last reconnect was driven by a text exchange we had last summer. He was texting about how a Bob Seger song, Like A Rock, had a big impact on him one night on his deck. We'd seen Seger together in 1980 and, like our friendship, we just sort of lost touch with his music over the years. Well, just for grins Pat looked up to see if Seger was still even alive. When he did he saw that he wasn't only still alive, but he was in the middle of his "Final Tour." Pat was always "spontaneous" so he pulled the trigger and got tickets for us,...

A few posts back I mentioned that this has kind of become the summer of chasing aging rock stars. There was a realization that many of the rock heroes of my youth were dying off, and so to counter act any grief, I thought I'd try and be proactive and see a few that are in their 60's and 70's before they too kicked the rock bucket. I knocked a few of them off my list in a single night at Summerfest a few weeks ago, including Soul Asylum, The Suburbs, Tommy Tutone and of course my personal favorite, The Church. Last night was Roger Waters, formerly of Pink Floyd. Roger is 73 and the band has been broken up almost longer than it was together, but me, my son and my friend Ryan went because we're all fans and thought this might be one of the last chances to see him. It is tough to put into words how amazing the whole spectacle was. When we got to our nosebleed seats, I was a little upset that there were big speakers hanging in middle of the sight line to the huge scree...

Everybody has that favorite band. Some have many favorites. Some change their favorite from year to year, fad to fad, genre to genre. It's something that everyone is entitled to. We don't all have to like other peoples' favorite band, and maybe once you're over fifty years old, you shouldn't even have a favorite band. (Let alone be writing about one. But I am. So there.) I know a guy who 25 years ago worshiped Neil Diamond. I had a hard time understanding this. While there's nothing wrong with Neil Diamond's music, it's just that at his age (26ish) I thought it was weird to be a fan of somebody more likely to be worshiped by my Mom or my in-laws (they did). Everybody has their thing though, so I get that. Back in the day, I knew a guy who used to travel from state to state following Bruce Springsteen on tour. The guy was a fanatic. While I never went to that extreme, I had a few favorite groups that I waited for their new albums every year. Then I...