I THought There'd be Jet Packs in the Future

It has been 25 years since the movie “Back to the Future,” was first released.  Its funny but in the sequel the year Doc and Marty travel ahead to is 2010.  Back then, 2010 seemed liked as fictional as the rest of the movie.  I mean it was SO far away.  Of course I think we all suspected that 2010 wouldn’t be quite like the movie depicted; like there would be no floating cars or hovering skate boards. But I figured personal jet packs for the masses wasn't too rediculous. 

Then again that wasn’t the only thing that was off.  For one thing, I really thought I’d be a rock star.  Since I was very young I imagined that I would be probably a musical genius and loved by the masses.  Then, I think around 12 years old my mom suggested I get a guitar.  Huh, just realized how “uncool,” it is for a mom to suggest that.  At any rate, the first guitar I owned was a ¾ sized Harmony® acoustic with an extremely high action that made the string too tight and my fingers bled when I played it.  But I played it for hours at a time.  Don Mcleans “American Pie,” was the first song I learned from start to finish. 

I had played so much my parents must have felt that this was more than some passing phase because at Christmas that same year I got an electric guitar and amp.  It was on now.  I could turn up the volume and tune out the burgeoning turbulence of my teenage life.  I made that little 30 watt Crate amp bark out notes that shook pots and pans and rattled pictures hanging on the wall.  I played first thing after school and usually all the way to bed time.  Sure, my school work suffered which would be putting it nicely but hey, I was going to be a rock star.  Who needed school?  In fact being educated would have cost me some serious “cred.” 

Bye 16 I was an angry, emotional, lonely adolescent with a pretty high tolerance for hallucinogens.  I had no band.  I had no fans.  I didn’t even have my own songs yet.  Boy though, I sure FELT like a rock star. I knew it was only a matter of time.  I even had accepted my fate of a Rock star death.  Dying in a plane crash was way to random it seemed to me.  That was certainly NOT a rock stars proper death.  No I think I would have liked to have died from something drug related like an overdose.  That’s how a star goes: alone and brooding, face down in their vomit.  Oh the fans would eat that up!  Nothing galvanizes the angst filled youthful music fans like their hero dying before his/her time by their own hand (see Kurt Cobain).  

Shortly after what would have been my senior year, I sort of fell into this band with a group of guys.  I wasn’t even old enough to get into the bars but I could play lead guitar and I would practice all day if you needed.  That was my first band.  We called ourselves “Big Muscular Seth,” for reasons which elude me now.  But that was our name.  By now I was 18 and feeling more artsy and introspective so my music  wasn’t the  grungy death metal as it was more of a college sound. 

We played some gigs.  I even had a groupie.  We cut two demos.  We ultimately failed to make money or get rich when our lead singer and writer of most the songs moved to Washington DC to be with his fiancé.  Even the Beatles couldn’t compete with Yoko Ono and our band would suffer the same fate.  But I loved the two years or so I had with that band.  I loved practicing, writing and recording.  Playing before a crowd is such a rush that I cannot to this day rediscover it in anything else.  And when people return to see your group or start requesting a particular song…it’s flattering and humbling at the same time.  Big Muscular Seth had probably tens of fans and that’s counting girlfriends and friends.  But we were good.  And through that process I grew musically and transformed from slick guitar show off to song writer. 

That was it.  That was my rock star career.  I went on to do solo stuff around the local coffee shop tour.  Throughout my twenties I wrote many songs and played them for people.  I learned to play some wedding standards and got gigs playing classical stuff at wedding ceremonies.  All in all, I had fun with music.  But here I am 32 years old when I should be dead from heroin. 

Anymore, I play for my family.  In particular my oldest boy loves music.  My crowd is usually my wife, our other son and the dogs with me and the boy jamming out using the stairs for a stage.  As of now my oldest is not five yet and can’t play any chords on the guitar so I really have to carry our group.  But I have faith someday he’ll start his own music rebellion.  Around the time I was 18 I got really into old blues recordings and in the last ten years Jazz.  Pretty much anything goes today as I find myself listening to more bizarre things.  Example: for some reason in the last week I can’t help but find the 80s band Toto very interesting.  I think it’s the harmonies.  So if you catch me with the acoustic today I’m probably trying to hammer out my blue grass arrangement of “Rosana.” 

But this isn’t a post about rock and roll really.  I guess it’s about adjustments.  I think you can be disappointed at times that your life hasn’t turned out like you thought but still be grateful that it is what it has become-what it needed to become.  I am blessed beyond any measure and certainly beyond anything I deserve.  I don’t think the music needed me in the grand scheme of things and that’s why I never “made it.”  But I think I needed music and in a big way music made me. 

Lets be honest, this is a post about getting old.  It happens to even some rock stars lucky enough to sober up or avoid faulty planes.  But eventually they all die.  This is why I started this blog I think.  Chances are that after the few copies of Big Muscular Seth’s demo C.Ds are gone, no one will remember those songs…good songs.  A true rock star gets to live forever through their music.  I think part of growing up for me is realizing my legacy isn’t important. Not like I once thought it was. 

BMS for life baby.