In the fourth grade, we were asked for our choice of a musical instrument to learn. I asked for a saxophone. They gave me a violin...
A year earlier, my grandfather, a man of little patience, had given me a few lessons on Hawaiian guitar, but he had given up in frustration when my progress failed to meet his expectations. Later on, he would fuel my interest in shortwave radio, another lifelong pursuit...
Carrying a violin case to school wasn't exactly a big help to my social status, but I progressed well enough on the instrument that my parents arranged for me to take lessons from Harry Taub, one of the Buffalo Philharmonic's most respected violinists. Taub was a stern taskmaster, long on criticism and short on praise. A number of times, he squeezed my index and middle fingers together so tightly that the nail from one cut into the other, but it was the constant criticism that was the primary factor in my eventual decision to quit the instrument...
Many years later, I had a very moving conversation with an English gentleman who was a few years my senior. He was waiting while a CB radio was being installed in his car, and somehow in the course of our chat, we discovered that we had both played the violin as youngsters. I related my story, and Peter confided that his violin teacher had eventually concluded that he was tone deaf, a near mortal sin in a musically talented family. His father had become so incensed upon hearing the news that he took the violin and smashed it to pieces. Some fifty years later, you could still hear the pain in Peter's voice when he spoke, and see it in his eyes. When he left the shop that evening, he took special care to say goodbye and thank me for the wonderful conversation. It was as if that painful memory, which had been bottled up inside him for so long, had finally been vanquished in the light of day. I hope so. He seemed to be a very kind and gentle man...
As a child, the male figures in my life were mostly distant, authoritarian figures, save for Uncle Lorne, whom I never heard utter a cross word. He was a calm, soft-spoken man, seemingly at peace with himself and the world, and possessed of a zen-like patience and wisdom. Aunt Matie was his perfect counterpoint, a sweet, even-tempered woman with a heart of gold. Their house on Seventh Street remained a favorite refuge right up until her untimely death...
I was never really one of the guys, anyway. Fighting and roughhousing weren't exactly my favorite pursuits. I was a reader and a dreamer; a lover, not a fighter. One of the last to be picked when choosing up sides in sports; one of the first to be singled out for ridicule and abuse...
So I withdrew into a world of my own creation, with imaginary friends who never laughed or pointed fingers; who never threatened or hurt. Books and music were my companions. From childhood on, I would read myself to sleep at night, often with a transistor radio playing softly in the background. AM radio in Buffalo during the late '50s and early '60s was alive with a variety of wonderful sounds. Doo-wop groups, plaintive country ballads, reverb-drenched guitar and sax instrumentals, novelty tunes, rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and even folk music shared the airwaves with the pop tunes of the day. Compared with today's restricted playlists and formats, it was an aural smorgasbord of sounds...
My father had a sizeable collection of 78 rpm records from the pre-war, big band era: Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, the Dorsey Brothers, etc. Of these, three novelty records were my personal favorites: Cab Calloway's Minnie the Moocher, Fats Waller's Your Feet's Too Big, and Holiday For Strings by Spike Jones. I literally wore the grooves out of all three. The hi-dee-hi-dee-hi-dee-hi chorus of the Calloway song was infectious, Spike Jones' humor and irreverence were a forerunner to my love affair with Frank Zappa's music and wit in later years, and the Fats Waller tune was all too fitting for a young boy whose feet has grown to a man's size 13 in as many years...
In the mid-1950s, I started collecting records on my own, using money I'd earned cutting grass or shoveling snow. My tastes were a little odd for a nine year old; among the first 78's I purchased were Andy Williams' Are You Sincere, Charlie Gracie's Butterfly, and Just Walkin' in the Rain by the melodramatic Johnny Ray. A year later, I received my first 45 rpm record player as a Christmas gift, and my record collection gradually swelled with disks by Buddy Holly & the Crickets, Bill Haley & the Comets, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Huey 'Piano' Smith & the Clowns, the Coasters, The Clovers, the Drifters, Elvis, Ricky Nelson, Jerry Lee Lewis, Dion & the Belmonts, Larry Williams, Link Wray, Duane Eddy, the Ventures, and many others. My aunt had discovered a shop on the corner of Ninth Steet and Pine Avenue that sold used jukebox records, five or six for a dollar. On every visit, I'd return with a bagful of new sounds...
My first pocket radio was a 2 transistor Japanese marvel that could hardly pull in the local stations, with audio so anemic that it was necessary to hold the speaker right against your ear in order to hear it. I remember hearing the news of the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly one February morning as I was waiting for the bus to Benjamin Franklin Junior High, but it would be a few more years before I'd realize the full extent of the loss...
It was my grandfather who introduced me to the world of shortwave radio, with a wonderful Hallicrafters SX-28 receiver. From my basement refuge, I could listen to voices from all over the world: the BBC from London, HCJB from Quito, Ecuador, exotic stations from Brazzaville and Leopoldville in the French and Belgian Congo, the Voice of America, and, most intriguing of all, the Communist propaganda from Radio Moscow. I also listened to ham radio operators from around the world, and dreamed of one day joining their ranks...
I also built and rebuilt a large HO scale model railroad, that never quite worked the way I had envisioned, but I had fun designing the track plans. As with all of my interests, I read every relevant book or magazine that I could find. For better or worse, every interest became an all-consuming passion until I moved on to the next challenge...
Somewhere around the age of four or five, my parents had given me a dog, a mongrel terrier that I named Soxy because of his markings. He was a rather unruly pup, and my folks had used a rolled-up newspaper to discipline him. (On me, they used a wooden yardstick or a leather belt, but that's another story...) I remember trying to follow their example, only to have him rip the paper from my hands; then another, and another, until the floor was littered with shredded newspapers. So much for trying to act 'butch'...
The insistent cat in my lap as I type these words is evidence that some things never change...
Eventually, my folks decided that Soxy was incorrigible, and took him someplace far away, only to find the poor, bedraggled pup perched on our doorstep a few days later. The reunion was short-lived, however. A short while later, he was diagnosed with distemper, and was taken away by the SPCA...
It was several years before I had another dog, a mixed breed cocker spaniel name Laddie. He was the perfect playmate and companion for a quiet boy like me. I had a few friends in the neighborhood by that time, but I still spent much of my time alone...
Perhaps my favorite place in the world was my aunt and uncle's camp near Tupper Lake in the Adirondacks, where we spent many a summer vacation. I loved the clean mountain air and the background chorus of songbirds, crickets, hummingbirds, grasshoppers, dragonflies, and cicadas. I loved fishing for perch, sunfish, bullheads and northern pikes. And I loved listening to records or picking out melodies on the old player piano in my Aunt Matie's living room while a roaring fire crackled in the fireplace. Even now, my mind's eye sees every detail...
It was the end of summer, only days before my twelfth birthday. We had just returned home after a great two week stay in the mountains. Laddie had gone with us, as well as my friend Bobby, who lived across the street. My favorite cousin Jack was there, and we'd spent a lot of time exploring and running around in the woods with Daisy air rifles. I never saw my folks as happy as when we were in the mountains with Aunt Matie and Uncle Lorne. It had been a perfect summer vacation, but while we were unpacking the car, Laddie slipped away. The next morning, a police officer came to our door with the sad news that he'd been hit and killed at an intersection a mile away. I was inconsolable in my grief; at first, I rejected the offer when Bobby's mother offered me a fish bowl and some guppies, but then I succumbed. No one could have suspected how much that small act of kindness would come to affect my later life...
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Seventh Street
Tuesday, September 10, 1946 was an unremarkable day by most standards, but it brought with it the gift of life for my virtually hairless premature self. I arrived a month to the day earlier than expected. Close friends and my few employers will tell you that’s the only time I’ve ever been early for anything in my life, but don’t believe them. There had to have been at least one other time…
As a baby, I had the whitest blonde hair this side of Johnny and Edgar Winter, with big blue eyes, a moon face, and a perpetual smile. Until I reached the age of three, my folks and I lived in an erstwhile apartment on the second floor of the house where my father’s older sister and her husband lived. Aunt Matie was a sweet, generous woman whose five-foot-two-inch, 105 pound frame was an oddity in a family of big people. Dad’s other older siblings, Harold, whom we called Uncle Baldy, and Pearl both hovered around the 300 pound mark, and Dad was no lightweight, either. My brother and I would both eventually fall prey to this unfortunate inheritance…
Seventh Street in Niagara Falls, NY was a much different place in the late 1940’s and 1950’s than it is today. My aunt worked as a counter clerk in Delaney and Thorne’s drugstore across the street, on the southwest corner of Seventh and Pine Avenue. Diagonally opposite the drugstore was Kirby’s grocery, where we did our food shopping. Both were neighborhood stores, where the owners knew their customers by name, made deliveries in times of need, and carried accounts for their regular customers. The family dentist’s office was right next door, and the family doctor was right around the corner. Cars and televisions were not yet a reality of life. Home entertainment revolved around the old Philco floor model radio that sat in the living room, and my 78 rpm record player that cranked out endless repetitions of songs by Gene Autry and Burl Ives. Even as a pre-schooler, music was an essential part of my life…
We eventually moved into a second floor flat on the corner of Seventh and Walnut, two short blocks away, that was owned by an Armenian family. My mother’s parents lived three blocks further down Seventh Street, and her brother’s family and her maternal aunt and uncle shared a duplex just around the corner from them. My dad’s father had been killed in a traffic accident when dad was young, and his mother passed away when I was yet an infant, so Aunt Matie and Uncle Lorne, whose only son, Jack was away at college, became surrogate grandparents to me. I loved them dearly…
The men in the family mostly worked worked shift work amid the stench of the chemical plants that made the air almost unbreathable along the Niagara River, just a stone’s throw from the Falls. Grandpa, Uncle Art, and Uncle Marty all worked at the Carborundum plant; my dad and Uncle Lorne both worked for DuPont. My grandfather, from whom I inherited my musical talent, later would sever two fingers on his left hand in an industrial accident. Though they were later reattached, the affected digits were stiff and lifeless, and permanently curled, making standard guitar fingerings an impossibility; he did, however, continue to play Hawaiian guitar until he passed away in 1981 at the age of 87. My dad had twice been burned head-to-toe by liquid Sodium, which singed the hair from his head and left him looking like a white-eyed lobster. Of all his exposed skin, only the area covered by safety goggles remained unburned…
Better living – through chemistry…
Somewhere around the age of four or five, my folks had taken me to see a movie about DuPont’s history. I remember being terrified by a seemingly endless series of chemical plant explosions, but I don’t remember much else. At that young age, I knew exactly what I didn't want to do with my life...
More than most kids, my life as a child revolved around my mother. Dad's shift work schedule negated any kind of normal family life; if he wasn't away at work, he was often sleeping after working the midnight-to-eight shift. My favorite memory from this period is of some autumn nights after he had gotten his first car. He had rented a parking space in a garage a couple of blocks away, but he and I would first drive around Goat Island so that I could see the colored lights shining on the Falls. It was a little thing, but it meant a lot...
In addition to an appreciation of music, the years on Seventh Street also was the origin my lifelong love affair with trains. The tracks leading into the Erie Railroad's Tenth Street yard passed under both Pine and Walnut a short block away, and I spent many hours watching the Erie and C&O freights as they arrived and departed. From my grandparent's yard at the far end of Seventh Street, I could watch the steam engines shifting passenger cars in the terminal, and see the New York Central and Lehigh Valley trains come and go. I recall riding once to Buffalo with my grandmother on the Central's Beeliner, a self-propelled rail diesel car, and I remember well the sparks that flew from the overhead catenary as the Niagara Junction Railway's diminutive electric motors switched cars among the smog-shrouded chemical plants...
Socially, I guess I was a bit of a misfit. My playmates, as I recall, were mostly girls a bit older than myself. One girl in particular took a dislike to me. I never knew why, but in retrospect, that early rejection stayed with me for years. Finally, as I was entering first grade, a new family moved ito the house across the street. Their two daughters, Brenda and Alicia, were my age and a year younger, respectively, and we quickly became friends and playmates. The friendship almost bore disastrous consequences one January day on 1953. We attended Fifth Street school, an ancient stone building a mere two blocks away down busy Walnut Avenue. On the way home, I spotted them walking on the other side of the street and darted between two parked cars, intending to dash across the street to join them. Then I saw the oncoming Cadillac...
I turned back; the driver tried to brake, but the next thing I knew I felt the impact, and found myself hurtling over the front fender en route to an abrupt landing on the hard pavement. I found out later that my mother was watching from the living room window and saw the impact. She handed my newborn brother Billy to Lynn, the teenaged girl who lived downstairs, and ran to the scene of the accident. I remember being rushed to the doctor's office in the back seat of the car that had hit me, but fortunately, all I suffered was a tender derriere and a sprained ankle. It was a long time before I'd cross any steet if there was a car anywhere in view after that lesson...
A couple of old photos come to mind. In the first, I'm about three years old and dressed in a sailor suit; it was the only time in my life when I would be happy to wear a uniform. In the other, taken a year or two later near my grandfather's house, I'm dressed in a black and silver cowboy suit and mounted on a black and white pony. There's a similar photo in a Buddy Holly biography. Well, alright...
A few months after the accident, we said goodbye to Seventh Street, although we'd return many times during the ensuing years to visit Aunt Matie and Uncle Lorne, who continued to live there until my aunt's untimely death of a cerebral hemorrhage. My grandparents and my Uncle Marty's family had both recently relocated to the Tonawandas, and my folks had purchased the newly built house not far away that would be my home at various times for twenty-five years of my life...
In 1997, I returned to the old neighborhood for the first time in many years. The houses where we once lived are outwardly still in good shape, but the neighborhood has definitely declined, especially the blocks south of Walnut Avenue. The block where my grandfather's house once stood is now taken up by the parking lot of the convention center; the downtown section and the rail lines are all gone, as are the steam engines and the electric motors. Even the chemical plants have fallen on leaner times; the air along Buffalo Avenue no longer burns the eyes and smells like rotten eggs. The family-owned businesses were slowly driven out by various corporate chains who, in turn, abandoned the area as its racial and ethnic mixture changed...
Niagara Falls remains a site of natural wonder and man-made clutter. On the American side, high rise hotels, a near-vacant shopping mall and tacky souvenir stands stand only a broad avenue's width from urban decay. Across the Rainbow Bridge, wax museums and greasy restaurants mingle with more tacky souvenir stands, high rise hotels, a gambling casino, and other tourist traps. Yet, there does seem to be a better quality of life on the other side of the Niagara - a gentler pace, a more forgiving attitude. But then again, I'm an unrepentant dreamer. I've been called a lot worse things, and I certainly would be in the years that followed our departure from Seventh Street...
As a baby, I had the whitest blonde hair this side of Johnny and Edgar Winter, with big blue eyes, a moon face, and a perpetual smile. Until I reached the age of three, my folks and I lived in an erstwhile apartment on the second floor of the house where my father’s older sister and her husband lived. Aunt Matie was a sweet, generous woman whose five-foot-two-inch, 105 pound frame was an oddity in a family of big people. Dad’s other older siblings, Harold, whom we called Uncle Baldy, and Pearl both hovered around the 300 pound mark, and Dad was no lightweight, either. My brother and I would both eventually fall prey to this unfortunate inheritance…
Seventh Street in Niagara Falls, NY was a much different place in the late 1940’s and 1950’s than it is today. My aunt worked as a counter clerk in Delaney and Thorne’s drugstore across the street, on the southwest corner of Seventh and Pine Avenue. Diagonally opposite the drugstore was Kirby’s grocery, where we did our food shopping. Both were neighborhood stores, where the owners knew their customers by name, made deliveries in times of need, and carried accounts for their regular customers. The family dentist’s office was right next door, and the family doctor was right around the corner. Cars and televisions were not yet a reality of life. Home entertainment revolved around the old Philco floor model radio that sat in the living room, and my 78 rpm record player that cranked out endless repetitions of songs by Gene Autry and Burl Ives. Even as a pre-schooler, music was an essential part of my life…
We eventually moved into a second floor flat on the corner of Seventh and Walnut, two short blocks away, that was owned by an Armenian family. My mother’s parents lived three blocks further down Seventh Street, and her brother’s family and her maternal aunt and uncle shared a duplex just around the corner from them. My dad’s father had been killed in a traffic accident when dad was young, and his mother passed away when I was yet an infant, so Aunt Matie and Uncle Lorne, whose only son, Jack was away at college, became surrogate grandparents to me. I loved them dearly…
The men in the family mostly worked worked shift work amid the stench of the chemical plants that made the air almost unbreathable along the Niagara River, just a stone’s throw from the Falls. Grandpa, Uncle Art, and Uncle Marty all worked at the Carborundum plant; my dad and Uncle Lorne both worked for DuPont. My grandfather, from whom I inherited my musical talent, later would sever two fingers on his left hand in an industrial accident. Though they were later reattached, the affected digits were stiff and lifeless, and permanently curled, making standard guitar fingerings an impossibility; he did, however, continue to play Hawaiian guitar until he passed away in 1981 at the age of 87. My dad had twice been burned head-to-toe by liquid Sodium, which singed the hair from his head and left him looking like a white-eyed lobster. Of all his exposed skin, only the area covered by safety goggles remained unburned…
Better living – through chemistry…
Somewhere around the age of four or five, my folks had taken me to see a movie about DuPont’s history. I remember being terrified by a seemingly endless series of chemical plant explosions, but I don’t remember much else. At that young age, I knew exactly what I didn't want to do with my life...
More than most kids, my life as a child revolved around my mother. Dad's shift work schedule negated any kind of normal family life; if he wasn't away at work, he was often sleeping after working the midnight-to-eight shift. My favorite memory from this period is of some autumn nights after he had gotten his first car. He had rented a parking space in a garage a couple of blocks away, but he and I would first drive around Goat Island so that I could see the colored lights shining on the Falls. It was a little thing, but it meant a lot...
In addition to an appreciation of music, the years on Seventh Street also was the origin my lifelong love affair with trains. The tracks leading into the Erie Railroad's Tenth Street yard passed under both Pine and Walnut a short block away, and I spent many hours watching the Erie and C&O freights as they arrived and departed. From my grandparent's yard at the far end of Seventh Street, I could watch the steam engines shifting passenger cars in the terminal, and see the New York Central and Lehigh Valley trains come and go. I recall riding once to Buffalo with my grandmother on the Central's Beeliner, a self-propelled rail diesel car, and I remember well the sparks that flew from the overhead catenary as the Niagara Junction Railway's diminutive electric motors switched cars among the smog-shrouded chemical plants...
Socially, I guess I was a bit of a misfit. My playmates, as I recall, were mostly girls a bit older than myself. One girl in particular took a dislike to me. I never knew why, but in retrospect, that early rejection stayed with me for years. Finally, as I was entering first grade, a new family moved ito the house across the street. Their two daughters, Brenda and Alicia, were my age and a year younger, respectively, and we quickly became friends and playmates. The friendship almost bore disastrous consequences one January day on 1953. We attended Fifth Street school, an ancient stone building a mere two blocks away down busy Walnut Avenue. On the way home, I spotted them walking on the other side of the street and darted between two parked cars, intending to dash across the street to join them. Then I saw the oncoming Cadillac...
I turned back; the driver tried to brake, but the next thing I knew I felt the impact, and found myself hurtling over the front fender en route to an abrupt landing on the hard pavement. I found out later that my mother was watching from the living room window and saw the impact. She handed my newborn brother Billy to Lynn, the teenaged girl who lived downstairs, and ran to the scene of the accident. I remember being rushed to the doctor's office in the back seat of the car that had hit me, but fortunately, all I suffered was a tender derriere and a sprained ankle. It was a long time before I'd cross any steet if there was a car anywhere in view after that lesson...
A couple of old photos come to mind. In the first, I'm about three years old and dressed in a sailor suit; it was the only time in my life when I would be happy to wear a uniform. In the other, taken a year or two later near my grandfather's house, I'm dressed in a black and silver cowboy suit and mounted on a black and white pony. There's a similar photo in a Buddy Holly biography. Well, alright...
A few months after the accident, we said goodbye to Seventh Street, although we'd return many times during the ensuing years to visit Aunt Matie and Uncle Lorne, who continued to live there until my aunt's untimely death of a cerebral hemorrhage. My grandparents and my Uncle Marty's family had both recently relocated to the Tonawandas, and my folks had purchased the newly built house not far away that would be my home at various times for twenty-five years of my life...
In 1997, I returned to the old neighborhood for the first time in many years. The houses where we once lived are outwardly still in good shape, but the neighborhood has definitely declined, especially the blocks south of Walnut Avenue. The block where my grandfather's house once stood is now taken up by the parking lot of the convention center; the downtown section and the rail lines are all gone, as are the steam engines and the electric motors. Even the chemical plants have fallen on leaner times; the air along Buffalo Avenue no longer burns the eyes and smells like rotten eggs. The family-owned businesses were slowly driven out by various corporate chains who, in turn, abandoned the area as its racial and ethnic mixture changed...
Niagara Falls remains a site of natural wonder and man-made clutter. On the American side, high rise hotels, a near-vacant shopping mall and tacky souvenir stands stand only a broad avenue's width from urban decay. Across the Rainbow Bridge, wax museums and greasy restaurants mingle with more tacky souvenir stands, high rise hotels, a gambling casino, and other tourist traps. Yet, there does seem to be a better quality of life on the other side of the Niagara - a gentler pace, a more forgiving attitude. But then again, I'm an unrepentant dreamer. I've been called a lot worse things, and I certainly would be in the years that followed our departure from Seventh Street...
The Sins of the Fathers
The first year of the new millennium had been an ominous one. Inexplicably, it seemed, the planet earth had become a much more confusing and terrifying place, all within the span of a few minutes, on the morning after my 55th birthday. For those of us who call ourselves Americans, that is…
The truth is, we were only experiencing the same reality that a large segment of the planet’s human population faces on a daily basis, but on a much grander scale, as befits our lion’s share consumption of the world’s resources. And in a very real way, we were receiving a dose of our own medicine; though, as usual, the ones who paid the price were certainly not those whose activities and policies had created the hatred that fueled the flames of destruction. They never are…
I was on my way to work at my day job when I first heard the news report on a Canadian radio station. I reacted with stunned disbelief, hoping against hope that what I was hearing was something akin to the Orson Welles radio production of ‘The War of the Worlds,’ but a quick change to the local NPR affiliate provided the ghastly details. How could this be happening? And why???
I felt the same sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that I’d felt that day in November of 1963 when John F. Kennedy was shot: a loss of innocence; a fear of consequence; a crisis of faith. All of life’s trials and misfortunes seemed so petty in comparison. What was the point of creating music in such an ugly, hate-filled world?
From the time I was very small, music had been the one constant in my life. In it, I had found refuge in the worst of times, elation in the best of times, and comfort and security during the times in between. More than anything else, music defined my life, but in the dark days that followed September 11, playing music seemed narcissistic and self-indulgent, like Nero fiddling as Rome burned…
The Reverend Jerry Falwell then poured kerosene on the fire with a statement on television’s 700 Club implicating that the tragic happenings were an indication of his God’s wrath against America; specifically targeting gays, lesbians, feminists. pagans, and others whose lifestyles or philosophies differed from Falwell’s straight and extremely narrow viewpoint…
This ludicrous logic not only cast the perpetrators of this heinous act as agents of God; it also could have put myself and most of my closest friends at risk of bodily harm in the emotionally charged atmosphere of the day. People who are perceived as ‘queer’ or ‘different’ have been used as scapegoats for centuries, often with fatal results, as in the well-publicized Matthew Shepard and Teena Brandon cases. All of us know the pain of hiding our true identities from friends and loved ones for fear of their reactions, yet many eventually find the courage to live life on their own terms. For some, the path to self-realization is much longer than it is for others. In my own case, the path seemingly took many a wrong turn; yet I have few regrets, for all I have experienced, good and bad, has made me the person I am today…
Throughout most of my life, I’d been haunted by fears and doubts, remnants of attitudes developed in childhood and adolescence, and as I neared my fiftieth birthday, the life I’d been living had turned to quicksand beneath my feet, unleashing a horde of demons from years past. Now, five years into my sixth decade of existence, I’m living the life of my dreams, and my soul at last knows an inner peace. For the first time in my life, I’m proud and happy with who I am. The story of this wondrous rebirth is the subject of this book…
This is not a typical biography; I’m not a typical person. I feel things a little deeper than most folks, and I’m not afraid to show it - in my words, in my music, and in my life. There’s a difference between talking and communicating that’s the same as the difference between music that merely entertains and music that’s played from the heart. Both have their place, but once you’ve learned the art of communication, mere conversation just doesn’t suffice…
The heroes of this story are the people who inspired me, and the true friends who’ve been there for me at various critical junctures along the way. Without them, this journey might have aborted long ago…
The truth is, we were only experiencing the same reality that a large segment of the planet’s human population faces on a daily basis, but on a much grander scale, as befits our lion’s share consumption of the world’s resources. And in a very real way, we were receiving a dose of our own medicine; though, as usual, the ones who paid the price were certainly not those whose activities and policies had created the hatred that fueled the flames of destruction. They never are…
I was on my way to work at my day job when I first heard the news report on a Canadian radio station. I reacted with stunned disbelief, hoping against hope that what I was hearing was something akin to the Orson Welles radio production of ‘The War of the Worlds,’ but a quick change to the local NPR affiliate provided the ghastly details. How could this be happening? And why???
I felt the same sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that I’d felt that day in November of 1963 when John F. Kennedy was shot: a loss of innocence; a fear of consequence; a crisis of faith. All of life’s trials and misfortunes seemed so petty in comparison. What was the point of creating music in such an ugly, hate-filled world?
From the time I was very small, music had been the one constant in my life. In it, I had found refuge in the worst of times, elation in the best of times, and comfort and security during the times in between. More than anything else, music defined my life, but in the dark days that followed September 11, playing music seemed narcissistic and self-indulgent, like Nero fiddling as Rome burned…
The Reverend Jerry Falwell then poured kerosene on the fire with a statement on television’s 700 Club implicating that the tragic happenings were an indication of his God’s wrath against America; specifically targeting gays, lesbians, feminists. pagans, and others whose lifestyles or philosophies differed from Falwell’s straight and extremely narrow viewpoint…
This ludicrous logic not only cast the perpetrators of this heinous act as agents of God; it also could have put myself and most of my closest friends at risk of bodily harm in the emotionally charged atmosphere of the day. People who are perceived as ‘queer’ or ‘different’ have been used as scapegoats for centuries, often with fatal results, as in the well-publicized Matthew Shepard and Teena Brandon cases. All of us know the pain of hiding our true identities from friends and loved ones for fear of their reactions, yet many eventually find the courage to live life on their own terms. For some, the path to self-realization is much longer than it is for others. In my own case, the path seemingly took many a wrong turn; yet I have few regrets, for all I have experienced, good and bad, has made me the person I am today…
Throughout most of my life, I’d been haunted by fears and doubts, remnants of attitudes developed in childhood and adolescence, and as I neared my fiftieth birthday, the life I’d been living had turned to quicksand beneath my feet, unleashing a horde of demons from years past. Now, five years into my sixth decade of existence, I’m living the life of my dreams, and my soul at last knows an inner peace. For the first time in my life, I’m proud and happy with who I am. The story of this wondrous rebirth is the subject of this book…
This is not a typical biography; I’m not a typical person. I feel things a little deeper than most folks, and I’m not afraid to show it - in my words, in my music, and in my life. There’s a difference between talking and communicating that’s the same as the difference between music that merely entertains and music that’s played from the heart. Both have their place, but once you’ve learned the art of communication, mere conversation just doesn’t suffice…
The heroes of this story are the people who inspired me, and the true friends who’ve been there for me at various critical junctures along the way. Without them, this journey might have aborted long ago…
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Dedication
The discomfort had been there for months, occasionally flaring into a searing pain that burned from my abdomen into my lower back. It had frequently struck just before or during gigs, and though I suspected that something in my diet was at the root, the obvious answer had somehow eluded my grasp.
The pain had begun, as it often did, on Saturday night. I had planned on attending a friend's birthday celebration later that evening at Roxy’s Greenroom, but decided not to risk the half hour drive into Buffalo while I was in such a condition. It had subsided a bit when I awoke the next morning, only to return again shortly after noon, but at 5 pm I felt well enough to start getting ready for the 8 pm show at Nietzsche’s. A hour later, the pain returned, gradually gaining in magnitude. For the first time in the many years that I’d been putting together shows at Buffalo’s legendary music club, I was forced to cancel the gig.
A few hours later, I was flat on my back, with an assortment of tubes protruding from various orifices, already greatly relieved that my worst fears were not reflected in the initial diagnosis. As the week progressed, I was poked, prodded, inspected, detected, injected, and occasionally neglected by an overworked hospital staff, but I, the most patient of patients, raised no complaint. By week’s end, I felt as if I had been cleansed in body, mind and soul, and I awoke at home the following Sunday with a head full of ideas and a body bursting with renewed energy. Among the revelations was the thought that I was the bearer of a story that needed to be told, not for the entertainment or enlightenment of the world’s masses, but rather as an extension of my private commitment to doing what I can to make the world a better place for people like myself, whose lives and lifestyles cannot be conveniently molded to fit one of society’s arbitrary categories or labels.
To those who must struggle, against seemingly overwhelming odds, for the right to be themselves, I dedicate this work…
The pain had begun, as it often did, on Saturday night. I had planned on attending a friend's birthday celebration later that evening at Roxy’s Greenroom, but decided not to risk the half hour drive into Buffalo while I was in such a condition. It had subsided a bit when I awoke the next morning, only to return again shortly after noon, but at 5 pm I felt well enough to start getting ready for the 8 pm show at Nietzsche’s. A hour later, the pain returned, gradually gaining in magnitude. For the first time in the many years that I’d been putting together shows at Buffalo’s legendary music club, I was forced to cancel the gig.
A few hours later, I was flat on my back, with an assortment of tubes protruding from various orifices, already greatly relieved that my worst fears were not reflected in the initial diagnosis. As the week progressed, I was poked, prodded, inspected, detected, injected, and occasionally neglected by an overworked hospital staff, but I, the most patient of patients, raised no complaint. By week’s end, I felt as if I had been cleansed in body, mind and soul, and I awoke at home the following Sunday with a head full of ideas and a body bursting with renewed energy. Among the revelations was the thought that I was the bearer of a story that needed to be told, not for the entertainment or enlightenment of the world’s masses, but rather as an extension of my private commitment to doing what I can to make the world a better place for people like myself, whose lives and lifestyles cannot be conveniently molded to fit one of society’s arbitrary categories or labels.
To those who must struggle, against seemingly overwhelming odds, for the right to be themselves, I dedicate this work…
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