In 2018, I am finally going to start a blog working through 365 days of impacts on my life. This is meant to tell the story of who I came to be in bits and pieces. This exercise is meant to show we are all shaped by the people, situations, circumstances, joys and sorrows that have impacted our lives. Sometimes we are influenced just as much through learning about what we don't want to be like, than what we turned out to be. Sometimes it is a stranger who makes a lasting impression on us, and we may never know their name. Sometimes it is those who've been the worst to us that actually teach us the BEST lessons. If nothing else, since I don't have kids, this will serve as an autobiography of experiences that have shaped my character since May 3 1965. I will try to include pictures where I needed. Some will not need pictures. As I enter my 5th decade, I can look back and say that In my teens (as most are) I was extremely insecure, unfocused and had stage f...
I believe that I got the love of funk from my dad. Back in his day it was Ray Charles. One of the best memories I have of my dad is a trip we took in Christy's convertible from Atlanta to Albuquerque New Mexico. We were delivering Christy's car to her after she had accepted a position during the dot com boom at a startup called Super Groups. She had gone out early to take the job, had her stuff shipped from Atlanta out there, and then we drove her car out so she could have it out there. I had taken road trips with my family before and short ones with my Dad in Michigan, but this was the longest road trip we had taken together up to that point. We rode with the top down listening to all kinds of music. A little known fact of my dad is that he LOVED Prince. Mainly because my dad couldn't escape a good beat. But the funniest thing was we were listening to Prince's song Sexy M%&F$@. If you don't know, that song has a killer beat, and one that drummers love - in addition it has a killer horn rift in it. So we are tooling along and he is just beating on the steering wheel to it. Then all of a sudden he says - hey, what is he saying there? I just kind of said, it doesn't really matter dad. He pressed me. When I told him what Prince was saying, he just laughed, and then said, yep, you're right. LOL. One of his favorite songs of Prince was Delirious. As a matter of fact, he loved the entire 1999 album. He loved D.M.S.R too. He had no idea what the lyrics were. Tipper Gore would have had a heart attack. Back in the day of the cassette tape, we made him a tape of the entire 199 album and he'd pop that in the car for his drives to work down in Detroit.
