I don't spend my time talking about the "olden days" – really I don't. Working on the web has kept me very much in the present. But tonight I watched a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony retrospective and since you have to have given music at least 25 performing years to be inducted most of the performers were closer to my age than to that of my buddies here on the Web. And wow.
I feel the way you feel 2/3 of the way down a fantastic black diamond slope with the wind in your hair and frost on your ear lobes and your heart pounding. Where else is there the power that music brings to us? We go where it takes us — return to places we'd forgotten we knew, find pride in the memories we cherish and an abashed amusement in those that might have been a bit – um — less luminous. Our moods, our clothes, the way we're driving, or eating, or doing less discussable things, changes with the music around us. It's bits of soul reflected.
I was blessed to be at a couple of the most amazing inductions; I've written about that before but some of those moments appeared tonight and I could feel again the hair raising thrill of watching Ben E King and The Beach Boys and Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan and Billy Joel and Mick Jagger and dozens (literally dozens) of others performing together. Coming as we all do from a generation that did so many things as a tribe, it's particularly moving to watch them trade glances and cues — such a familiar pattern.
I love my life now and am so grateful to be a part of the explosion of the new connected world, but I am also grateful for the years those musicians gave us. They are brothers and sisters and inspirations and former fantasies and just plain fun. I know how many died of overdoses, I know there are seamy stories and I know that there are wonderful musicians who have followed them and will themselves end up on that stage when enough years have passed but my time was a wonderful time to be young and loving music. And once again tonight I remembered how many moments of my own personal Hall of Fame were accompanied by, or part of, or generated from – the music they gave us all.