Tracks In The Dust

A Famous Musical Moment In Time

Climb The Mountain [Remastered]

When I was younger, much younger than today. I dreamed of being a rock musician and being famous. Almost every guy I knew that was in “a band” in those days had an ambition to be famous. Oh sure, there was the pure satisfaction of being in a band and creating music, creating a sound that would make people come and listen to you when you played in public. But that was just a taste of what could be. Could we be someone who everyone would play on their car radios, or play loud at parties with a bunch of rockin’ people dancing away the night?

Not that any of my musician friends truly believed that we were on our way to stardom. We had some idea of what it could be like, one of the bands I was part of even “opened” for some bands back then that became pretty well-known. But that was a small thing really. The band will forever be grateful for the opportunity to create that time, to create that moment that would be musically connected to someone with music we wrote. Of course it wouldn’t be memorable enough to become the next gold record. But it was something captured by the five of us like a painting that someone would paint and hang on the wall.

So here it is decades later. Me with a family full of love and life and children. A career, a home, cats on the couch and dogs in the yard. No one will recall those days except a few musicians and the road crew that dragged our sorry souls around from place to place. There will be the basements and garages that still ring out the tones of bands we loved. The memory of those prime nights when every thing went well  with the crowd, and we had visions of fandom and success (like some arena rock band waving to the crowd of teens).  Echoes of Journey, Styx, Kansas, Boston or rockin with the old timers of the British Invasion or even farther back with the distant reverb of Buddy Holly or rocking at Sun Records.

A few years back we had a reunion that had taken decades to realize. Indeed with much less hair, many more responsibilities, and many more pounds. We still had a touch of that remembrance, of the creation of our original music that was so much just designed to honor our musical heroes. With a bit more sensibility, and some recording equipment we recaptured the music we wrote so long ago, so our kids could hear it just once. (Attached is one of our originals). So we could play it from time to time and say “that was us” – back then we had some fun, played for some people and made them cheer. Yup, we were famous, successful – at least in our minds eye.