Rock Star.

I had a friend growing up that was so cool and funny we used to nearly wet our pants coming up with interesting ideas how we were going to change the world or die trying.  He grew up with a guitar or two.  i remember the first, the second, and so on, Some asshole ripped one off and your name is bleached, pal.  Run scared, bro.  But in smoky rooms we Wrote the new history of Rock and roll.  For ill-concieved teen age political reasons life kept us apart.  I almost can't even do "Rock" anymore.  I can barely find the Heart. No pun intended.
When we rocked we rocked.  When we rolled we rolled.
You had better believe we paid for in all ways.
I hope you appreciate it anyway...
His name was Steve W.  but that was never the point.  I wish you could have met him.  I want you to meet Rock And  Roll.  I still do it for him and our friends.
--Jed


Ok, So "Steve" is legendary in the minds of all who knew him.
I met him on the bus.  He wasn't as pretty as some, but maybe more than many.  I certainly would rather have been "barely" dating girls (and was).  His face was radiant in ways I could only try to illuminate properly with stage lights, spotlights and colours later.  We were thirteen years old.  His hair was blonder, more middle European, whereas mine is slightly northern.  I thought his looked a little exotic, and he had a tiny accent from his Polish grandma.  But how could it in nineteen eighties America?  His laugh made me laugh, though.  It was full and heartfelt.

Steve made me laugh.  That was what I liked about him..  His other artistic talents with music would only show up later.  When I offered for us to hang out after school one day he was nervous but eager.  Sometimes his voice was a little too loud when we would joke together and I would say, "Keep it cool, man, my grandmother will make up stories to think about us."

My grandmother, did actually, invent stories to think about us later!  But she was cool too, so it didn't matter much.  She got on a trip one week in which the word "orgy" was bandied about.  I barely knew what that meant, but there WERE some good times happening here and there.  Many, many girls and boys came in and out of my house.  I'm just friendly like that, I guess. Straight, but friendly.  No orgies, I'm afraid, but we loved each other.  She was just slightly jealous.

Steve and I shared a love of music.  Both of our older sisters (and other neighborhood pals) had turned us on to Rock and Roll records.  They played incessantly in my room and in theirs.  "Have you heard this one, yet?" we would ask.  "Are you kidding?  That one blew me away!"  Rock and roll would blast out of windows all across the land.  I miss that.  People don't listen except to tiny earbuds now.  That would have been considered "bullshit" in my day.  You NEEDED to be blown away.

"Play it loud and proudly," we said.  My ears are still ringing.  We BROADcasted.

Steve and I decided one day that we would play guitar.  We would imitate our heroes and go all the way to the moon if we had to in order to help everyone hear how cool it can be.  Perhaps our music was heard at the moon on one or two occasions!  Certainly the neighbors and my grandma heard.  "What's all that racket?"  they said, and grandmas are still saying that today.  What they heard was universal passion and drama.  Unique human elements were shared.  Music was shared.

At age fourteen (?) Steve and I took guitar lessons from "Mr. D."

I had an old Hohner with tight steel stings too close together, too far from the frets.  It made my fingers nearly bleed.  I was a schoolboy and hadn't been out in the fields with a rake or shovel or hoe, yet.  Steve had a cooler, nearly Spanish style, with plastic strings.  He was having no problems.  One day I said to Steve, "Hey, Jim Morrison is one of my heroes, Why don't YOU play, and and I'll sing the blues, like Jim?  Or Robert Plant, Or Roger Daltrey from the Who, or Eric Clapton?  Hendrix maybe?  Like I can on a good day?  Or we tone it down and play something like Cat Stevens or Jethro Tull just to rest vocals  while you rock on?"

Steve was excited.  He was a fury of learning.  I was, too, only I couldn't quite maintain his voracity.  Actually, maybe I outstripped him on several weeks.  In fact, he learned guitar and I sang as well as my teenage vocals and heartbeat could manage, which wasn't great or even good some days.  The other days,  "Stand back and watch...this."  was the trademark.

There might be a legend floating about of how myself and my friends went to a movie theater to watch Led Zeppelin's "The Song Remains the Same."  I freaked out.  I thought.  "You cat's are cool!!!"  I knew the repertoire and could NOT shut my mouth.  Sorry again, friends.  That was me on an average to bad night.  That album got played at my house at TOP volume almost daily or weekly, though, before and after.  It WILL blow you away.  I was better at singing LOUD and with inspiration most nights.

No real balance can make you feel undeniable in the moment.   You're either tuned in or you aren't.  Sometimes you have to tip off of the scales to see how amazing you and your friends are.  People who can take those risks do it and we learn and grow and experience.  I call us both leaders and outliers.  If you just want to have a family and family values, Of course it changes things.

Enter Joe W.

Joe was a friend from the same era.  We all liked him.  He had a calm and easy way of talking.  He could win any argument.  We were amazed by him.  He became a lawyer, of course, but...

Steve and I had been alone together for a couple of years. We sounded so good some days we bent light rays into different ways than they had been working before.  We bent time.  Don't believe me?  You weren't there.  But I hope so.  Steve played things that I couldn't have imagined by myself.  We just WERE.

Joe, though, had put together a spectacular array of drumming equipment.  You wouldn't believe the kaleidoscope of percussion sounds that could erupt out of his mind!  Great waves of power and energy would flow from his hands at high volumes and in well reasoned capacity.  He was modeling himself after Neil Peart of Rush fame, who I didn't know too well but could imagine through Joe.

We rolled through Neil Young's "Cinnamon Girl," Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven," "When The Levee Breaks,"  NOT an easy tune to sing, but Joe rolled on the drums so well that Steve and I had ear issues for years after.  This was in a bedroom.  We were dedicated!  Cat Stevens, Yes's "Roundabout", The Whos' "Behind Blue Eyes" may have been in there.  Rush's "Tom Sawyer," of course.

Joe's parents were so pissed off at the neighbors constant calls and what might have been a scooter issue between him and I.  I thought it might be funny to let the gears out and see if Joe could hold on.  He didn't.  He cut his leg badly.  I cut his leg badly.  There was some blood and anxiety, but Joe was a trooper.  We made his parents believe that it was diving accident in a swimming pool.  They promptly sent him off to boarding school.  He sent me letters with cool drawings, but I don't know how to negotiate with people like he does.  I let him go, seeing if he would come back.

Joe's favourite saying to his parents was, "You do your thing, I'll do my thing".  No wonder they sent him to school to NOT be a drummer.  Fuck them.  They wrecked the band!  They were being responsible in some way.  But they changed the world by not letting us play.  More eardrums would have be been damaged by us.  And were again.

Steve's cousin moved into his house, which was fun, because he was personable, a really cool guy, wanted to fit in, and so promptly learned the bass guitar.  Steve and I couldn't believe the luck.. NOW the gods were smiling!  What gods?  We didn't know.  Rock gods.

No drummer was in evidence.  Couldn't buy one or manufacture one, only  the one night I mentioned my new girlfriend wanted to spend some time with me.   Bad, bad, bad, idea to say that to a band.


This ends part one of how my band, "The Band"  became a Presence in society.  We shined.  More people for whom who I can't really speak were involved soon after.

If you can see a man using a Gibson Les Paul issue guitar on stage stroking it delicately and maybe with more intensity than I could, with a violin bow like we had seen in another packed movie house, like it was his girlfriend, that I never could have touched, or lightning would have struck me.  Perhaps it did kill someone??? like it was his last day on earth, with a packed house and more cheering fans, you would see what I saw in Steve.  If I could shine a spotlight on him, I definitely did at every opportunity, even if I could barely cast a colour change over him, to catch his shadows or brilliance, barely could make my fingers press the buttons.  He was worth it...

I'm an artist.  I was supposed to paint a visual image of Steve, just like I did with spotlights..  I literally couldn't, without crying and running all my colours.  I did this instead.  I don't usually bend over my keyboard that far.

Steve.  I miss you, pal.


--J.  Shidler 2013