"Roll Tape"

     To those of you who have followed my BLOG you might have wondered where I’ve been for the past 3 weeks. Well, much has been going on in my life, but most of it has been typical everyday kinds of things that have just taken too much time from me to get another posting ready. However, I have started a couple of HUGE projects that I hope will be of interest to you when they are completed. First, I am working on a complete overhaul of my website. It will feature not only my music, but also my photography and it will be where my BLOG will be easier to access. The other major project that I am working on is what I am going to likely call “The Soundtrack of My Life”. That could change though.

     I have been recording music for over 40 years now. In fact, since I was about 14 years old. Thankfully, you will never hear any of the really ancient stuff. Take my word on something - that’s a good thing! The point is I have been going through hours upon hours of recorded music on old reel-to-reel tapes and transferring a great deal of it to the computer for the “Soundtrack” project. I’ll explain as things go along what all this is about, but for this entry in my BLOG I want to talk about some things that have been happening while listening to these old tapes. Most of them have not been played in many many years. I certainly remember a lot of the recordings, but amazingly I have “discovered” some old recordings that I had forgotten about. Some of them I simply don’t remember doing at all. That’s kind of humbling.

     What has happened though is hearing all of these recordings and listening through the typical things that you never hear when you hear a song on someone’s album (such as the starts and stops, background talking, joking around, noises, and in a few cases some pretty amazing exchanges between people) a curious thing has happened to me. I have quite literally been hit with a myriad of emotions while hearing these things. Things like just before starting a recording you can hear my ex-wife in the background asking how long I’ll be so that she can plan on when to have dinner. The exchange ends with an audible kiss and mutual “I love you” expressions. Hearing that strips away the hard years that were to come and I am reminded that I was indeed in love with her and she was in love with me. We were young, just staring out really, and all of life was still before us. It was before all the “stuff” that eventually crushed our love and our marriage. Hearing it makes me ask the inevitable question, “What the heck happened?” Well, of course I know the answer because the memory of all the bad stuff still lingers too. But it makes you wonder how you can let something that was good just die. No, I’m not hung up on my ex now. I have a good life now. But the “what if” game does play through your head and that’s a game that is hard to play.

     Other things have hit me while listening to these old recordings. The dreams and goals and vibrancy of youth that seem to just ooze off the tapes. Everything seemed possible then. There’s some pretty funny stuff on those tapes too. Things that remind me that I’ve been kind of nutty all my life!

     If all goes the way I plan, then you will have a chance to hear many of the songs recorded over a nearly 40 year period of time. The idea is to combine two forms of media for this project. I will be writing an auto-biography of sorts (where music in my life has been concerned) and the reader will be able to access a digital jukebox on the new website that will allow you to hear some of those songs when they were new and before the magic of a professional studio “cleaned them up”. There will be a lot demons exorcised in this project and that part is for my benefit. I’m hoping that to anyone interested in my life and my music their benefit will be to share it with me. Let me know what you think. I really would like to know.

Take care dear friends,

Randy