reflections on fathers day

Easy to get nostalgic on fathers day. 2 daughters, years of great memories and more to come. Luckily they have my passion for music and good hearts. Have been in touch this year with many old friends from 60s and 70s from chicago and it has been wonderful to communicate with old friends again. Some of them were the most important people in my life at one time or another and now we have setteled into a comfortable friendship and exchange ideas, musical discoveries and news about our families. I am doing a radio interview tonight on wgn radio in chicago with steve nakon and dave solomon about the great band mountain bus. they were chicagos answer to the grateful dead, much better in my opinion. funny thing was I hated the whole west coast hippie music scene, didnt like the music, lack of style and the forced communal attitude. But, through fate and chance I found myself in the control room at streeterville studios in chicago in 1970 and 71 assisting jimi nielsen on the control board recording mountain bus among others. he was kind to teach me about recording and life at the same time. hard when you are 17 to view the world ouitside of your own self important sphere. mountain bus was in many ways more interesting musically and personally than the dead, they created some great music and were great people as well. I jammed with some of them later and it was a memorable experience. i wish we had thought to tape it. Music is still the driving force in my life. I retained my large vinyl collection and added to it cds, tapes and now digital files containing music we could only dream about years ago, i.e. outtakes from hendrix, beatles, stones, pink floyd, hi fidelity live shows from the 60s to the present, all online and free. It is a daily treat to find the next collectable gem that rounds out the musical appreciation for so many bands. We have all come a long way and now many of us are dads, shudder to think it actually happened and we didn't screw it up! I have tried to share my positive traits with my daughters and not shy away from my faults. On this day, we reflect on our dads and hope we have done them proud and that we become good fathers to our kids, no matter how old they are.