What comes around goes around

I love music! It's a passion. It's been a career. It's been a hobby. Through various stages of my life, music has been a constant, and the soundtrack in my head never stops. Like, ever. Even when I want it to.

So where did this passion come from? I'm sure to an extent, I was born with it. But being born with something is really just saying there's a tendency, a preference for the thing in question. In order for it to grow into a self-defining attribute, it needs to be nurtured. For me, that nurturing came from many sources, but none so meaningful as my uncle Richard. My dad's second-youngest brother, Richard is the same age as my oldest sister. As a result, his relationship with me more one of big brother than of uncle - he was like my big brother who happened to live at my grandparents' house.

And I remember so clearly, when we'd head east for a holiday weekend or any other occasion, pulling up in front of that little green house in Richland, and as soon as we were inside and the greetings were out of the way, I'd make a beeline to Richard's room to see what new records he had acquired since my last visit. Not only did he have a great collection, he worked at the local radio station, and got cool promotional copies, sometimes even in duplicates, and he was very generous about giving me the extra copies. My favorite of those hand-me-downs was a 45 of ELO's "Sweet Talkin' Woman" on purple vinyl. He also took me with him to the station, where I got my first taste of the back-end of Radio. With that taste still lingering in my mind, I became music director at my high school radio station (KASB-Bellevue) and then went on to my proudest (professional) accomplishment, the Friday Night PartyZone (1993-2001 RIP) on Seattle's C-89.5 FM.

Richard also gave me my first experience of playing in a band. He was putting together a band for a church talent show, and I was brought in to play one-finger keyboard basslines... By the time the show happened, I was also singing a duet ("Leather and Lace") and playing a sax solo ("Old Time Rock & Roll") and playing drums ("You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling" and "Desperado"). We got the same group together a couple more times, and I always loved it. That transitioned into my being on the worship team at Champions Centre, where I regularly played drums, played bass and led several hundred kids in praising God. One of my favorite moments there was last September when Richard & Dorothy came and watched me sing, and I got to introduce him to the rest of the guys in the band.

And yet, with all those pivotal, inspirational experiences that Richard gave me, I don't think he ever intended to, or thought that he was doing anything special. He was just being him, which is always how he is. But to me, he's been an amazing influence at all the different stages of my life. Thanks, Rich, for everything!

But what inspired me to spill out this long-winded monologue about his many virtues? My own nephew Donald (aka The Donald) put a post on his blog this morning that totally gave me vertigo as I read that I helped shape his musical experiences in a similar way to how Richard had shaped mine. Donald's trip down memory lane took me on my own, and I hope that someday Donald reads that he has been powerfully influential to someone else.

Oh, and in case it's not perfectly clear, that picture at the top is a giant boombox robot destroying a city with the sounds of awesome.