I love rock and roll. Always have. Always will. And even though I’m drawn more to the classical stuff, you know, the songs and bands that will never lose their popularity, occasionally you can catch me rocking out to something from today’s generation. I am not a country boy, to the disappointment of my parents and family, and I am not a hip-hopper…that’s what you call them, right? Hip-hoppers? Anyways…
My love for music grew quickly–and later on in my life I realized that I should not only be a listener, fan and admirer of rock and roll–but also a player! Then I got a guitar and that led to a bass and now I’m singing and playing bass in a local cover band. Something I never thought possible, being married to a preacher’s daughter, but since the scales have been lifted from mine eyes (we got divorced), I have seen the glorious rock and roll light! And the Lord saith unto his humble servant, “Go forth and ROCK!” At least, that’s the way I see it.
To make a long story short, once you get in a band and get a bunch of songs under your belt, you go hit the club and bar scene. Easy, right? Nay, not so.
Let me again remind you that I live in a very, very rural community. The biggest metropolitan area is about an hour away. You may think that’s not a long distance, but it is if you’re pushing 40 and are used to a 10pm bedtime! That’s right, I’m not 17 anymore. So let’s call this strike one and strike two.
There are very few rock and roll bars in the area, and in order to survive, they have to supply the community with a healthy dose of line-dancing, karaoke nights, and DJ’s. Now we get to the heart of it…
Strike three is the DJ. Here comes this fellow with all these records (did I just say records? Ugh…), I mean, computer, mp3, ipod doo-dad’s and gizmo’s, and gives the bar owner a reasonable price to play music for the ladies to dance to. Something that takes this fellow a few minutes to do takes me and the guys in my band a lifetime to accomplish, and that DJ is going to get the job over my band because the ladies love the hip-hop. They’re hip-hoppers.
It’s a cruel world out there, that’s no surprise, but my friends and I haven’t given up the search just yet for a rock and roll bar deep in rural Midwest USA, yet. The ones we do find always seem to have just hired a DJ the night before, too. I’m not getting younger, and my bedtime is soon approaching, and it might as well be like looking for a needle in a haystack, but the one thing being a lifelong lover of rock and roll has taught me is you gotta keep the faith. So, amigos, remember that while you’re reading this, there is a middle-aged man out in the middle of nowhere still looking for that pot of gold under the rainbow–keeping the faith!