I know, my dear reader, it’s been a while since I’ve posted here. So, since I know that both of you have just been on the edge of your chair waiting to read what I’m going to say next, I’ll begin with an apology and a promise that there will be a wealth of brilliant pontification to come and shorter durations between each monologue.

Sometimes I wake up in the morning and for no reason that I can decipher, music is playing in my head.

I suppose it could be the last breath of a dream I was having that has run screaming from my memory leaving the radio playing as it fled. Just this morning I awoke with Alice Cooper’s ‘Is It My Body’ from the 1971 album ‘Love it to Death’ playing somewhere between my ears.

It’s not inconceivable that I might have been dreaming about the period of my life between 1971 and 1974 when I used to play that album from start to finish over and over until it became burned into the auditory cortex in my brain. But if I was dreaming anything at all, it was long gone be the time I was conscious enough to realize that I was awake, given another day to be on earth and that Alice Cooper was in bed with me.

Later, as Linda and I were sipping coffee outside Pete’s I watched a beautiful, silver, convertible Mercedes Benz roll past. The sleek, aerodynamic body style reminded me, for a nanosecond, of the space ship that uncle Martin kept in the garage on the 1960s T.V. show ‘My Favorite Martian.’

Instantly, that quirky, kitschy theme song was in my head, followed promptly by the respective theme songs from ‘I Dream of Jeannie,’ ‘F Troop’ and ‘Bewitched.’

Of course, at this very moment the song playing in my head is the theme song from ‘Get Smart.’

This is just the way it is with me. My head is like a jukebox, there’s always something playing in there.

I’ve heard a lot of people talk about this. I even heard neurologist Oliver Sacks talk about his book ‘Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain’ on NPR. So this is clearly common.

But it feels different with me.

Seriously, does everybody always have a song of some kind playing in their head? Always?

Even as I type this I’m being plagued by ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.’ Not the Beatles. Anyone who knows me knows what a Beatles freak I am. I have the first four bars of ‘Dear Prudence’ tattooed on my arm for shits sake.

No this is that nauseating version by Elton John recorded in 1974. Don’t misunderstand. I like Elton John well enough. Hell I think ‘Tumbleweed Connection’ is one of my favorite albums of all-time. And I’m also pretty fond of ‘Madman ….’ and even the much more commercial ‘… Yellow Brick Road.’

But this version of Lucy is, noisome.

I think this is probably due to, here’s where I give away my ancient ass, going through adolescence in the 70s. Yeah, music is “super-important” to all teenagers of every era but I think growing up in Detroit in the 60s and 70s was different. Music was everything. The only thing I wanted to do in high school was play music. I tried to learn guitar in Jr. high but that was difficult and I had zero ambition. So I took up drums. That was much easier. I didn’t have to read music, didn’t have to know any theory or keys or chords or notes. I just needed to be able to bang on skins and kind of keep a beat, ideally with four-limb separation.

There were still things to learn like time signatures but I thought I could just fake it. How hard can Grand Funk Railroad be anyway?

Three problems arose very quickly.

• Practicing rock and roll drums in an apartment does not help you attain the affection of your neighbors.
• The 70s was full of down right amazing drummers. John Bonham, Bill Bruford, Don Brewer, Jimmy Fox, Clive Bunker, Ginger Baker … the list is endless. I’m gonna be in bands that are gonna cover this stuff?
• I sucked.

A minute ago I mentioned Bill Bruford, stupefying drummer for the band Yes and suddenly ‘Heart of the Sunrise’ from 1972’s ‘Fragile’ started playing up there.

So this then, is how I ended up a photographer.

I figured out that if I couldn’t play music well enough to get gigs and money and ultimately, chicks, then I would just photograph musicians. I could hang with the band, get backstage passes, money and ultimately, chicks, although they might be the hand-me-down chicks.

Of course now I had to learn f-stops and shutter speeds and aperture settings and film stocks and reciprocity factors and guide numbers and pushing and pulling film and high and low key contrast control and the zone system and color theory and that says nothing about chemistry and black and white printing.

I really wanted to be Annie Liebovitz or Norman Sieff or Bob Gruen.

Now it’s ‘The Cover of the Rolling Stone’ by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, can you guess why?

What I ended up becoming was a newspaper photographer, which coincidentally afforded me some decent opportunities to shoot bands. That’s Shirley Manson of Garbage at the top of this post.

In between a gazzillion grip-n-grins, ground-breakings, ribbon-cuttings, city council meetings, house fires, injury accidents and women’s club teas and ice cream socials I’ve been lucky enough to shoot five presidents, Olympic games, babies being born, open heart surgery and an endless stream of NFL games, Rose Bowls and Rose Parades and a ton of artists and musicians.

For some unknown reason now it’s the dorky dweedle dweedle from Austin Powers.

Some of my favs included Missing Persons (Dale Bozzio was extremely photogenic) Tina Turner, Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton, Courtney Love and … Alice Cooper.

I never got a cover of Rolling Stone but I did once photograph a Beatle. It was Paul but it was before I knew how to get a photograph in decent focus.

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so ………