I've been taking an extremely long walk down memory lane lately… some people always say they don't look back… they don't get nostalgic… makes them melancholy.
That's not the type of looking back I'm talking about… the more I study personal development the more I keep hearing how important it is to pause……….. and reflect.
Reflect… that means looking back… whether it's just the day, or a week, a month, year, decade, lifetime.
I'm finding as I archive my life it's helping me up the gratitude… learning certain keys like “Don't put one mistake on top of the first one… (which means DON'T BEAT YOURSELF UP FOR MAKING A MISTAKE!)… so that I can look at the body of a life and see how far I've come… I hope more people do that… finding things to congratulate yourself for… and just the sheer fact of HAVING COME THIS FAR is massive.
The thing I look at to compare that to? The simple equation of those of us that aren't here any more…. sorry to go off on this long rant into the philosophical but it's just hitting me right now…
I've had great conversations over this last year with other friends who think about these things and it comes down to this…
I think the majority of people who have moved on to the next world, if given a chance… “How would you like to go back for a do-over, or even better yet, a chance to just do more… or do something again…” you know what I mean?
So what does this have to do with Shotgun Tom Kelly? Well, when I watched the video I'm going to embed in this post it took me right back to a VERY important time in my life… when I was JUST FIRST getting into radio and music heavily… I wasn't playing it as much back then… well, at least with the eyes to be a professional musician… I was just 10 years old when this video of SGT was made… but I hear the songs… and I imagine hearing these performances coming out of my radio.
And this is the guy… this is the FIRST “Older Brother” or “Uncle” turning me on to music. The first one saying, “Check THIS out!”.
And there it started… this relationship that I think most people had with disc jockeys… I don't know if that exists today.
But this voice, the way he spoke to me/us was one on one. He was talking to an individual. Wow… the more I study modern sales and marketing as well… it's all about the relationship. It's all about *scaling* ourselves… how do we do what we do whether it's music, teaching and coaching, whatever but be able to deliver it to more than one person at a time? And how do you do it elegantly? Man, these are the first examples, as I'm seeing now.
Scalability… share yourself in more than a one on one capacity
So getting back to Shotgun… as I've written before… Chicago did a show several years back in Southern California and Shotgun did some interviews with the band. I was freaking out! I went to him and told him I HAD to talk to him later.
We talked, I told him where I came from, how important he was/is to my musical life and we just plain hit it off.
He kept comparing me to him in the sense we replaced icons in our industry… me with Peter Cetera and Shotgun replacing “The Real Don Steele” on KEARTH 101 in Los Angeles.
Well, thanks for the compliment and comparison but something tells me his accomplishment is much bigger than mine! But we'd probably sit around arguing about it if given the chance! “No YOU'RE THE MAN!!! No YOU'RE THE MAN!”
Whatever the case, it's pretty nice to watch this Youtube video of Shotgun at KGB in 1972, bringing back that moment in time for me and suddenly finding myself as one of his closest friends, peer and “In The Club”.
Well, I told him about my interviews I've been conducting! Haaaaaaaa Funny how they started out as bass players… here's another perfect example of JUST STARTING. I can sit around till the cows come home waiting and wondering what this will be… what it'll be called, what we'll talk about…
The amazing thing is the interviews are going into many directions… sure, starting out as bass players but even then I get to talk to some pretty amazing, smart people who go off into all kinds of incredibly valuable directions… spirituality and how it plays into how we deliver music and the ultimate *reasons* for doing it…
So there… I've scheduled an interview with Shotgun and it's only appropriate… when we talk it's gonna be amazing… we have so much in common… the threads that have been interwoven into this incredible tapestry of 2 careers.
How the music HE TURNED ME ON TO… Elton John, Chicago and many more have become my life.
Let me just leave this right now with this thought… when we do this interview what's been happening with the other interviews is that they end with no finality… they're ALL ending with a theme of “We have to do this again… we have to keep this going… we have to MAKE SOME MUSIC TOGETHER… We have to do a mastermind with MANY of us at the same time!”
And that's where it's heading…
In the meantime… I'm going to put a couple videos here for you to enjoy…
The first one is a GREAT short video Shotgun did in 1972 when working at KGB. BELIEVE ME… this video made me start writing TONS of questions down for him! As I watch what he was doing… it's bringing it all back to me AND I WANT TO KNOW!!!! What are the knobs for and WHY ARE YOU TWISTING THEM?
And look at the 45 single records he's playing! And queing them up!!! This was an art… if you didn't have it right you'd have dead space… this was a craft that only someone like this had mastered… and we're gonna talk to him, SOOOOON!
The 2nd video I'm posting it almost made me pee my pants when I saw it! I just got off the phone with Shotgun before I wrote this post and he told me he was in the audience for “The Tonight Show” when it was Johnny Carson and Shotgun's famous “You Better Believe It Baby!” shows up in this video!
Watch this video and know this… as you see Johnny Carson and Doc Severinsen talking about the title of the song Doc had played coming back into the show… watch what happens… they didn't even know that the guy who blurted this out was the great Shotgun Tom Kelly!
Shotgun told me that they're doing a special event for “The Tonight Show” of the Johnny Carson era and Shotgun is going to be one of the guests to speak… and yes, you guessed it… they're going to play this video to introduce Shotgun to the event!
Oh, yeah… and the point of all that? Shotgun and I were talking about doing the interview and I told him… “When I started doing these I have no idea what it's for… it's just important to DOCUMENT the moment… the times…” and he lit up… he said, “I couldn't agree more…” and you can see he's speaking the truth… he and his wife Linda had the foresight to make this little documentary back in 1972.
Thank heavens they did… because it's bringing it all back for me, inspiring me and making me want to capture these times for future generations as well.
Stay tuned for a GREAT interview with Shotgun Tom Kelly within the next month…