• Rock

    Shining Still…To Give Us The Will

    In the summer of 1980, my father pulled into our driveway. My mom and he had been divorced for just over a year. I had spent the last year missing him terribly. He was living over a half hour away in a different city. I had just turned 13 only a few months before and the hormones were raging. My emotions were all over the place as the man who had introduced me to the sacred power of music had become a part time dad.

    My dad was like my own personal John Lennon. He was so fucking cool with his longhair and carefree lifestyle. He liked The Beatles, The Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin, The Kinks, and scores of other great bands. As a child I would sit on the floor of our basement as he would pull out vinyl gem after gem and spin it on his Thorens turntable which I still own to this day. Like Alice falling through the rabbit hole, a vibrant and gorgeous world opened up to me. Anything was possible in this magical place that shone brightly, was eternally warm and forever welcoming. I learned at a very early age that as long as there was music, no one would ever be truly alone.

    One artist that I fell in love with immediately was Todd Rundgren. Hermit of Mink Hollow was the album I remember hearing quite a bit back in the late 70’s, although my dad played all of Todd’s records incessantly. When he pulled up in our driveway that day in 1980, he had a big smile on his face. I ran out to greet him and he said, “Hey Mark? Guess what? I have tickets for us to see Todd Rundgren’s Utopia at Poplar Creek in Chicago in a few weeks. Wanna go?”…