Saturday, December 31, 2016

Moonage Daydream

Okay, throw 2016 into that box and nail it shut.  Here's my obligatory final blog post for this year...  To start, here are my 3 favorite photos from this year:

 

PHOTO 1: Taken on January 10th at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Los Angeles the day after I attended Lemmy's funeral.  After the memorial service at Forest Lawn the day before, Lemmy's ashes had been placed in his final resting place with only his closest friends and family as witnesses.  Before heading back to The Bay Area we returned to the cemetery to see him.  On the way in these Metal kids and their dog walked past us and it was obvious they were looking for Lemmy too... So I told them to follow us.  Lemmy's crypt didn't have a marker yet (it now does) so there was no way to know it was him.  The kids didn't expect this but I assured them it was Lemmy (we had confirmed the location with the cemetery staff upon arriving).  The kids and their dog then approached Lemmy and we stood back and this happened.

PHOTO 2: Taken on April 16th at 3132 Carlson Blvd in El Cerrito at the after show party following Metallica's Record Store Day in-store performance at Rasputin's Records.  The party was meant as a thank you to those who had contributed to the reissue box sets of Kill 'Em All and Ride The Lightning.  In the most epic homage to their Garage Days possible, the band rented the old Metallica Mansion from the current owner and had a production company stage the interior and outside in an old school East Bay Metal theme.  Words can't really describe how amazing it was to be back in that house with 100 or so guests, most of whom were old friends from back in The Day.   MANY old photos had been printed and placed in frames around the house, including the one I'm holding here.  It was taken in the Summer of '83 in that same room as Rich Burch (R.I.P.), James, myself, and a Canadian Metal buddy Gerald Yoshida raged while listening to an advance tape of Kill 'Em All.  At one point James was in the old kitchen (in the doorway behind us) and I grabbed this frame, tapped him on the arm, showed him the picture, and pointed to the next room.  He seemed to know exactly what I was asking (HAHA!) and this happened..  The two of us standing with that old photo in basically the exact same spot where it was taken 33 years (aka a million years) ago.

PHOTO 3: Taken on October 27th at Casa de Umlaut.  My Tommy and his Wing Kong brothers.  Just because.

As far as live music went this was my 2016:
For those who care, these are my 3 favorite non-gig posts from this year:
Obviously, David Bowie and Carrie Fisher leaving this mortal coil affected me.  When I worked at Lucasfilm a co-worker was working on a project in the photo archives and let me pick one photo to get a copy of on the down low... and this is the one I chose:


Yesterday,  I happened to be near the Lucasfilm / ILM campus in San Francisco and made a random stop.. and this was waiting for me to see:


Cue 'Leia's Theme'.

Anyway, that's it for another year...  As it's been in recent times, I haven't been "writing" in this space as often as I should..  but I'll continue to add to this thing as the mood strikes me in the New Year.  For those keeping score, this year marked the 12th Anniversary of me ranting in this space.  Crazy.

To quote Bowie:  "Freak out in a moonage daydream..."

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