GOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLL!!!!!!!

Hi. Thanks for saving my place. Bear with me while I write something long-winded.

I've always keep a little list in my head of goals. Some are immediate, like buying socks. I have very few matching socks, and the ones that do often have holes. It's a very easy goal to buy socks, and I nearly did recently when I was in a men's clothing store and holding a pair of new socks. In my hand. I just needed to finish the job: go to the counter; pay for the socks; accept the bag that I don't really want (another goal: reduce my carbon sock print); walk out of the store; drive home. But I froze. The socks remained at the store, I went home feeling my right big toe poking through the fabric in my shoe, and my lovely wife rolls her eyes at me when I walk down the hall in my mismatched, holy socks.

Why is it so hard to finish the easy goals?

Henning and I have been working on the artwork for the new record since before computers. It's nearly done, with just one small, easy panel to be created. In the amount of time it takes to finish this paragraph I could finish it. But I have more important things to do, like holding my breath. But frankly, I'm tired of holding my breath (and I don't look good in blue. Or dead).

Music Goal #1: Finish Telephone artwork.*

When I was 9 I wanted to be a record producer. I didn't know this then, but in retrospect it all makes sense. See, I had a pretty complex recording studio, very advanced for it's time. I would take two tape players and hold them next to each other. One had a blank tape, the other had songs I had recorded off the radio (not directly: we're talking actually holding the tape player up to the radio and waiting for the song you wanted). After I had a selection of songs I liked, I would chop them up - a guitar solo here, drum intro there, a show tune, maybe a little of my comedy improv. in-between. A project like this would sometimes take all afternoon. But it was worth it. Even if my chihuahua was the only audience.

The kids of today don't realize how easy they have it, with all the music you could ever want immediately available. Back in my day you had to walk through a snowstorm uphill both ways to the record store. Barefoot. To buy a tape you only knew one song from, the single the radio station seemed to play endlessly except when I had my tape recorder out and ready to hit the "record" and "play" buttons together. Don't get me wrong, I love having technology in front of me that can quickly make a song that sounds as good as a full-fledged recording studio. But I want to go back in time. I want to remember what it's like to spend hours working on a project for the fun of it, with no reason to make it except it feels good.

Music Goal #2: Write and record a song in one afternoon (to play for my dog).

When I was in middle and high school my music goals were pretty consistent: join a rock band, play big theaters and tour the world. In the 20 years since I joined my first band I've been lucky enough to check a lot of ambitious goals off my ever-growing list. Just this year I scratched a red line through another longtime goal: playing the Calvin. I used to work there and would sometimes rock my air guitar on stage when the theater was empty. With SFTD it was nice to play on the stage with real instruments and realer people in the audience.

But I've never played a show outside of the country. I admit, this is a pretty ambitious goal. I will settle for Canada, but I want something bigger. Spain, Japan, New Zealand, Brazil. I have my passport ready. I'm not sure how to do this, or who to tour with, but maybe by writing it down here I will have incentive to make it real.

Music Goal #3: Play a show on foreign soil.

I have a personality tick that sometimes drives me nuts. I find myself wanting to join other bands or start new ones, even though I play in three fabulous bands with people I really like (and, more importantly, where would I have time for a new one?!?). I hear band "___ _____ _______" and want to something that sounds exactly like them. Maybe one day it's a soulful, Motown-inspired group that touches on my gospel upbringing (wait, what?). Or maybe it's an avant-garde, instrumental trio that only plays marching band music using duck calls. But I know that I can do a lot with what I have. I just need to, um, just do it (hey, I work in advertising and know a good slogan when I hear it).

Music Goal #4: Work harder in the bands I'm in.

And, finally, I have an easy goal to work on, one which I'm accomplishing right now.

Goal #5: Write more on the Rockumentary.

Thanks, friends (and thanks, Alex, for inspiring me to write here again.

* The artwork for "Telephone" went to the printer last night at 11:41 p.m. Whew.

PS: This is dedicated to my favorite trombone player.