Piano Man

The Police reunited for an appearance on the 2007 Grammy Awards Show. Anyone familiar with Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland knew that a Grammy Awards Show would never be reason enough for the original band members to come together and suddenly decide to perform on television. It was obvious that this was some kind of reintroduction to the band. That suspicion was confirmed a day later when a press conference was held in Los Angeles to announce that tickets would soon be available for an upcoming tour. A group known for surprising the media, their fans and sometimes even themselves, had done so handily. It was that way since the beginning.

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If you’re like me, you’re wondering what happened to country music. The terrestrial radio stations today only play the watered down pop mess. Country music used to be a force to reckon with. Let’s get back to the good ol’ days!

Unless you have a satellite radio, you’re not going to hear real country music on the radio. Singers like Hank Williams III, Robbie Fulks, and Wayne Hancock just aren’t getting airplay. George Jones was basically kicked out of the Country Music Awards a few years ago for being too old. Once upon a time, I thought George Strait didn’t know how to pick a bad song. That was before I

heard some of his stuff from his latest album. I hate to say it, but George you let us down.

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In the fourth grade, a boy named Willie McTavish moved from Scotland to Auburn California, which was my home town. Miss Arbortree, our teacher, appointed me to show him around the school grounds, and to make him fell at home. I don t know why I was selected, unless it was the plaid shirt I was wearing that day.

Willie was a very nice boy, but very curious, and with hundreds of questions asked in his thick Scottish brogue, I spent a lot of time stuttering and asking him to repeat the question. It became apparent shortly that he was in love really in love with American baseball. Whether he knew of it before he came to

the states or not, I never found out. But love it he did, and the balance of my 4th grade year consisted of memorizing batting averages, ERA s, fielding percentages, and the like. Willie was relentless. He knew the figures not only of Joe DiMaggio and the other stars of the day, but also of the utility men whose names were hardly household words. Looking back, I believe I learned more math from Willie than from Miss Arbortree that year, as he required me to compute batting averages not on paper, but in my head (writing averaged is not very practical when you are whispering during music or social studies.)

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Before they got together as Green Day, Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tre Cool were merely three extraordinary hopefuls hoping and looking for their big break. The trio has no formal training and got their practice from playing for free at punk clubs on Gilman Street in Berkeley, California. Out on the streets is where the 3 talented individuals got their big break they turned from punk rock s most unlikely success story to a remarkable band with a series of chart-topping hits. Together, they sold more than 10 million albums and won a Grammy Award in the process. It s been a long journey for the trio who started out singing out in the

streets.

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