Last Night A Record Changed My Life

That's the title of a column in Mojo magazine, a magazine that I read regularly even though it's $10 to buy. That's a lot of rice pudding money, friends, just to blow on a magazine. But if you read me regularly, you know I love music, and love reading and writing about it.

But my point, if I have one, is the phrase "... it changed my life!" or "This will change your life!" Usually said breathlessy. By someone with a severe case of overestimating their relative influence in the world.

And yet so few things have "changed my life." And I'm not counting things like meeting friends, or people dying or 9/11. Those things obviously changed my life. Hell, when the price of stamps goes up, my life changes at least temporarily.

But what things did change my life? Reading Viktor Frankl. Watching Graig Nettles play third base for the Yankees in the 1978 World Series. Hearing the Byrds on my little portable radio, under the covers, when I was 13 in 1976. When my friend D. sent me a bunch of Kurt Vonnegut books when I had the flu when I was a teenager. That got me into reading, after not doing much reading in High School.

But, no, the music of the Smiths, Mr. Ed, the introduction of the New Beetle or the ascension of Jon Stewart in popular culture ... these things did not change my life.