Back from Sacramento and boy am I tired. I’m not too used to staying up past 2 am anymore. I hope Steve got what he wanted as he had a few snafus with his recording equipment but I think it all turned out okay. The guy is good.
I also enjoyed recording with my old pal, Marty Montana. Marty is an excellent bassist and musician. He and I go all the way back to playing in some of our first bands in the mid 70’s in Oak Park with our buddy Art Arias when I was a sophomore and they were both juniors in high school.

Sacramento, on the other hand looks almost nothing like how I remembered it when I moved away 26+ years ago. Sure, I’ve been back there countless times since I left but I rarely went anywhere other than my mom’s house. I rolled around a bit after I left but that was the first 5 years and not much changed in 5 years.

She’s been gone for 10 years this coming August and since then I have been up there maybe 5 times and most of those 5 times was right after she had passed away. The other time was for Aldo’s funeral a few years back literally a couple of days after I was out of a 5 day hospital stay (I had no business behind the wheel. Man!). I never really explored the place like I did yesterday after say, 1982.

I spent most of a day just driving and walking around and I was almost heartbroken to find that most of the stuff I remember is gone and what’s left has changed so much I don’t really recognize any of it anymore.

I did drop in on Esoteric Records which hasn't been at it's original location in about 30 years. I got to shoot the bull with my old pal (and once employer) Denis Tomassetti and have a Fat Tire Ale too. I used to hang out then began to work a bit at the original Alhambra Boulevard location when Rick DaPrado owned it (across the street from McKinley Park) and then it's 2Nd location on Broadway (right down the street from the original Tower records). During my visit yesterday we were laughing our asses off about all of the characters that came into the shop(s) and crazy times we had at those places. Thanks, Denis. A great guy from a great family!

Almost every one I grew up with that I was real close to, like myself have moved away. What parents that are still alive have also moved.
There are still some folks I wonder about and have lost touch with and I don’t know where they are. There is even one person who (I thought) I was pretty good friends with but he got real pissed off at me for wishing him a happy birthday last year on what I thought was his 50Th birthday but it turned out it was his 49Th. Geez, how did I know he was going to be such a jerk about it? At least I remembered his birthday, right? Now the guy doesn’t speak to me. Oh well. Life’s too short to hold grudges or to drink crappy beer.

Anyway--Sacramento is about twice the size (population) as when I lived there. It’s somewhere in the area of 470,000 in the metropolitan area. Hey, at least it isn’t San Jose…I mean, I have nothing against San Jose but they were always roughly the same size as Sacramento and today they have just topped the metropolitan population of 1,000,000! That’s not counting the surrounding areas. Yikes!

I miss a lot about Sacramento but most of those things I miss are just memories from a different time and places just change, for better or for worse things just change. You can’t stop time.
I suppose that old saying applies here; “You can never go back.”

Oh, last thing…Big ups to Alex Pearlstone for his excellent job at the scrimmage today at the Coliseum down at UCLA! Home boy is a walk-on for the Bruins football team and it looks like he may have made it through what is the 2Nd phase of a 4 phase situation. Way to go, bro!