Mommy’s alright, daddy’s alright, they just seem a little weird…

Tonight I stayed up late watching the 2016 induction ceremony for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on HBO.

I can’t say that I was ever really a huge fan of any of the inductees – Steve Miller, Chicago, Cheap Trick, NWA, and Deep Purple. I saw Steve Miller live once at the National Cherry Festival up in Northern Michigan, and I used to do ok playing Dream Police on Guitar Hero!

If anything, I think my favorite part of the performance was watching Cheap Trick perform Surrender because it’s one of those classic songs that I’ve always loved. I suppose the tribute to Glenn Frey was nice, too, as well as the nod to Prince at the very end who actually died a few weeks after the ceremony took place, but before it actually aired on TV.

NOW THAT JAM SESSION FROM THE 2004 CEREMONY WAS A HELL OF A FINALE!!!

Not long before I moved down to Florida, I made my own pilgrimage to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio – back in a time when every shirt in my wardrobe was either tie-dyed or from some concert or other, and seeing this pantheon of my biggest idols was just incredible. I think Aerosmith had just recently gotten inducted, as well as Michael Jackson, and Eric Clapton and Paul McCartney and Bruce Springsteen in the years before that.

It truly was “the house that rock built,” and I remember that they were doing this special promotion with the City of Cleveland where different artists had decorated these giant, 8-foot tall guitar statues and they had scattered them around the city for people to find, and I just thought that it was the coolest thing ever because they had about a dozen of them arranged out in front of the museum itself.

I literally could’ve spent all weekend just wandering around playing guitar scavenger hunt until I’d found every last one!

Sometimes it’s a little weird to look back at that point in my life that is so very different from where I am today, when music was the driving force in my life instead of humor and writing and family and geek stuff like I know today.

Watching this year’s ceremony makes me want to track down some of the other years to randomly watch here and there when I have a few hours to kill in the evenings, and maybe one day even make another trip back to Cleveland to see all of the changes that have been made in the decade-plus since I visited last. It’s crazy even now to take a look at the inductees from the last couple of years and see how many familiar names from my rock heyday are still popping up on the list…

• Stevie Ray Vaughan – 2015
• KISS – 2014
• Nirvana – 2014

And the beat goes on! 😉