Tuesday Tunes: Brothers

My kid brother:
better than me in
pretty much every
way, and I'm more
okay with that than
you might think. 

Awesome guy. Awesome.

The two most important birthdays occurring on April 5th for me belong to the two men whom I refer to as my brothers. One is my brother by birth, Damon Darnell, whom I have mentioned here before, and the other is my childhood friend Jeff Jefferson, Jr., who has always been and will always be simply "J.R." to me. (We even did one of those "blood brother ceremonies" that kids used to do.) J.R. and I were roommates in college as well, and I was the best man at his wedding. When I finally get around to getting married these two men will share the best man duties at mine. (Don't dust off your tuxes, yet, gentlemen, I'm still pretty unbearable.)
It is appropriate that today is Tuesday Tunes here in the Wolf Den as both of these guys have had a great deal of influence on my musical tastes.
J.R. always had a great fondness for film scores - not soundtracks, mind you, but the actual scores - and when I was staying over at his house and while we we were roommates, we would fall to sleep to compositions by James Horner, Trevor Jones, Randy Edelman, Danny Elfman, and others.

J.R. and I would sometimes go see two or three movies in one day when we were in college. J.R. is one of the few guys who really gets my sense of humor, and he has one of the best laughs ever, which always fed my ego. (I suspect that J.R. even laughed at some of my jokes that maybe weren't all that funny. He's that kind of guy.) One of my favorite things to do was sit and listen to J.R.'s copy of the 1978 concept album: Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of War of the Worlds featuring Sir Richard Burton, Julie Covington, and Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues.

My brother, Damon, is a real music aficionado, who was heavily into classic rock in high school. He could - and probably still can - answer just about any question you can think of about Led Zeppelin.

Damon's later interest turned to jazz, and he even named his St. Bernard, Coltrane - something of a legend around Durango, Colorado - after jazz great John Coltrane.

Damon is always pointing to me toward new and old music that he has found, and, considering that my brother does the great majority of his searching without benefit of the internet, I am generally astounded by what he finds. Last night he was telling me that I really needed to check out the old-time music group, Uncle Earl.

Happy Birthday, my brothers.