Nearly Almost Famous-ish

In early September of 2000 I was unemployed. I had no direction in my life and I lived for only a few things: sex, parties and my daily dose of Beverly Hills, 90210. Life was good. One late afternoon I awoke and looked up at the television.

I had (and still have) a tendency to sleep with the television on. The reason I had slept into the late afternoon was because the night before there was a huge party at my place to celebrate the 18th birthday for two of my former co-workers. Hell, they were friends and how could I not throw the birthday party that they wanted?

So I had been up all night. I had finally hit the bed around ten o'clock that morning and was slightly hung over. I opened my eyes and saw Rebecca Rankin on the tube talking about the new Cameron Crowe movie. I had heard he was making a new movie but hadn't read more than a blurb in Rolling Stone magazine a few months earlier.

As the late afternoon sun shown through my bedroom window, behind my television, I saw this:



My world changed that afternoon. I was obsessed from the first time I saw that clip. I HAD to see that movie! It was not scheduled to release for another couple weeks, but I got a phone call a few days later from my friend Andy. He had gotten a hold of a couple tickets for the sneak preview. I was there!

The night of the sneak peek I was so consumed with anticipation that I could barely contain myself. The movie started and I was totally consumed with all that it offered. I fell in love with Penny Lane, Russell Hammond and William Miller that night. And more importantly I re-fell in love with music.

I had been playing in a band for close to a year at that point and things just hadn't been going well. Basically we couldn't keep a coherent line-up. Seeing Almost Famous did not make a good band but it rekindled a desire to play. It was my inspiration for a looong time there after. That movie is not about being a teenager, or a rock star or a groupie. It's about the music.

Even though I fell back in love with music the night I saw Almost Famous a part of me died that night as well. I realized that I was not going to be the rock star I wanted to be. I was just going to be ordinary the rest of my life. That's the great (and awful) thing about art, it makes you strive to be better and it also makes you realize just how ordinary you really are. That night I knew it was never going to happen to me. I was a pale imitation of my heroes.

But it was okay. I had the music I loved to tell the story of my life and make it complete. And it did. It helped me through break-ups. It helped me get through career anxieties. And it helped me get through national tragedies. Somewhere inside of all that I found a reason to keep going. I can thank Almost Famous and the musical inspiration it gave me to keep on going. I love that movie and I love the promise it represents. If I ever meet Cameron Crowe I will thank him for that wondrous movie that sent my head spinning and made me dream bigger than I ever had before.