I Remember When Rock was Young

CLICK HERE and listen to this (Click the back button on your browser to come back here. I guess I need to learn how to embed this stuff)
OK so this just hit me earlier today. This is good music. Actually, one of the best covers of this song I ever heard was way back in 1989 or 1990. At O'Charley's, we decided to have live entertainment on Friday and Saturday nights. My memory is that it didn't last but whatever, that's beside the point. One guy I hired for awhile did a great job with this song, so much so that we had the whole saloon singing the refrain. Later this same guy started playing regularly at Courtyard Cafe at Hickory Hollow, which is where Monica and I had our first date. He later bought Courtyard, changed the name to Nathan's, and kept playing there. His name? Phil Vasser.

I searched for him doing this cover, but couldn't find one. I'll keep trying. It was dynamite!

Did you know that a relative of Englebert Humperdink (I think his son, actually) heard Vasser there at Nathan's and hired him as a songwriter. That's how he got his start.

Monica actually was friends with Vasser for a while before all this. I still kid her that her old boyfriend is on whenever he's on TV. Of course he wouldn't know me from Adam's housecat nowadays, but oh well.

Along those same lines, when I was running the Fifth Quarter on Thompson Lane, we remodeled the saloon and changed it to a piano bar. It was pretty uptown too, with upholstered chairs, a sunken bar, and a mirrored stage. I hired a girl, I forget her name for sure, who was immensely talented, both as a musician and singer. She packed the place out. One night as I'm doing the manager thing, one of the waitresses says a customer was asking me to come by his table. Naturally, I'm like "Oh man, what did we do wrong this time?" I go to the table, and it's Lee Greenwood. Now this is right when "God Bless the USA" had just become popular. Click here to Jog your memory Anyway, he was asking about the entertainer. I told him what I knew of her, her background and so forth, and he said that he was very impressed by her. He asked me not to say anything to her because he wanted to go in and listen to her after dinner. To get to the point, it was basically an audition. He was going on a brief road trip and his opening act had cancelled two or three of the dates. So he hired her to front for him later that month. I never did hear much afterwards, except I know that it got her several jobs, mostly studio work I think, but for all I know she's now some famous artist. Can't believe I can't remember her name.

There was fun in the restaurant business, lots of it, but the crap outweighed the gold. Too bad too.