Fanfare for the Common Man: I am a Rock n’ Roll Star | Columnist | Berkeley Independent

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Fanfare for the Common Man: I am a Rock n’ Roll Star

Published Tuesday, February 23, 2010 10:02 AM

By Dan Brown
Berkeley Independent

photo provided

Spazz (Mike Rhodes), Rokkit (Dennis Mullins) and Paper Cut (Dan Brown)

This weekend I got to be a rock and roll star.

This was my second weekend reconnecting with new/old friends I’d never met. These were classmates in college way back in the late seventies and early eighties that, except for a couple of beer drinking buddies, I never hung out with, never did stuff with, and certainly never talked to.

Now I wonder how I survived the last 28 years without them.

Suddenly, thanks to the magic of Facebook, these “Old Friends I’ve Never Met” are now my “Best Friends I’ve Just Met.”

Have you ever been given a genuinely serious and tight hug from a complete stranger?

I got one of those last Saturday night from one of my new Best Friends.

Her rocker groupie name is Roxy (I’ll explain that in a minute). Back in college she was known as Jim’s Girl. We never talked, and on an occasion or two occupied the same room in whatever college dormitory party we both attended.

We saw each other for the first time on Saturday night and she gave me one of those special “Best Friend” big and tight hugs then said, “It’s so nice to meet you.”

Roxy is no longer Jim’s Girl, she’s Jim’s Wife and has enjoyed that status for more than 25 years. Both are two people I wished I’d made more of an effort to get to know better way back when.

Along with Stix, Trixy and Spirit Raven – I’ll explain those in a minute also – we spent the evening together catching up on all the old times we never shared.

All this thanks to social networking.

How did we ever survive without Facebook, My Space, and Instant Messaging? It’s a wonder mankind had ever been able to communicate before this.

We’ve come a long way from the rudimentary paintings on those cave walls in France.

Roxy, Trixy and Stix have become three of my closer friends in a life that can count total friends on both hands and a foot.

I have several acquaintances, but very few friends. Along with Spazz and Rokkit, my bandmates in this Post-Fifty-Non-Garage Band called Night Flight, they can be called my Almost-Best Friends.

Any of y’all that know me, know those are numbered very few.

Before there was the Internet I was a painfully shy and self-conscious teenager who could do two things well, write and throw a baseball, and then a father of two children. I never had time for friends outside my family because I never really made any friends outside my family.

Not until Facebook.

My best friend in the whole world is someone I’ve only met in person twice, but we’ve known each other coming up on six years now.

So this was some weekend, driving 13 hours through a foot of snow and rockslides, and surviving a couple dozen White Castles to boot.

All this to be a rock star.

Which brings us back to the rocker groupie names. Roxy is Diane, Stix is LeeAnn, Trixy is Cheryl and Spirit Raven is Sharon. Night Flight consists of Spazz (Mike), Rokkit (Dennis) and me, Paper Cut.

Paper Cut is like Slash from Guns n’ Roses. I may not cut deep but I can be very painful.

More amazing than knocking off 24 White Castles in two days is the fact that I had four people tell me they loved me this weekend, and two of them were guys.

All because of Facebook.

I just listened to a song called “Lucky Man.”

It was my rock star debut, my first lead vocal performance of any kind outside my shower or car with the radio cranked.

At 52, I discovered I actually can carry a tune in a bucket.

I found the choice of song to be extremely poignant. Plus, I don’t believe in coincidences.

The first line of the chorus – well, the only line of the chorus goes like this, “Oh, what a lucky man he was.”

I certainly was.

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