It’s funny. Sometimes I sit down to write and nothing comes out of my mind, and other times, the keys can’t rush up fast enough to hit my fingertips, exploding thoughts to the screen, blindingly. And yet other times, what I expect to come out when I first grab the laptop ends up never hitting the page and something altogether different tumbles forward.

Tonight is probably that last one.

I was on the treadmill getting in a run earlier this evening, something I haven’t done enough of the past couple months as we get ready for the Shamrock 8k in a couple weeks. When I run inside, which is more often than not, I like to watch something on the TV that I can just zone out to. Series, documentaries, sports, whatever. Tonight was “The Eighties”, a series I’ve been watching lately. The episode was called “Video Killed the Radio Star” and it featured pretty much the anthem of my life. Ultra-talented artists, incredibly smooth voices, amazing writers and musicians and arrangers.

It made me really want to write about some of the great music I’ve heard in person over the years, and some that I’ve missed out on. Let’s focus on the later first as there are so many good artists I never saw.

I don’t regret anything in my life — and if you know me well, you may want to re-read that statement, slowly, several times, and be amazed that it actually is completely true — but when talking music, five artists/bands come to mind right off the top when I think about not having seen them play: B.B. King, Prince, Bon Jovi, Johnny Cash, and Madonna. It’s a fairly diverse group, but that’s what music does. It provides you an opportunity to expand your limits, experience something completely different than what you might think you’d normally like and open you to a great understanding of artistry. You can like bands or singers from a wide array of genres and still appreciate what they offer without losing your core personality.

Now, here are the top five artists, in my opinion, who I have seen in person, and this is a really hard list to complete as I’ve been lucky to see a solid core of musicians: Pearl Jam (many times, first in 1992), Metallica (1993), Elton John and Billy Joel (1994), Garth Brooks (1996), and Adele (2016), who, because of this blog, I’m right now listening to on YouTube, Man Card be damned.

Anyone who knows me, knows Pearl Jam tops everything in my world, and seeing them before they were even headliners was amazing. Metallica was already riding the wave from the Black Album, and Elton and Billy were established stars for a decade but still in their prime. Garth, holy hell that was a show (actually back-to-back nights) that that man put on. And while in a completely different category, Adele may have been the most amazing audible experience I’ve ever had.

With that said, I’m hard-pressed not putting another particular long-rocking star in there too. That’s where the digression in this post comes from. I had planned to talk about seeing Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in 1995 at Hilton Coliseum in Ames, Iowa. So fantastic was his music, and so sneaky. Think about it: how many songs can you name? I bet it’s at least 3-5 more than you think right now. Just try. So many huge songs from one artist/band. And I was lucky enough to see him live.

His inclusion here would have happened in some form as he was on my mind after Sugar Mama text last night when she got to D.C. to tell me that Eddie Vedder was singing on the Oscars. He was chosen to perform the “In Memoriam” and did a fabulous job. He sang Petty’s “Room at the Top,” all too appropriate considering, and thus his inclusion in this post one way or another.

During the piece when they show the people associated with film who were lost to us in the past year, typically it’s a still shot, a simple picture. But for some of the bigger names, the ones with the largest stature, they get a short video clip. There were four in this year’s segment. One in particular caught my eye.

Martin Landau play so many parts in so many movies and TV shows over the years. According to IMDB, he had a 175 credits since 1953, an impressive resume for anyone. Yet, out of all of that, his less-than-four-second clip was from a movie I instantly recognized. It was a close-up, just a powerful image of a man talking to the camera, talking directly to me. Nothing in the background can be made out, just bright lights and colors splotched together imploring you the watcher to focus on him, his words, his meaning. He was playing Abe Petrovsky, the judge in “Rounders” which is probably also in my top-five favorite movies. Say what you want about it, but his line is indelible:

“We can’t run from who we are. Our destiny chooses us.”

Think about that. How would you like your last performance, your curtain call to a successful life to be so succinct and still epically poignant for the whole world to see? That line is incontrovertible, as all you can do, and probably just did, is shake your head a little to the side, a twinge of a nod as if to say “I see it, and I can’t do better. Dilly, dilly.”

What do you want to be your curtain call? What are you doing to earn that nod?

We aren’t all going to be rock or movie stars. Hell most of us, if not everyone reading this blog, will just live a normal, everyday American life like me. And that’s fine. But there’s something in each of us, something unique that we can focus on and make our “thing,” our special talent or ability or project. It’s what we’re supposed to be doing, you know, because we don’t get to choose it, it chooses us.

So go do it, whatever it is, today. If I don’t go first, I want to someday see your epically awesome curtain call and give you that nod. And if I do go first, I hope I find my calling soon so you can do the same for me.