Thursday, December 31, 2009

Resolutions were meant to challenge your dreams come true...

Wow! A new year! I will! I won’t! I must! I can’t! I should! I better not! New Year resolutions are never simple and let’s be honest, the only time a true change toward the horizon takes place is when it’s too late.



I don’t want to be your buzz kill but there are a lot of people banking on your resolutions. Financial advisors claim to have the future figured out, your hairstylist has designed the perfect cut that will erase the age off your face, big gyms with fancy names promise special training and your children guarantee they’ll never ask for money again.



Growing up in south Billings near Optimist Park I spent every year wanting only one thing—to live in a house I wasn’t embarrassed of. Between zero and eighteen I had no clue what it meant to keep up, I just assumed big beautiful homes were part of the process and for some reason the UPS man hadn’t delivered mine yet. So I spent every New Year’s Eve with the radio cranked listening to Casey Kasum’s yearend American Top 40 countdown hiding the ugly walls my parents refused to paint.

But was it truly what I wanted?



At first it was wild life animals like lions and birds ripped from Weekly Readers and other magazines at the dentist office then I grew into a period of never turning on the lights which went away really fast after stubbing my toe on the metal bed my Grandfather brought over from Germany. Then it hit me…I swiped an idea from the TV show WKRP in Cincinnati and the Hollywood flick FM—at the ripe old age of 9 I wanted to be in radio while standing on the worlds biggest stages singing songs I wrote…if I was going to be a rock star…I needed rock star posters!



One problem…I lived in Montana, the biggest thing we had going for us was Charlie Pride, Canadian Curling, Evil Knievel, Brett Hart before the WWF and about thirty chickens in the backyard. The only stage available was a large wooden step leading into my sister’s bedroom and the well weathered haystack in Ranchester, Wyoming that came with miles and miles of long grass that clapped incredibly loud when the wind blew.



The posters were given two jobs—make my bedroom look like a rich kid living near Zimmerman’s Trail and keep my dreams of being live on a rock star stage alive until I was old enough to get a car—then I’d be able to drive and drive until one suddenly appeared on the highway of dreams.



My first rock star poster was Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. I had no clue who they were—I won the darn thing at the Yellowstone County Fair. They had long hair; they had to be rock stars! Once stapled to the wall, it became instantly clear…I can’t have rock star posters in my bedroom and still be listening to Dolly Parton and Porter Wagner. Time to make a change in my listening habits and that meant quite possibly hurting my mother’s feelings. She didn’t like Country Music; she had a passion for Western Music and along comes her kid vowing to make a difference by ushering in something called Rock n Roll.



I couldn’t do it!



Not until the day I turned Beth from KISS over and heard Detroit Rock City. Within two weeks Led Zep was down and every wall including the ceiling featured Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Ace and Peter. Now my bedroom radio station had rock star attitude. Gone were my 8-track tapes of John Denver, Buck Owens, Donna Fargo, Stonewall Jackson singing Me and You and A Dog Named Boo and yes home state favorite because he was from Great Falls…Charlie Pride no longer kissed his angel good morning.



The paint on my walls came from a band that made it perfect for others who also wanted to hide what life had given them. And then I saw them in concert at the Metra, the tickets cost a bank robbing six bucks. It was loud, in your face, featured fire and bright lights, taking from me something I’ve never been able to get back…childhood innocence.



I told Gene Simmons that when we sat behind the stage at the Charlotte Coliseum in 1985…not a streak of paint on his face, he laughed, sat back on the amplifier case and started asking me questions about growing up in Montana. It was then I learned how important his show in Billings was to him—to be the best you had to play everywhere and be everything to all your fans and that meant hauling your equipment into a Podunk town like Billings.



They were out to prove to the world what a little paint can do.



Now that I’m 47 and KISS is trapped in chapters of books you can’t erase—each year I walk alone into a room searching for something that still seems to be missing. So often you want to give up. The idea of pulling off another collection of resolutions sounds completely 1977 but somewhere inside, the mind continues to travel by way of thinking and that journey is where trouble begins.



I can’t be the only one who picks up their resume of accomplishments and sees a blank empty page.



Last weekend I caught Ryan Seacrest counting down the biggest hits of the year—while his radio scripts read, “At number one is Poker Face from Lady GaGa.” My ears heard a totally different story, “How many slots on the charts am I away from finally capturing my childhood dream? Or is it time to let go and walk the way of England Dan and John Ford Coley, Stryper and Cinderella?”



It’s a new decade; I have a new heart…batteries not required. I refuse to call it a night until I hold what’s been calling my name since the day Mom was told, “It’s a little boy.”



Find your music with me! If it's not in 2010 we gotta keep trying in 2011 and 12. It's there! I can feel it!



arroecollins@clearchannel.com

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