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The Green Marble Box
05/20/2007 07:34:29 / whatever
We pulled up to Phillips-Robinson Funeral Home in east Nashville and knew we were in the right spot. Out front stood long hairs, babes in bomb black dresses, dudes sporting cool vintage clothing, smoking and engrossed in pockets of conversation - "MUSICIAN" may as well have been stamped on foreheads. It was a gathering in Nashville not seen unless one of our own crosses the Great Divide or there's an award to be given.
We hadn't been with Randy for many years since we were kids. Not little kids but at this time in my life, I class late teens & early 20's as "kids". Randy was a drummer. There was a talent pool among the music scene in Hendersonville. Tennessee at the time that was extraordinary. We played - we laughed - we loved - we lived. If we'd had a motto it'd have been the classic... "Sex, Drugs & Rock-N-Roll!" We lived like we invented it.
Now, nothing on Earth remains of Randy but ashes in a green marble box. We didn't know what had killed him, he was just 52. Beyond the recent scare for guitarist (now college professor) Raskuvavitch Pa-Newton's double by-pass surgery, Randy is the first of our gang to go. I had looked up his band web site "Horse" and found it... cancer. Posted, was an article from "The Nashville Scene" in which he was dicussing living with and fighting that dread malady. Like Mellencamp's lyrical fight with "the law", Randy's fight with cancer came to the same end.
Scattered upon the tables on either side of that green marble box were pictures and momentos encapsulating Randy's brief life. We met up with Pete from back in the day (a phenominal guitarist who edits music videos now) and together the memories started flooding in. As always, we recalled the fun and funny, leaving the bleak and hung-over trapped somewhere in the furthest recesses of our minds.
We left early. We had a 2 hour drive ahead and we'd had about as much as we could handle anyway. This gave Dabo and me a chance to ponder our own lives. Most of our buddies have lived what people consider fast paced, exciting lives. Lives filled with wine, women and song... in many cases that translates to booze, divorce and road burn-out. I wish we could tell you that Randy's drumming in a Heavenly angel band now but we honestly don't know.
We chose a different path many years ago. Perhaps it's more apt to say a different path chose us. It alienated us from friends of our youth... friends forever in our eyes of love. They know our stand for Christ and it doesn't fit into the partying lifestyle so da KAZKILL boyz ain't on too many "Who's Who" lists of party invitations. We still love them and we miss just being with them... we'll miss Randy dearly.
In the end, for us at least, it can best be said in an old poem by Rhea Miller, set to music and made popular by George Beverly Shea...
I'd rather have Jesus than men's applause; I'd rather be faithful to His dear cause; I'd rather have Jesus than world-wide fame; I'd rather be true to His holy name: Than to be the king of a vast domain or be held in sin's dread sway! I'd rather have Jesus than anything this world affords today.
Never do those lyrics reach deeper into the soul than when standing before the green marble box.
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