Brothers and their Music >>> #4 in a Series on Music Mentors

     My brother and I aren't twins but we have the same birthday.  Same parents, too, just two years apart to the day.  When my mother left my birthday party to go have him, I was probably too busy eating cake to notice.  It took me a few years, but, after getting over the shock of having to share my special day, I came to appreciate and brag about my little brother Brian---very best birthday gift of all, bar none.

Brian, left, with state park ranger, working to save sea otters

     We didn't stay in close touch during our college days.  Music-wise, I was singing in classical ensembles and folk and Latin groups, and he was "dead-heading" his way to rock concerts during every school break.  He got my attention big-time when he sent the song "Stairway to Heaven" to me while I was living in Spain.  Ever since then I've paid attention to the music he introduces me to and have become a grateful fellow fan of Los Lobos, Lucinda Williams, Old & In the Way, Chris Isaak, Traveling Wilburys and of course, The Grateful Dead.

     It's a long way from our childhood, sitting around the turntable in the room we shared, entranced with Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf", Woody Guthrie's "Chisholm Trail", and the Howdy Doody theme song. We somehow survived our early years without videos and even without television.  A radio and a record player, that was it.

     The romantic lure of the "ki yi yippee yippee yay" lyrics must have played a part in my "horse period", and Prokofiev's music, text, and accompanying illustrations may have influenced Brian's Fish and Wildlife work assignments to Russia years later!  ♫