matt keating died 2 days ago of liver cancer |
as far as i know it was april 3 or 4, 2011. the weirdest thing is, everyone has always expected his brother kimbo to be the casualty. even my mom used to say that when we were teenagers. me and matt were best friends for a brief period in 1968, very brief, but i knew him well. he was a good musician, but too much of an alcoholic and too hard headed. |
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i've had quite a number of "good" friends who thought they knew better than i did what i should be doing. he was one of them. i never have liked the feeling of being controlled by someone else, even when they were right. i just don't like it. i can't function according to what someone else has decided without any input from me about it. |
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The Indo-Intrusion, 1968, shortly
after KICKING ME OUT!
far right: matt keating - bass guitar |
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now that i'm older, i have aquired what seems like respect from a certain percentage of people in the world, but when i was younger, especially as a teenager, i had NO RESPECT whatsoever, i wasn't ALLOWED to have an opinion about what music is or is supposed to be. people said i had "talent", but they knew FOR SURE i didn't know anything about what to do with it, or what was even worth doing. i was told, from day one, "you'll never get anywhere in this town playing YOUR kind of music" i can understand their point of view and i even agreed with them, and i still do! |
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however, by the
summer of 1986 and
BRAIN-MUSIC, there was no doubt in my mind
whatsoever... |
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the fact is, i'm not worried about "this town", or ANY TOWN. if i was, i would have quit playing a long long time ago because it wouldn't be enough fun for me to look forward to enough to go thru the investment of time and money. however, there have been individuals with more VISION than i had, who spent a lot of time and effort ENCOURAGING me and helping me ... TEACHING me, enabling me, and most of all CONVINCING ME to go ahead and be myself, and fuck everybody else! there were many, and i am grateful to them all, too many to list now, but at the TOP of that list is WILL ALEXANDER. i am not the only musician or artist who says that about will, but i am perhaps the FIRST, which makes me the luckiest keyboard musician on earth. its a fact. that's not to say i have done everything will has ever thought i should do, nor does it mean i have achieved the potential HE might have envisioned for me at one time... the reason its so significant to me is i HAVE achieved what I ENVISIONED, and much much more, way beyond my wildest dreams. my wildest dreams really weren't sufficient to give me a path to what i enjoy NOW. it was simply a matter of mind expansion, money, and hard work |
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at least half of my life was spent having my meager aspirations CRUSHED by those people around me who weren't equipped to even have an opinion about what my potential was, or should be. matt keating was one of them, so i won't be missing our musical differences, but i will surely miss him as a friend. |
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bottom line: matt keating drank too much, and in the end, i think it probably hurt him. i think 50 years of tobacco smoke likely had something to do with it, too. if you are a young musician, and you have high musical aspirations, i would highly recommend that you not drink or smoke at all! i know that sounds inconceivable, but i'm telling it like it REALLY IS... and i honestly think matt would agree with me. |
