I haven't been keeping up with the news sufficiently of late. There has been more work lately, and more physical activity, and more demands on my time to accomplish various tasks. The extra work and activity are beneficial and I am grateful, but there has been a cost, as there is for most things.
I've gotten even further behind with email correspondence, only occasionally able to rise above work-related stuff and communicate with friends. I've also become increasingly unable to keep well informed about current events: I miss a lot of news stories and sometimes only learn about them through others' discussions of the topics.
That's how I missed, and how I learned of, the sad news that Charlie Watts won't be drumming any more, at least not in any venues where I can attend. I just found out a few hours ago that he passed away, and it's hard not to find significance of a superstitious sort in my completely coincidental switch of my stereo playlists the other day from the likes of Dire Straits and Aerosmith to the Rolling Stones. I must have played "Satisfaction" and "Midnight Rambler" a dozen times each in the last week, after a hiatus on Stones music of maybe six months.
If memory serves, "Paint it Black" was the first 45 rpm record I ever bought myself, when I was 16 or 17, and it was either that or the Yardbirds' "Shapes of Things" being played at excessive volume that damaged the speakers on my Dad's brand-new Magnavox stereo.
The Rolling Stones provided a lot of the background music for my teen years, and a lot of my memories of those days--and many later years, too--strut and stretch and skip and swagger to the sound of Charlie's drumbeats and cymbal crashes.
I'm going to miss you, Charlie Watts.
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