On December 29th, 1967 I met my mother for the first time. I’m sure she remembers the occasion much better than I do; after all, I was very young (aged a mere 0) and quite overwhelmed with a brand new world unfolding so quickly around me. In addition to the bright lights, the relative cold, and the abrupt, surprising (and uncalled for, really) slap upon my bottom, The Beatles had recently released Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band and Jimi Hendrix’s first album had just dropped a few months before. So I had a lot to take in.

Fast-forward forty-six years into the future (to the day) and I found myself in New York City. I’m a huge lover of birthdays (particularly my own)* so m’lady and I had driven to Connecticut and stayed with friends the night before so we would be able have the whole day together in the Big Apple to celebrate.

And we did.

Shortly after we checked into our high-rise hotel somewhere in Manhattan m’lady suggested an outing, so out we went. Our unspoken destination was the Morrison Hotel Gallery, a very cool rock photography gallery that is housed in the very spot where the album cover for The Doors’ Morrison Hotel was shot. I was thrilled on both levels, and after gaping appropriately at the oh-so-familiar front window of the shop I started flipping through their photos with gasping glee.

Meanwhile, behind me m’lady was surreptitiously retrieving a framed print from behind the counter, her pre-purchased over-the-top birthday present to me.

“Hey Todd…” she called.

I turned and there she was smiling, handing me a framed print concealed in brown paper. “I hope you like it.”

It’s a picture of Keith Richards sitting on his amplifier practising, with a blurry Charlie Watts sitting at his drum kit in the background. The picture was shot in black & white by Ethan Russell during The Rolling Stones American tour of 1969, it measures 8.5” x 13” and is numbered 15/350, and of course I loved it. Still do. It hangs as the centrepiece in my practise room.

Oddly, I don’t remember much else from the day, though I’m sure we had a great time and it probably involved an overpriced gourmet burger somewhere, as my birthdays tend to do. Oh, and we went to see Phish at Madison Square Garden.

And because it was my birthday (of course) the band played a bunch of my favourites: Sparkle, Golgi Apparatus, David Bowie**, and Stash. Because it was undoubtedly other peoples’ birthdays as well, they added a bunch of other songs like Gumbo, Walls of the Cave, Waves, and The Line. Surely they are somebody’s favourites, and there’s no reason why those somebody’s might not just be early-to-middling Capricorns like me.

And then, an hour or so after the concert ended, so did my birthday. But as usual I still had New Year’s Eve coming right up, and a whole day in between to prep and recover.

Birthdays are awesome. Well, mine are.

*Unlike my father. While I look at the anniversary of my birth as the marker of another successful year living, laughing, and loving my brief time amongst the living, my father saw his birthdays as reminders that he was one year closer to death, and he treated them with due dread (sometimes I think he looked at every day the same way). A guaranteed way of putting my dad in a bad mood? Wish him a Happy Birthday. I learned early on not to.

**To avoid confusion I should point out that Phish has an original composition entitled David Bowie, which is decidedly not a David Bowie song. The lyrics go (in their entirety): “David Bowie UB40”. The music goes longer.

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