Tuesday, October 21, 2003


This may sound like a boatload of bullshit, and I hesitate to believe it myself with the passage of time and no more further tingles in the back of my spine, but last year I was fully convinced that I was being haunted (in a good way) by the ghost of Randy Rhoads.

Yes, I made light of it to a degree, saying we played lawn darts and that he rode in the car on the way to work with me and the whole nine yards, but on the real, homey was in my dome. In my soul. His music crept up on me slow and then took hold like a pitt bulls chompers and wouldn’t let go. I’d be chillin watching the tube and strait up I’d hear a riff, I’d feel something in the room with me, telling me to put on something, anything, with Randy playing. I grabbed all the cd’s I could find with him on em, diggin in the crates at the cheap record shops, vibin, like 5 discs in a row in my changer, all randy strait rippin that fukn Jackson a new asshole.

The more I played his shit, the more he was there, I remember one night, me & mrs. P driving into town from Haleiwa, there’s a pretty long stretch of road that’s just pineapple fields, it was dark as hell, couldn’t see the Waianae mountain range on the right but I knew it was there, just like Randy. He was there. Laughing gas (live cut on the Quiet Riot Randy Rhoads years disc) was blasting, and that guitar solo, which I think might have been at the whiskey, starts just strait gunning, and you hear the kids in the crowd just like “whoo” like just unbelievable shit, I’m telling you, to be there at that moment, nuts.

Anyway, I could feel homey strait smiling. For real. He was with me. And when I got home and lay in bed ready to nod off, he was chilling on the roof, trying out new chords, strait vibing. I’d like woken him up or some shit. seriously.

Now I’m the first person to look on this in retrospect and acknowledge that I was probably strait tripping. Just got a little lost in the music. But I wanted to spread the word, make people remember, make people realize, homey was a fukn legend in the making. If that plane hadn’t dusted into that fukn house, shit, he would have changed the game WAY past what he did already.

I don’t know, I’m fukn just going off on this shit again.

One thing I do know. He was there for a while, and then strait outtie. Haven’t heard a peep since, shit, prolly a year already. Nada. I’ll bump his shit and listen, wait for like that weird feeling in my dome when I know he’s in the room, but zero. He’s moved on, either upstairs or kicking it with another believer, spreading his own unique version of the Schwartz in the afterlife and just being a strait-up playa.

In a way it kind of makes sense. i mean, he was only on this earth for such a short time, why should i expect he'd hang out with me for more than a few months? wherever you are Randy, thanks man, for the company (imagined or not) but most of all for the music. you will never be forgotten, at least not if i have shit to say about it.