I have always loved music. Ever since I was a kid, I would listen to 45's on a beat up stereo record player that I got from my older sister. One of the first records I remember spinning was the Beatles "I'm Down", a cool song that was never really one of their hits (it was a B side to "Help"), but I liked the tune a lot. What really struck me was the vocals, man, those guys could sing! I started to mimic McCartney's vocals, I was only about six, but I thought I sounded pretty good. I kept on listening to Rock and Roll, because that's what I was told The Beatles were. That led me to borrow other 45's from my sister, including some really heavy stuff, like Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. I was hooked.

My sister was really cool, she was a hippie, ten years older than me. She used to let me hang out with her and her friends and they would tell me stories about how they'd go to concerts and "veg out". I didn't realize at the time that "veg out" was getting stoned and digging the music, but the fun they seemed to have all the time made me want to go with them and find out what it was all about. So, in 1973 when I just turned 11, my sister surprised the hell out of me and got me a ticket to see Led Zeppelin at the Garden. She told me it was the 3rd and final night they would be in New York, and they were filming some kind of movie during the show. I didn't know what to expect when I went into the place, I had only been in NY a few times, to see the Rockettes, the Christmas tree and a museum or two. I thought it was going to be a cool experience, but I was really too young to understand what I was about to witness.

If you've ever seen "The Song Remains the Same", then you basically have an idea what happened at the gig and how it went down. We sat in seats on the opposite side of the stage, though in the Garden there are really no bad seats. I could see the band real well most of the time, except for the clouds of smoke that smelled real funny that floated all around the top of the Garden inside once and awhile. After about 2 hours I noticed my sister and her friends were really acting weird, but they were definately having a great time and so was I. There was some really cool shit going on with the band, a drum solo that lasted 15 minutes, funky noises from the guy playing guitar, he even played with a violin bow at one point. The singer was all over the place on stage, and he would do these screams that would echo back and forth around the stage, really wild. The bass player stopped at one point and they rolled out this really huge Hammond organ and he played this bizarre fugue that sounded like the church from Hell. All in all, the show was great, and it seemed like Led Zeppelin played forever. I didn't want the concert to end, it seemed nobody else did either. In fact, the band came out 3 times to do an encore. I can't describe the feeling in the building, thousands of people singing along to a band, feeling real good, lights, smoke and Rock shaking the Garden. I will never forget Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham that day. Four musicians who again touched my soul like the Beatles did years before. 

For the next 20 years after that Zeppelin gig I tried to recapture that feeling with my own bands I was a part of. I played bass and sang in dozens of bands, one of which lasted awhile and we played in front of crowds of hundreds and we played for bartenders. Each time I played though, I always felt like McCartney singing and playing bass on that 45 of "I'm Down", or the guys in Zep on the Garden stage. The energy, the music, the soul of it all.

I never achieved the pinnacle of rock stardom with my playing career like The Beatles or Led Zeppelin did. Never was part of my journey, and I accept that with no problem. As the years went by though, I have never forgotten the feeling of those first 45's, of being at that Zep show and of being on stage myself all those years. The music still burns within my soul even to this day as it has done my entire life.

I have continued the musical journey of my soul with Romulus X Records and The Fallout Shelter Studio as the next path I have taken. It's a simple path, really. It's my soul's journey on this path. A journey surrounded by music, a journey I love so much. I want to spread the music message along this path to others who will listen, try to give to them the same feelings that my sister and her friends gave to me all those years ago. The same message that The Beatles and Zep gave to me and the same message we gave to people with the bands I was in for over 20 years after that. The exact same message that Romulus X Records artists and everyone who records in The Fallout Shelter now give to their fans as we move forward on our soul's musical journey together.

That's all this label, the studio, the artists, the music business, the ups and downs of life in general all mean to me. A learning experience on my soul's journey. I have had some great teachers along the way to keep me humble and in the right frame of mind. Music is one of those things that teaches me how great life really is as it continues to touch my soul.

It's a beautiful thing.