![]() The next several years were the toughest of my life, and brought me to my knees, emotionally and financially. I was scared shitless and brimming with resolve at the same time, alternating between, “What have I done?” and “There’s no weekly in Boulder.” Among all of the decisions I had made in my life, this was by far the most unexplainable, but it was something I felt completely compelled to do. I will never forget the conflicting feelings that swirled around me as I drove through Utah with my two dogs in the back of the car. There was nothing that made sense to my friends and family when I announced that I had decided to give all of that up, risk everything I had, and head off to Boulder with a hope and a dream. After graduating, I cut my teeth as a journalism entrepreneur and publisher, built a successful business, bought a house on three acres of wilderness property just 10 minutes from a pristine nude beach, and was living the dream when I learned that there was no alternative weekly magazine in Boulder, Colorado. I had truly found myself in the redwood forests on the UCSC campus, where I studied sociology, learned to play guitar, and became a Deadhead. My feelings about Santa Cruz could easily be described as love at first sight, and my affection for my new home as a refugee from Southern California only grew during my 18 years at the Northern tip of the Monterey Bay. ![]() We try our best to make decisions that are governed by logic and rational thought, but there are also times when we feel compelled to do something crazy, despite how it may seem to others, or even ourselves. This serves to illustrate the at-times mystifying truth that sometimes in life things that make no sense just work in spite of their “lunacy,” or perhaps even because of it. Yet even though absolutely void of any rational, logical basis, all of these bands succeeded in bringing their names into our households, and staking their claim in then-popular music history. Really? What is that all about? Perhaps the memorable lyric from the band’s only hit tune, Incense and Peppermints, supplies a clue: “A yardstick for lunatics, one point of view.” But among all of the strange, nonsensical band names that came out of the Sixties, there is one that will always serve better than any as a metaphor for the often absurd nature of life: The Strawberry Alarm Clock. Similar stories abound in connection with bands such as Jethro Tull, Iron Butterfly, Pink Floyd, Moby Grape, and Buffalo Springfield. English rockers, Led Zeppelin, reportedly chose their name after a conversation about forming a band, during which one of the musicians commented that such a group would “go over like a lead balloon,” which somehow morphed into a “lead zeppelin.” A traceable chain of events, but still well outside the boundaries of reason. Pretty random, and positively nonsensical. For example, frequent Grateful Dead lineup partner Jefferson Airplane adopted their name from some vague blend of the name of a friend’s dog and blues pioneer Blind Lemon Jefferson.
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