I’ve had the joy of experiencing an incredible amount of extraordinary music in my life, on vinyl, CDs, digitally, and live. I’ve been a DJ on and off since 1980, and I love playing with music and connecting music with people.
There have been three pieces of music that showed up in my life at just the right moment to help me through super challenging experiences. All three are instrumental, and two are solo musicians.
I was about 3 months sober in AA when I met a guy who was new in the program who fit the mold of the quintessential alcoholic. He was a complete mess and utterly incapable of taking care of himself. I started taking him to meetings, quite truly because I didn’t think he’d be able to make it there and back on his own, and then we became friends. Along with being brilliant, hysterical, and a complete mess, the one area of his life he kept clean and together was music; he was also a jazz guitarist. We used to hang out in his room many nights after meetings, listening to music. I was also a mess at the time, and was specifically having trouble falling asleep at night because I was full of stress and anxiety. My new friend had turned me on to George Winston’s December.
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Michael Swerdloff