abracadabra

Steve Miller Band - Abracadabra
So when my friend Bob Jeffrey would hear a song by Steely Dan, he’d come into my studio when I was in San Diego to give me shit. Bob was a straight up blues based rock and roll, nothing contrived, music lover… and to Bob, Steely Dan sounded arrogant… jazzy, not rocky, mysterious lyrics, not simple and direct… Give him BB King or Bob Dylan…
I remember thinking this song was just a goofy but fun song… “Abra, abra - cadabra… I want to reach out and grab ya”… pretty direct there… And one day, I was playing this song and into the studio came Bob… to tell me that he’d take this song over anything by Steely Dan any day…

One of the things that you can do in life is make people happy.

Bob worked in our traffic department at KPRi in San Diego… His job was to get commercials on the radio… and make sure that clients were happy. He was great at it and it was a high stress job. He could also move a computer and put all the components back together faster than anyone I know… (He taught me to not think about all the stuff that had to be moved and just to move it…) Bob made a lot of people happy… I was grateful for his friendship and able to repay the favor getting Bob concert tickets for him and his dad to see BB King and Bob Dylan.

I received an email from a friend that Bob passed away in his sleep. He was a young man and is gone way too soon… But maybe in music heaven, he can hangout with BB King and complain personally to Walter Becker of Steely Dan (and Walter will show Bob that Steely Dan is actually a blue-band that plays Jazz Chords…) But I’m not sure Bob will be convinced… Love ya dude…