A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away …
In the category of weird stuff you find on the Internet from the far distant past …
If you’ve read my best-selling book, Impact: How to Get Noticed, Motivate Millions and Make a Difference in a Noisy World, you may have read about a strange, young kid by the name of Richard, who used to hang around Recnac Studios in Tampa with his girl friend Marla and talk about sitting in on sessions with the Beatles.
At the time, I was only ten years older than the kid, having built the recording studio out of nothing, by doing joint ventures if you can believe that.
I never knew quite what to make of the kid.
Apparently, he was 16 years old at the time and one night he and his girl friend tried to go see a washed up Tiny Tim who was playing at a roadside TraveLodge motel on the edge of town. Since they were underage, they couldn’t get in to listen to him, but apparently he met them in the lobby of the hotel and offered to give them a private concert in his hotel room.
Fast forward a day and they were knocking on my door asking if they could bring Tiny Tim by to record.
Tiny Tim, was a pretty strange guy, but he was a walking encyclopedia about the original Tin Pan Alley music and I sat there and recorded song after song all afternoon.
I had no idea what ever happened to the tape …. I guess Richard held onto it though and eventually turned it into an album.
I was doing a search and stumbled across my name on this page …
http://www.tunecore.com/music/richardbarone
Scroll down and you will find what Richard wrote about the experience along with a production notes credit that mentions the studio and my name.
Richard Barone’s book, FRONTMAN: Surviving The Rock Star Myth (Backbeat/Hal Leonard Books) includes an entire chapter about his experiences recording Tiny Tim.
Apparently, Richard went on to do okay in the music world …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Barone
Just goes to show you how tiny things make a big difference. If you want to read more of them get The Impact Factor: How Small Actions Change the World.
By the way, Recnac Recording Studios was the dream of a young man with almost zero resources who couldn’t even get a recording studio to let him work for free, who turned things around in a couple months and built his own recording studio from scratch — but that’s another story!
You never know who you are going to influence as you go through life, so make your small actions good ones.
A little kindness can go a long way.
All the best,
Ken McArthur
KenMcArthur.com
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OneDayIntensive.com
TheImpactFactor.com