...fifty years ago today
Buddy, Richie and the Big Bopper
plowed into a frozen Iowa corn field
and not with a tractor...

i'm a big fan of Buddy, and Richie
and to a lesser degree the Bopper
(he was actually a DJ with one fluke hit record)
but am i the only one who is tired of the phrase,
"the day the music died"?

a sad day to be sure
a day to revisit the music they created
to reflect on what sounds they might have made
had their young lives not been cut short...

the music changed but it did not die
it didn't die with Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison, Lennon
or even Glenn Miller or Wolfgang Mozart...
i'm sure, when Wolfie died at an early age,
some contemporary music wag exclaimed,
"Today, the music died"...
(but in German, Austrian or some other Euro tongue)

music will never die
it's like love
woven into the very fabric of the universe
it is found in birdsong
in waves thundering or gently caressing a rocky shore
in the laughter of children
in the rhythmic click of a car turn signal
in the pounding of a lover's heart

it is the primal reverberation of the big bang...