I was fourteen years old and the victim of a back injury that still plagues me to this day.  I did a stupid thing in a school weight room and it sent my L-4 and L-5 vertebrae into a stormy mess that…like I said, still brings a little rain every now and then twenty-one years on.

Boy am I glad it happened.

I had a doctor’s appointment on March 18th of 1983.  I turned fifteen that day.  The Doc was trying to figure out what was wrong with my back for sure.  He didn’t get it right.  Fate, however, did.

My mother was with me.  She took me to the doctor’s office.  After the appointment, a shopping mall was not far away.  We went shopping.

While she sifted through the latest bargains she could find in the women’s apparel section, I was drawn to a end-cap bin of music cassette tapes (google it if you need to).  I tossed a few cassettes here and there.  Aerosmith, Pink Floyd, Chicago…and then…suddenly, an image…the cover of the cassette…albeit a paint chip of what used to be 331/3 album art…caught my eye.  Man, that looks cool, I thought.

It was the cover of The Moody Blues’ first album “Days of Future Passed”.  On the old version of the cover and the spine, it said “Day of Future Passed” in big letters and “Moody Blues” below that in smaller font.  But what caught my attention were the words in the right hand corner of the cover that I could not read without a magnifying glass these days…”Includes the song Nights in White Satin”.  So these are the guys that sing that song, I thought.

Understand that while I turned fifteen that day, Nights in White Satin and Days of Future Passed were a year older than I was.

I took it home.  I was hooked.  Wow.

I enjoyed The Moodies in anonymity for years.  My pals did not get it.  They didn’t hear it.  They heard Hank Williams Jr. and that is fine.  Their tastes have varied over the years.

A few years later in the spring of my senior year of high school, the Moodies made a little more sense to my friends and others who thought I was “out there”.  The Moody Blues scored a top ten hit with the song “Your Wildest Dreams” and they won Billboard’s Video of the Year award for said song.  That fall, in November, I saw my first Moody Blues concert at the Louisville Gardens…it was November 23rd, 1986.  I was not disappointed.

It is interesting that over the years I have heard Justin Hayward, the lead-singer and guitarist of the band say that The Moody Blues are a band that people have discovered for themselves…given no great media push for the band.  CHECK.  In recent years I have heard Justin Hayward say that people love listening to The Moody Blues and still attend their concerts because they want to hold on to the music of their youth.  CHECK.

Here’s the thing, in 1986 when I saw The Moody Blues take the stage for the first time, I, at age 18, thought they were a bunch of geezers.  Graeme Edge, still going strong in 2014, was 45 in 1986.  Justin Hayward had turned 40 the month before and John Lodge was 41.   They were over the hill!

Guess what?

I am still enjoying the music of my youth.

I am the geezer now.  I am older than Graeme Edge was when I saw them in 1986.

Guess what?

My dear wife, Carrie, and I are planning to see them again at the end of August this year…2014.

So what if Graeme Edge is 73.  Who cares that Justin Hayward will be 68 this year.  They are just getting warmed up.

And me, well…I am still young.  I am still actively listening to and looking forward to the shows of the music of my youth.

Nights in White Satin.  Tuesday Afternoon.  I Know You’re Out the Somewhere.  The Day We Meet Again.  Ride My See-Saw.  The Voice.  Your Wildest Dreams.  I’m Just a Singer in a Rock and Roll Band.  Question.  The Story in Your Eyes. You and Me.  I never get tired of them.  These are songs about love, peace, optimism, hope…goodness.

On the way home from a concert in Dayton, Ohio in April of 1992, my good friend Tim Mullins said something about The Moody Blues not getting any younger.  He asked me how many more Moodies concert I thought I would see (that being my 6th).

I studied his QUESTION carefully.  I paused.  I remember telling him I will be delighted and satisfied if I get three more.  That would make nine.

Providing all goes well, the August concert…also just outside of Dayton…will be the forty-eighth time I have seen the Moody Blues in concert and I would not trade a moment of listening in person, on the radio, on a CD, or on an ipod.  I have been more than than blessed to be able to hang on to the music of my youth in such grand fashion.

Peace to all as we speak the rights.

Danny Johnson