This weekend here in West Seattle where I live, we are celebrating the annual summer street festival. It's a time when a lot of us old farts who live here come out of our cubby holes, and go up to the "junction" — our two block long shopping district — and drink a lot of beer, listen to a little live music, and generally have ourselves a grand old time.

It's also a time where we inevitably run into a lot of folks we haven't seen in awhile — kind of like a class reunion. And that's when the stories come out. In my particular case, this almost always involves recounting the old war stories from my years in the music business.

So let's get one thing straight. I never made it to the levels I once imagined, as an idealistic kid who loved rock and roll, I would. But I came close. So close, you could almost touch it. I played a significant part in the development of at least one act who came out of humble beginnings here in Seattle, to become — albeit briefly — a major superstar in music.

That would be Sir Mix-A-Lot.

The story behind that is one far too long to recount here — and I promise that at some future point we will get into all of that. But let's just say that my association with Mix-A-Lot eventually led me to a gig in L.A. working at American Recordings for the biggest record producer in the world — one Rick Rubin.

At American, I ran national retail promotions for artists ranging from Mix-A-Lot to the Black Crowes to Johnny Cash. It was a very short time I spent at American — just under three years. But in those three short years, my life was forever changed. As a somewhat still naive guy from Seattle — despite being thirty something years old with a fair amount of music biz experience already under my belt — nothing on earth could have prepared me for what I experienced there.

I was like a kid in the biggest candy store in the world. And I have never been quite the same since. So like I said, there are numerous stories I can relate from my time there. The experience changed me forever.