I thought it would be fun to share my favorite musical experience of 2012. In July of this year I was doing some work in beautiful upstate New York, not far from Cooperstown. When I walked into the Walmart photo lab I’d be doing an inspection in that day, I met a man that would be best described as resembling the punk-drummer kid from the film “School of Rock,” but in his 60s or so.

Since this particular Walmart is the closest one to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, I asked this guy if they ever had any famous baseball players stop in the store. He said he didn’t know about that, but that they did see Yoko Ono in the store from time to time as she had property close by.

I don’t remember a lot of the details of our conversation but I’ll hit the highlights. We talked about The Beatles and Yoko Ono and how Bob Dylan had supposedly introduced The Beatles to marijuana. He then told me about how he was born and raised in New York City’s East Village in the 60s and his mom was actually a friend of Bob Dylan’s wife, Sara. He then related a story about A.J. Weberman who was constantly digging through Bob Dylan’s garbage and how Bob finally had enough of that and attacked him on the street in Manhattan.

He talked about how he came of age during the beginning of the punk movement at CBGB and that to him and others in his neighborhood, it was just their scene and they didn’t understand how significant it would become worldwide. He talked about how he’d later moved around to other punk and hardcore hotspots like Oakland and D.C. and had hung out with some of my favorites like Ian MacKaye and Mike Ness.

While it’s possible that our whole conversation was a sham and he was just a compulsive liar who had a vast knowledge of the East Village culture of the 60s and 70s, I’d like to think our conversation was genuine. Regardless, it was an awesome conversation and I enjoyed it enough to rank it even above the greatest show I’ve ever attended; Jeff Mangum playing with the Music Tapes in Ames. But that’s another story.