What I Want To Be Doing When I'm 70 (Happy Birthday Keith Morris)

70 years is made up of approximately 36,816,480 minutes.

When I think about how I (directly) spent about 90 of those 36 million minutes with Keith Morris, and how much those minutes and all the other indirect minutes will stick with me, it gives me the urge to create something.

It’s on my mind. Post- our conversation it hasn’t really left. I want his level of curiosity and energy when I hit his age, gods willing.

Keith Morris is turning 70 today. Happy Birthday, Keith. If you’re on Facebook, you should tell him.

If you’re in California, you should go to his birthday party tomorrow too.

Keith was kind enough to come hang out on Just Press Record a few months ago, and I had the pleasure of introducing him to Ned Russin.

Our talk, over those 90ish minutes, gravitated around how Ned is half his age and - being an artist, all the way through, for now 70 years - it’s just so… cool.

Inspiring and interesting and all that stuff too, but, it’s just so cool. Because he’s doing what he wants. He’s getting paid enough to at least not starve, and, he’s never compromised.

Let me put all the emphasis on that last point: NO COMPROMISING.

That’s the part I respect. The most. I want that.

I want, when I’m 70, to be doing my own version of this stuff.

I mean, just look at what he’s been up to this year alone because, it’s as eclectic as it is uncompromisingly Keith:

• The Circle Jerks played at Coachella in April and Keith pissed people off for talking about politics and culture on stage.

• Keith was a tour guide at The Punk Rock Museum in Las Vegas personally taking fans through exhibits and telling stories.

• He DJ’d at the Levitt LA Season Wrap at MacArthur Park in LA, with his friends Redd Kross, Kate Clover, and others.

No golf. No boring stuff. I’m sure he’s got all the doctor visits and bills every other 70-year-old has too, but the guy is living.

And, let me make one other point clear about the no compromising because I think it needs to be said.

I’m sure he pissed plenty of people off over the course of his lifetime. I'm sure some of them mattered more to him than random Coachella attendees/live streamers. I’m sure of it because another detail about Keith people might miss if they only know the music is his many (many!) stories about the people in his life that he loves.

There’s plenty who love him back too. But beyond that, he’s got friends, and he’s had friends who are no longer with us, where there’s a genuine love so deep it’ll break your heart in a way I promise you, you wouldn’t expect.

You’ll respect it, but you might not expect it.

He told Ned and me about Jeffrey Lee Pierce, his friend who is no longer with us, and it was so compelling we snipped it out of our interview to capture on its own. You can watch it here:

The point is - for all the no compromising in the art sense, the other thing Keith has is all the capacity for finding, appreciating, and putting love into the world.

I hope I’m there at 70 too.

Happy birthday Keith.