Ep. 49 - The Code We Live By: LAPD Stories, Freemasonry & Music with Raymond Foster

Welcome to the Drop the Needle podcast, your backstage pass to the mystical realm. I'm your host, Jim Allstott, and here, gifted souls step up to the mic sharing their spiritual journey. We're hitting the high notes and the low notes of their awakening, creating a symphony of enlightenment. This isn't just another interview show. This is where divine insights are channeled and universal truths are revealed. So crank up your stereo and sit back, because who knows, this just might help you compose the next transformative chapter of your soul's purpose. Are you ready? Let's go. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Drop the Needle Podcast. I'm your host, Jim Allstott, and I'm so happy you all decided to join us. Today, we have a truly fascinating guest with us. Joining the show is Raymond Foster. Raymond's a retired LAPD lieutenant and seasoned criminal justice consultant. But beyond his notable career in law enforcement, Raymond's an accomplished author of several books, including the latest, The Temple Within. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, please welcome Raymond Foster. Welcome, Raymond. Thank you, Jim. I'm seriously pleased to be here. I am so happy you were able to make this work with your schedule because I know it's kind of a crazy schedule. And one of the things that in our pre-show meeting we talked about was your ties to the Masonic Temple, right? So I want to go into that a little bit. But before we do, if you could please tell everyone a little bit about your background. I know I mentioned some of those things, but I want folks to hear it from you. So I'm a native Californian and I was born in Long Beach and I went to the Coast Guard. I enlisted when I was 16 years old, went to boot camp when I was 17. At the age of 21, I joined the police department. In fact, I got an academy class and they called in February of 1980 and they called me the night before on a Sunday. And they said, hey, we're looking at our records. Is it true that you're not 21 yet? And I go, well, no, I'm not 21 until next month. And they said, well, you can't be a police officer. So I actually had to be delayed six weeks. And I got a call Friday night before the Monday, the 20th in April. And the guy says, you know, he says, we don't have a place for you in the police academy. He was just show up. Somebody will quit that first day and you can have their job. And so I showed up and I was number 101. And the drill instructor said, well, who are you? And I said, well, I've been told to show up because somebody's going to quit. He just looked at me. He goes, okay. And at noon, I hear the loudspeaker calling my name because somebody quit at lunch and I was in. So that began a nearly 25-year career. I retired from the police department about the same time my first textbook came out. And I went to teach at university. I spent some time teaching and continued to write. And then I got into consulting. And I did some overseas consulting and a lot with the federal government and small municipal agencies around the country and continue to write and ultimately would retire really a third time. And so I find myself now in a virtual worldwide book tour for my last two books. The one that we're focused on, The Temple Within, is my eighth book released in August. So I am a Freemason. I am also the chair of the board of directors for our Chamber of Commerce, president of our Rotary Foundation, Executive Secretary of our Rotary Club, the past master of the Masonic Lodge, the current officers coach. I teach the ritual. And my wife says, if I join anything else, it better be the French Foreign Legion. I was like, how in the world do you have all the time to do those things? I bet you're busy as all get out. I have five children and six grandchildren. So, yeah, yeah, busy. It sounds like it. It sounds like it. So if you're okay with this, I'd like to dive into a couple of the different things that you mentioned. Number one, let's start with the LAPD. Yeah. I'd like to know if you have any strange stories or memorable stories that you're free to talk about that you might be able to share with us. Well, you know, it's so hard to go back. The reason it's hard to go back is that, number one, I retired 22 years ago. So policing has changed significantly over two decades. And so some of the things that I talk about, it really was more of the Wild West. and we were coming out of a different time in law enforcement, I was a police officer in the height of the crack cocaine wars. And so this is when there was, in Los Angeles, there was a homicide every night. There were multiple shootings. My last night, I was the watch commander in 77th Division, and right out of roll call in the graveyard shift, I was on my way to a homicide, and then I got diverted to a pursuit that ended with an officer-involved shooting, and then I had to go back to another drive-by shooting where there was another homicide. So within two hours, I had been to three shootings just as the watch commander. Holy cow. And seen two and a half dead bodies. So it was a different time than it is now. It's nowhere near the level of violence. It's nowhere near what it was. So the one story I do tell, though, is I probably still hold the record. I'm not certain, but I don't know. But we had a car chase. And as the primary unit, the guy in the chase right behind the suspect the entire time, it went 104 miles in 57 minutes. So a little bit of math there and tells you the average land speed was pretty fast. And my partner that night, I was what was called a primary trainer. So I got the recruits their first two months out of the academy. It was his second day. And at the time, he had a new kind of vest that was ceramic. So it was big and bulky. It was before the technology caught up with it. His wife made him wear it. And it was huge on him. And we called him the turtle. Within 24 hours, he earned a nickname, the turtle. And I told him, don't fall down backwards in some water. You'll drown, right? That's awesome. So we're standing at the corner of 39th and Western, and this lady is screaming at me. She's screaming at me in a scene of some kind of domestic dispute. And I'm listening as she screams. And she's not angry at me, but she's angry. So her voice is up. And it's like 2.30 in the morning. and I look over my shoulder and I hear the radio on my hip talking about a 211 GTA. Now, 211 is the penal code sex for robbery and GTA is Grand Theft Auto. You'd call that today a carjacking. And it says two male blacks with baseball caps. And look, there's this car stopped at the waiting for the light. And what's unusual is they've got the windows down. She's screaming at me, but these two guys are looking straight ahead. They're not looking at me. And they're baseball caps on. and it says red Ford Taurus. And I go, well, that's a red Ford Taurus. It says with paper plates from Coley Ford. And I looked down and I go, yeah, yep, that's got, and they'd use a shotgun. And I tell her, I said, hey, man, we're going to be back. I never did go back. We get in behind him, we're off to the races, and this goes all the way down the 5 freeway to Camp Pendleton, the Marine Corps base, so far down that the military police got alongside me on the way back north and were waving at us. it went so far that the helicopter actually had to divert to another airport because it ran out of fuel. Oh, my gosh. And then at one time, at some point, we get off the freeway on the way back, and we're the only ones behind this guy. And they're saying on the radio that the sheriffs are going to terminate the pursuit at something like Imperial Alameda. And I don't even know what that means. and they say that about the time that I go flying through the literally flying through the intersection and I see all the sheriffs leaned over their cars with shotguns I think they were going to shoot the cars everything went by too fast and so we're finally going down Alameda real fast and he makes a left turn onto a side street and I go to make that left turn and I lose control of the car and I go into a four-wheel lock skid and all I can see is this telephone pole getting bigger and bigger and bigger. I said to myself, the only thing I remember from driver training is you can't brake and steer at the same time because once you lose traction, you're not steering any longer. So I got my foot off the brake and I steered up a parking or up a driveway into a dirt lot, down the dirt lot, back onto the side street. And I was so far ahead of everyone else, one of the cops at the end of the thing comes up behind me and goes, hey, why did we go through that dirt lot? All they saw was the dirt dust in the air. So they all turned in that dirt lot. Yeah. Because they didn't know what had happened. And when we got up to the next intersection, they were gone. And I looked and I go, well, I remember when we got up the freeway, The first time, this is before this dirt lot thing, I turned to the probationer and I said, hey, look, we've been chasing these guys 50 minutes, man. I'm going to catch them. And whatever they're going to do, I'm going to do. So if you've got a maker you want to get right with, now's the time because I'm not going to stop. Oh, my gosh. I scared the crap out of them. It did, I'm sure. And at any rate, as we come to this intersection, they're gone. I look both ways and go, man, I don't know which way they went. I went south. and I saw their taillights at the next intersection, caught up with them. They pulled over in front of their grandmother's house. Oh, my. And I was talking to them later, and one kid said, Look, officer, we got down there to the middle of nowhere, and we knew you were going to kill us. So we went home where there was witnesses. So they went. The last half of the trip, they were just trying to get home. And so that was the next day, my right leg, my quad hurt because I'd been pushing on the gas pedals so long in that extended position. I talked to a couple of race car drivers later, and they said, oh, yeah, you were pressing on the gas for an hour. What do you expect? Oh, my God. So that's a long time ago. That's almost probably 40 years ago now. Holy cow. That story, that's bananas. I mean, that is totally crazy. Yeah, and that's a mild story, by the way. You know what? I'm sure it is, but that was a good one. Thank you for sharing that. That's awesome. I appreciate that. Well, I'd like to move on to something that's obviously more recent for you, and that's the Masonic fraternity or clandestine organization. And I don't know which you call that. That's our fault. You know, the Masonic Lodge, the Freemasons, is a secret society. We think of ourselves more as a fraternity with secrets rather than a secret society, because there's no secret about it. We've got these huge buildings everywhere, right? If you look on the internet, man, there's books everywhere. There's like a million billion YouTube videos. Most of them are wrong, but that's what secrecy breeds. Secrecy breeds misinformation, gives people a space that they can make whatever up they want to. And that's really part of the temple within. And when I wrote this book, that's one of the things I struggled with, you know, and I talk about this in the introduction, is that I have an obligation. I took an oath not to divulge secrets. And so what I decided to do was that anything that had been previously discussed by a Masonic scholar, and I think you can, and Ms. Mace, we can define those couple of dozen men who are Masonic scholars. If it's been printed and talked about before, then talking about it's open source already. If it was because much of our ritual derives itself from biblical passages, The Bible, of course, is open source. So there's a chapter on the book of Ruth, and it begins by telling you, if you're non-Mason, you're not going to know why we're talking about this specifically, but you can still get a lot from the lessons within this chapter that I'm going to talk about. And so we are a society with secrets, and I will tell you that really, the only things that are secret are our modes of recognition. We have handshakes and passwords. right and the words the ritual themselves and there's again there's a chapter in the book where i talk about why secrecy is important to us um so we are a society with secrets um but i think we're freemasons um and we are fraternity i don't know what else i don't know how else to describe us Hmm So I was reading somewhere when I was researching for the show about is it Yale University that has the skull and crossbones Is that the university where there is some correlation I sorry Well, it's whichever one that the Bushes went to. I know that they're a member of skull and crossbones. It could be Yale or Harvard. I'm not certain which it is. I thought it was Yale. It could be Yale. Yeah. There are a great many secret societies. With Freemasonry, we have what we call appendant and concordant bodies, and these are officially recognized bodies, such as Scottish Rite, the York Rite, the Shriners, Eastern Star, Demolay, Rainbow Girls. Demolays for the younger men, right? Okay. Yeah, and people like Bill Clinton, Walt Disney, Neil Armstrong, they were all members of D. Malay. And by the way, those are members of D. Malay who did not go on to be Freemasons. There are lots of members of D. Malay who go on to be Freemasons. And yeah, the two men that landed on the moon, Buzz Aldrin, was a Freemason. As a matter of fact, he drew the square and compass in the lunar dust and had permission from the Grand Lodge of Texas to open lodge on the moon. And Buzz Aldrin was a Mason. Neil Armstrong was a senior de Malay. He was not a Mason. So, you know, lots of men, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Douglas MacArthur. Mozart. You can go through Mozart, Descartes. There's lots of men in history who have been Freemasons. So I'm just one in a long line of men who've joined the fraternity. That's very cool. So what I was, the reason I brought up the skull and crossbones is that in, believe me, I was digging around a little bit because knowing that we were going to be able to talk about this, I thought it was important. Because you're right. When it comes to secret organizations, and I myself am in a fraternity still, and I consider myself to be still a part of that fraternal organization, even though I'm not an active member any longer because I don't attend the university. But with that, there is a lot of misinformation that's out there. so I guess hopefully in our time together we'll be able to dispel some of that and one of them was the skull and crossbones because there was what I had read was there was a correlation between the Masonic rite and the skull and crossbones like how it started and then the other thing that I picked up was the skull and crossbones insignia or emblem is also the same that is the jolly roger from pirating and so some i forget where well it was on all online right because there's so much out there but there was a discussion about pirates being masons too and how that's how they they came up with that because it was the skull and crossbones and they put it on their flag and they raised the flag and um uh black members or african-american members in different societies that's sprung off of that but what about the pirate thing i guess i'm i'm curious about that having seen that i was like you got to be kidding me so you know here's i was gonna i want to make sure I get the facts right on this. I'm pretty sure I do. You know, the Hocken Cross, the Hooked Cross, the Nazi, the swastika, is an ancient Hindu symbol. But the Hindus, they were Nazis, right? It's a co-opted symbol. And so, yeah, the skull and crossbones, I can't speak to their secret society. I will tell you that in the current, Freemastery has been around since 1717 in its current form as a formal organization. We can trace its history as it transitions from operative guilds of stonemasons back as far as the 14th century pretty clearly with documents. And we can see that they were allowing non-Masons into their groups, and there was reasons for that. And so this society is pretty old. To say it's ancient is not too far off. And so lots of people have copied it. They've copied some of the ritual, the ideas, and they've co-opted symbols. You know, the Masons don't use the skull and crossbones necessarily, but we do use some versions in some degrees, use the skull in what's called for reflection, for a man to reflect. and you know that's actually some ancient Catholic writings too because if you look at a skull you ever looked at a skull it looks like it's smiling yes and you know that's you know it's happy in death it's happy at what it's done it's happy where it is it's happy in eternity and this is one of the things it's just a symbol that's been co-opted so there is no connection between Freemasons and pirates I wish there was back to Blackbeard long john silver you know well now that doesn't mean that some pirates weren't freemasons they could have been i mean i mean it's very you know and when you the the the idea now i will say i could say almost definitively that there were privateers who were freemasons okay because privateers uh especially during the the what the 15 18 years that the french and the english were going at it during what we call the napoleonic wars privateers on both sides of the channel and masonry was on both sides of the channel and so the fact that they were privateers masons who became private sir of course that just makes sense yeah it stands to reason right um so but no there's in the skull and crossbones i don't know of we would call that a uh in masonry We'd call that a clandestine organization, not one we're related to. And we're not allowed. We are prohibited by our Grand Lodge from talking. There's a big book that says who you can talk to, who you can't talk to. Because there are people who call themselves Freemasons that we don't recognize as truly being Freemasons. um well what's the differentiating factor between if someone were to say hey i'm a freemason versus no you're not type of thing well i think a freemason would just walk away from them wouldn't say no you're not but okay um well right we have a for our yeah our discussion we have sure we have a lineage. So the Grand Lodge of York and the Grand Lodge of London in the early part of the 18th century, the English are colonizing around the world. And around 1730, when they're colonizing the United States, what will become the United States, some men in Philadelphia petitioned the Grand Lodge, I believe, of York to form the Grand Lodge of Philadelphia, which Benjamin Franklin to become the Grand Master. Along the way, the Grand Lodge of Philadelphia would give what's called a dispensation to other lodges, like I think you gave one to Missouri. You could trace these right back. Missouri will give one to California when it's forming up as a state. California will form a Grand Lodge. It gives a dispensation to my lodge to form a lodge. So there's a lineage that traces them back all the way to the formation of the first Grand Lodge in London in 1717. And so we recognize those. Now, every once in a while, a lodge will go sideways and do something that we don't recognize, whether it's hazing or something like that. One of the biggest controversies that was in Freemasonry was homosexuality. So there are two lodges in the United States, two Grand Lodges, that won't allow gay men. And so because of that, I don't know if we still don't have community. We call it not having communication. We don't have communication, the California Grand Lodge, with those two lodges because of that issue. and so there are lots of openly gay men in california i don't know about other states he really can't speak to them so there there are other groups out there that claim to be masonic there was a guy going around he was the he called himself the masonic chief of police and he actually was in a uniform with a badge and a gun he would show up he would show up at police agencies and get interviews with the chief of police because he was so convincing um so there are lots of and never arrested for him he never was wow he died of a heart attack or something it was really a fantastic story of of bluff i guess um but yeah so there are organizations that i wouldn't recognize as freemasons gotcha you know you were talking about hazing and that was one of the things that they had brought up in some of the things that I was reading. They were talking about goats and I'm like, what? Like they're bringing in, well, like a goat being part of the process. And here's the reason why some of it I give a side eye. I think I even mentioned when we were on our pre-show call, my family was involved with Eastern Star, the Masonic Temple, Scottish Rite, Oriental Shrine. So my grandfather went through to the 33rd degree. Is it 33rd degree? Is that what it's? 32nd degree? That's an honor. 32nd. 33rd is honorary. He could have been a 33rd degree mason. Sure. Yeah. So, and that was one of the things that they were talking about too, where there was some statue or something that they, it was almost like a Bacchus statue that they had to kiss the rump of a Bacchus statue or something like that. I can't see my grandfather doing that first of all, you know, but, and then And again, I'll circle back to the, yeah, when you're not talking about something, all of a sudden, everything's free game, right? Yeah, they bring down aliens and all this other stuff. But yeah, it was very interesting, too. So with those different levels, as I understand it, there are really only three levels of the Messiah. Yeah, there's graduation steps or something, or ascending. Yeah, there's only three degrees in masonry. First, second, and third, entered apprentice, fellow craft, and master mason. Now, these other degrees given by these other bodies, both Scottish Rite and York Rite, are efforts to further explain the third degree of masonry in reality. They give other moral lessons to the men, but they are not. Every Mason, every member of the York Rite and the Scottish Rite is a Master Mason with three degrees from a blue lodge. So you can't get into York Rite or Scottish Rite or the Shriners unless you are a Master Mason. So it used to be that you had to do what was called a Master Mason's proficiency, which is to memorize a very pretty long passage of the third degree before you could apply to either the Scottish Rite or York Rite. They dropped that requirement. And now we see in many lodges the day a man is raised to the master mason. Somebody puts an application in his hand. I think that that deludes the whole thing, but that's just my opinion. And the same with the Shriners. In fact, used to have to be part of Scottish Rite to become a Shriner. I know a guy who just joined the Shrine and he's not a member of the Scottish Rite at all. So these rules change for these other organizations. So are they recognized then or no? Yeah, they're appended and concordant bodies. They're what we call, yes, they are recognized by us, but there are three degrees of masonry. That's it. These are extra degrees where a man's learned something. I'm a York Rite Mason. Now the difference between Scottish Rite and York Rite, York Rite is probably more properly called the American Rite. But the Scottish Rite is non-sectarian. The York Rite is a Christian degree. Okay, thank you. And that has been watered down in the last decade or so a little bit. It used to be that a man would swear that he would defend Christianity. Now I think it's the right, you would defend a man's right to be a Christian or something like that. So it's changed a little bit in its nature to attract more men because as organizations shrink, they do things to try to survive. And so personally, I think if they shrink to where they're no longer useful, they should be gotten rid of. Yeah. That's what I think. Well I mean I guess there some truth to that but there also that history and that lineage that you know 1717 that a while You know, I've been around a while. So I get, let's put it this way, I understand exactly why there would be the effort that would be put into that to salvage it or to save it, to keep it going. After that amount of time, you would have to feel an obligation to do that on some level. I think it survives and it will continue to survive because it's useful, because it's valuable. of the men who become Freemasons. And even if you don't delve into the more esoteric parts of it and you don't explore the wisdom as much as you could, just living by the principal tenets of the organization and belonging to it will make you a better man and therefore probably more effective in society. And as long as last night it was a Thursday night at our lodge, it was a social night, and there were three men there who were interested in joining Masonry because what we do is we have a social every Thursday, and we give tours of the Lodge. And we don't invite men. We don't ask them to become Masons, but we open the door and allow them to ask questions. And so we still see men, and two of the three were younger. They were in their late 20s, early 30s. That's good. That's what we want to see. Right. And so I think that Masonry is going to become more relevant. Part of the temple within, part of the reason I wrote the book and I thought the timing was good, I think that there's going to be a renaissance in Mastry. I think that young men under the age of 35 or so are seeking belonging. They are seeking guidance. They are seeking a place where they can fulfill who they should be. And I think Freemasonry is a good path for them. And I think that it's ready for a renaissance. Okay. I can see that. You know, times do change and you either change with it or sometimes you just go away or it dissolves because it's no longer relevant. But I think what you're talking about with leadership, mentorship, different things of that nature, that's always there. And I would agree with you in terms of the timing, right? Especially today, it seems like there is a need for something like that, some mentorship, some sense of belonging that, you know, more so for whatever reason in society. And that could be a whole other podcast as to what's going on around us. But if we could, I want to ask a couple more questions on this, and then I do want to talk about music because I know you're a musician. So I want to talk a little bit about that. The symbols that are used. Now, oftentimes the eastern star, because I remember seeing this in the middle of the floor, it looks like a pentagram. I didn't even know what a pentagram was when I was, you know, following along with my parents that would go to this. I go, oh, look, there's the star, cool colors, you know, that sort of thing. And then, of course, the compass and square that makes it like an A type of thing. Can we talk about those a little bit in the misinformation, I suppose, that's out there? Yeah, the compasses square are the real traditional things everybody knows about Freemasonry. They see that symbol that looks kind of like two triangles on each other, upside down, one pointy with a point down and one with a point up. And so that's a very ancient symbol itself. It's from alchemy. We see that most prevalent in alchemy, and it refers to as above, so below, or as in the spiritual world. So in the physical world, it tells us to, as we look up, it also tells us as we look up to the great architect of the universe, he is looking down at us. And so there is a continuous communication between the spiritual and the physical realms. It also, these are two tools, the square and the compass, that teach moral lessons that a man can use. And the funny thing about these lessons is that they're like all parables. there's a surface lesson and then if you scrape it off and you scrape the surface you see something deeper and deeper and deeper and the square is both the square, I read an article the other day, last night, people talking about the circle and how the circle is, in fact I wrote it, I did a series of seven videos on the ancient symbolism of the circle, I've done four I've been releasing it, three sitting here in the box because the circle is such an ancient thing. And I read this article where somebody said, well, the compass, which draws circles, is a divine instrument, whereas the square is a physical instrument. Well, I mean, if you think of it that way, because the compass is the one that's on top of the square, I suppose the divine could be on top. But, you know, the compass can draw the circumference of all circles. It has an infinite nature to it that way. But the square, which judges right angles or tells us what a right angle is, it can judge all right angles, an infinite number of right angles that it can produce. Therefore, it too is infinite. And so they're both divine instruments, right, in that instance. Right. And the square, Mason's told, is to square his actions by the square of virtue. And so what that means is if you were to take the four cardinal virtues, and if any of your action falls, can be supported by two, like a right angle, it's probably a virtuous action. If it's both prudent and expresses fortitude, that's probably a good thing to do. The most important thing is now if you layer it away, or you take another layer, they seem all practical, right? But if you just sit and you think about, The nature of the infinite, and does a circle represent the infinite? It has no beginning. It has no end. How is that possible? Now it helps us with contemplation. And so contemplation on these questions is the most important part. You know, thinking through what we actually believe and what we stand for. That's what inculcates it into us. So that's a number of ways that these things can be used. Mm-hmm. Does that help you? Absolutely. And I appreciate you sharing that. So now I do know the story of you're a brass player, correct? I do. Yes, I have. Okay. So you had mentioned a story about when you were in basic training. Can you share that one? Because it's a great story. So on the third day of boot camp, and the chief petty officer, it might have been a first-class petty officer, I don't know, he's walking down the line. He's the DI. And he says, anybody here play a musical instrument? I'm like, my dad told me not to volunteer for anything, but this sounds all right, so I put my hand up. And he goes, well, go with this guy. So this other petty officer takes me down to a band room, and there is a chief petty officer in the band room. And he goes, what do you play? I go, well, anything brass, mostly a trumpet. And he said, well, here's a trumpet, here's music, play it. I said, okay. I play it. He goes, you're in the band. I go, okay. Go with this guy. He sends me with another guy to a tailor. That's the third day of boot camp. This tailor tailors, sews, and puts on me a class A uniform, a dress uniform. He goes, then they take me down to the band room where there's a bunch of other guys there. They hand me a horn and put me on a bus and take me to Candlestick Park where I play the Star Spangled Banner in a Giants game. so it's like the third day of boot camp and then every weekend um we would go oh my god we would go uh up and down the the all as far as uh seattle washington from san francisco and then all throughout the state by bus uh and be it parades or at uh opening ceremonies or and we did we basically had three songs we had the star spangled banner uh the semper paratus which which is the Coast Guard hymn and God Bless America. And that was it. Those songs we played. So you played the hell out of those. Yeah, it's like you're any other musician. And we did funerals as a trumpet player. I did lots of funerals. And that's when I would go out the honor guard, and they'd have the six guys with the rifles, the guys with the flags, and I'd be the horn player. And we'd be sitting and waiting and waiting, and somebody would infinitely go, Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, let's bury this sucker and get on the bus. We are pretty – well, you're, what, 17, 18 years old, and you're immortal at that point. So that's just some unlucky SOB, right? That's not going to happen to you. That's some 40-year-old guy. That's right. He's ancient. Now you look back on it. And I told my wife, I said, you know, transitioning from, wow, he lived a long life to, God, that's not, no, that's not enough. Right, right. It just seems like, well, you know, I think no truer words were said. Whoever came up with, if I would have known I was going to live this long, I would have treated myself better. Oh, my gosh. I was at the, we have two Masonic homes. This is where the brothers and widows live, one here locally. And I was in one of the lounges where they have coffee and cookies. And we were waiting for an event to start. And all the men were upset. They were all upset that Bob had died. Bob had died. And they were just talking about what a good guy Bob was. Bob had died. So finally, I turned to him and I go, so how old was Bob? And he goes, he was 98. Oh, my gosh. Bob had a good life. Yeah, I said, you know, when you're in 98, it's like when you wake up and go, hey, Bob's still here. That's the surprising part, right? You have a parade. But, you know, their perspective of being in their 80s and late 80s and 90s is that, you know, Bob is their peer. And so as you age, your perspective definitely changes. And so that's Bob had died. I thought that's funny. Oh, that's, yeah, that in 98. How old was Bob? 98. Okay. Moving on. That's good stuff, man. That is really good stuff. So do you still play or no? You know, during the pandemic, I picked it back up again and I actually taught myself jazz. I was more of a classical treble player. And I have a bunch of Music Minus One. It used to come out. I remember I bought my first Music Minus One on an album. and for anybody listening, Music Mind is one is all the – I bought the Hummel trumpet concerto. And so on one side of the album is the concerto with the trumpet and the other side is the concerto without the trumpet. You play along and they provide you with the music in the right key. And then it went to cassette and then it went to CD and now you just download the music and you can download anything. So I downloaded a bunch of – I started with really pretty simple jazz. And then I went to all the blues and jazz, what we call blues and jazz scales. And I memorized those and I played around with those. I pulled my Arben back out and I got pretty good. I'm not, you know, I don't really claim to be a musician, Jim. I claim to be a mechanic. And if I practice, practice, practice, I'm an excellent sight reader because it's what I do. I read music. As a matter of fact, my wife thinks it's so funny because she is a musician. I can't sing along to something unless I can. Once I see the music, I sing along perfectly because I can see the music. I can't do it in my head like a musician can. I can't play by ear, as they say. I just can't. When I say can't, it's probably a mental block, but I got to have the music. You know, it's interesting that, so that's like karaoke for brass players. Yeah. This one. Yeah. That's, wow. That's very cool, though. I like that. And, you know, interesting. So I went to school for music, so I have an affinity towards that, which is why we talk about music being the third pillar of the show, which I think is a wonderful segue into our musical questions. Are you ready for that? I am. Go. Okay. Fantastic. And this is the part of the show when I have a chance to ask the guests some musical questions. And as I always say, I truly believe that music is the tie that binds. And each of us has a soundtrack that accompanies their life if they just take a moment to think about it. So here's question number one. What was the first song you fell in love with from the radio? I think I love you with the Partridge family. And I remember I had to have been 10 or 11 years old, maybe 12, I don't know. But I was thinking about this the other day It was at the same time that I was becoming I was going from preteen to teen So it was the same time that I was beginning to try to understand the ideas of love And so I think I love you and I'm keeping me up all night. I don't know what to do about it. I just thought as a kid, that was a snappy tune. But I think also subconsciously it's probably speaking to the transition point I was as a human being. I love that. That's great, the connection there, too. So did your family have a song that everyone would belt out on road trips or vacations when you were growing up? Yeah, but John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt, and my mother used to sing Wilhelmina Mildew, and I've never even found that anywhere. But they had a – my dad hated it. She had an eight-track tape, an eight-track tape of Three Dog Night. And Jeremiah was a bullfrog. And at a talent show, it was some kind of talent show or something. I think my sister and my brother sang that at my mother's suggestion for that. She liked them and she liked the mamas and the papas. That's probably why I like the Seekers and anything from that folk rock era. Yeah. I think it's beautiful music as far as I'm concerned. That's very cool. Three Dog Night is really, they were an incredible band, in my opinion, too. I would say that they're probably the band for me in that genre, that era, for sure. So when you were in high school, did you and your friends have a song that you would belt out when you were driving around with the windows down? In California, I mean, you'd have the windows down all the time, right? Yeah. Well, you know, most of my friends were in the band. And I remember I went over to a friend's house with a sax player. He was scoring Elton John's Philadelphia Freedom so we could play it. And we had a jazz band, but we always ended with, Will I Ever See You Again? And so that, and I mean, just get, you know, you just get terribly bored of playing that. And that and the high school fight song, because I was in the traveling band. So my musical experience, you know, from that period of time, anything that sounded really, really musical. I mean, if you listen to the Moody Blues or you listen to the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band or you listen to things like that where they've got good strings and they've got good players. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of good music that came out then. So it's hard to settle in one that we would sing. And I'm not much of a singer anyway. So did your musical taste change after high school and then going into the Coast Guard and so on and so forth? okay i have a i have a seriously eclectic tasted music okay i love uh merle haggard and willie nelson and there are some country western songs i think are fabulous um there are some early rap music that i could you know anything eminem did some really interesting work i think some of the early rap music was it was just fascinating to me in fact i think that rap's been around in the form of scat or something else for a very, very long time. I am, I love jazz. In fact, I have to turn it off. My wife says whenever they get to the, it sounds like elephants. But I also, you know, I have all of Mahler's symphonies. Oh, wow. Okay. In albums. I have all, three of the Bach, CPE, Johannes Bach, And what's the other one? I can't think of his name. So, I mean, my music, I love Baroque music, which is, yeah, I love Baroque music, the instrument. It's just beautiful music. Because Baroque is probably the closest we have to jazz. It has continuous bass, basso continuum. It has, they don't improvise, but it has flourishes on it. What's the word? I'm thinking. So it's very decorative music. That's what the word Baroque means, decorative essentially. So I love Baroque music. I have a very eclectic taste. I love marches, John Philip Sousa marches. I mean, yeah. And, you know, Sousa, like Mozart, they were both Masons. In fact, Sousa wrote a couple of pieces of work specifically for Masonic lodges, actually for the Knights Templar, for their grand assemblies. and their grand encampments. Oh, wow. And his music expresses, if you listen to, I think it's A, A, B, B, C, C, it's his melody, counter-melody. And if you listen, you'll hear the melody, but you'll hear the counter-melodies underneath it. And you'll hear the two begin to struggle. The melody and the counter-melody will struggle, and the counter-melody will come out and it will take over, and it will become the melody, and then it will be subsumed again. So this is life's struggle between the conscious and the unconscious that he's trying to reflect, you know, that there's a counter melody within all of us. And it's actually the stronger, the more driving of the melodies. And so if we listen to our counter melody, how beautiful it can be. That's one of the lessons I think you can get out of listening to John Phillips. That's awesome. That's awesome. My exposure to John Philip Sousa was in middle school and high school marching bands having to... And the monkey wrapped his deal around the flagpole. Yeah, that's why I remember our band director used to say that all the time when it was time to play that. But so is there a song that gets your positive juices flowing that makes you want to go out and crush your day? It used to be Money for Nothing. Ooh, yeah. Because that's what police work felt like. Chicks for free. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, so that used to be, you know, really the song. I think CCRs, I heard it through the grapevine for a lot of reasons. Number one is it's a long track. And so you can get into it and stay into it. I think it goes on for 13 minutes or something like that, the long play. Holy cow. Yeah, it's a long, long play. And then they really get into it and they really explore the whole thing. But unlike the Marvin Gaye one, it's driven. Even, you know, I hate rumor mongers personally. I hate anyone who would be a traitor, betrayal. And I think I heard it through the grapevine. It just speaks to me. I just don't like that. That's the epitome of that, yeah. To the core. When I was in the late 70s, I sold stereos. I didn't steal stereos. I sold them. And we played, we had, well, actually, what was big at them was reel-to-reel tape recorders. Oh, yeah. And, oh man, I'll tell you what, Funky Town and the Stored Trooper March, we had those two on reel. Cranked those over with the giant speakers and sell somebody a $2,000 stereo system every time. Wow. So, yeah. Reel-to-reel. I haven't heard that. You know, my wife's probably got a collection of 500 albums which she's constantly putting on something. She put them on all CD and now she's putting them all on some kind of stick or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've had satellite radio for 20 years since it came out because I just like the music I want to hear. Right. So, yeah. At a moment's notice, too. I mean, you can just flip from genre to genre to genre. Yeah, it's very cool. I go back and I stay at the 70s and then I'll get bored, hit up to the 80s. And if it's an early 80s tune, I'm into it. Anything about 85, then I'm really into work. So I'm not listening to the radio. But yeah, so yeah. And I go to the jazz station, you know, back and forth. Yeah, I like that. Do you have a guilty pleasure song? one that you don't want anybody else to know is on your playlist no but i'll tell you i lived in saint kitts for about a year in the caribbean and i would go to breakfast every morning and they had they only had two songs they would play every day and they played them constantly every day it's all they had and it was the only place to have an american style breakfast little damn place and that was shake it off and girl and girl on fire get out of here yeah and so that's all i heard on and on for i used to and so got into my head for a long long time you know the lyrics the whole thing and so not a guilty pleasure so much as they were in my head for so long they i could have charged rent for the space i love that um what i'm going to do is i'm going to fast forward and go to my favorite question and then we'll wrap everything up okay okay and here it is so sometimes there are songs you hear that ring so true that they can stop you in your tracks the song lyrics sound like they were written specifically for you or by you what's that song? I got to go with, there's two. The first one I think would be more personal to me would be the Highwayman. Okay. And just the fact that you, I believe I've led multiple lifetimes in this life, right? I constantly, and people will tell you that. I mean, I'm a different human being. There's a fact, the mayor of our town, he goes, no, no. was it was another mason and he stood up in an assembly he was my sergeant when i was on the job man and he stood up he goes i don't know what happened to that ray foster guy but he's disappeared this new guy's appeared over here oh my gosh yeah uh and so this idea of transformation even within one lifetime uh is doable uh given how we live and when we live and so that's exciting to me I don't know what the next transformation will be. It doesn't feel like I'm done. And the idea that you might be able to come back and do this again, the idea of reincarnation is very attractive to me. So I think that that song speaks to me. The other one that I like is Teach Your Children Well by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. And that's because central to that song is the idea of having a code to live by. And I think every human being has to have a code. Have you ever seen the picture of The Wire, the series, The Wire on HBO? The crime drama? Yes. The most righteous character is Omar the dope, the guy that rips off the dope dealers. Right. Because he's got a code and he lives by it. And he doesn't violate his own code. And that code makes him predictable to us. that makes him predictable to the universe. And I think that a human being has to have a code to live by. It doesn't matter what it is. That's awesome. Just be consistent. So that's, yeah, there you go. I appreciate that. And thank you for sharing your songs with me. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us and your stories, which were fantastic. Just absolutely. I love the high speed chase. That was, wow. That was very cool. I definitely appreciate that. Well, it's just about time to cue the music for today's episode, but don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe to the Drop the Needle podcast to stay up to date on our latest episodes. I'd also like to take a moment to thank everyone again for tuning in today, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Drop the Needle podcast. I would also like to thank our very special guest, Mr. Raymond Foster, for joining us today. Raymond, how can folks get in touch with you or get your books or blogs? What would be the best way? So my old consulting website, we've ramped over to a writer's website. So it's hitechcj.com, H-I-T-E-C-H-C-J. Used to be Hitech Criminal Justice. So hitechcj.com, one of the most popular books are highlighted there. And everything from a P.O. box to an email address, telephone number. certain smoke signals I will reply to. So that's the way you get to. Fantastic. I appreciate that. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to invite you all to head on over to the show notes where there's going to be a link to the playlist from today's episode. There's also going to be a link to Raymond's website. So you can definitely take advantage of purchasing one or all of his books for that matter. All right. my drop the needle posse like Billy Joel says from the highs to the lows to the end of the show. This is the end of our show. Until next time, this is Jamal Stott wishing you infinite health and happiness and the perfect playlist for your life. Thank you again for being the best part of us. Catch you next time.