OK we all got that it is freakin’ winter. We get the cold. We get the snow. We get frostbite. We get that it has to be grey with no color showing. We get it. The lack of color is probably the worst part of winter. The grey of the sky and the dirty white of the snow becomes the monotone of our existence, we almost forget what color looks like.

This situation reminds me of a time back in April of 2000 when Blue Oyster Cult was having a tough time reentering the music business as megastars. They had recorded a song called “Don’t Fear The Reaper” that was promising. It had a good beat, you could dance to it. It was pert not to mention sassy. It had good rhythm and made you tap your foot to it. But it was missing something. You noticed it right off. “Damn that’s a great tune but it’s missing something” was a comment heard around many a water cooler.  Fortunately Christopher Walken was there to save the day.

According to Saturday Night Live (SNL) Christopher Walken brought the band into their studio and immediately figured out what the song was missing. Cowbell. It needed more cowbell to bring it into gold record territory, make that Platinum territory. Fortunately Will Farrell was up to the task and added the needed cowbell and more. Soon the song was off the charts, and Blue Oyster Cult was saved from a life of oblivion.

When you look outside right now, go ahead and look we’ll  wait, you’ll see nothing but shades of grey. It’s lacking something, just like “Don’t Fear The Reaper” was missing something. No it’s not Cowbell, but if cowbell were color that would be what it was missing. So I guess if the concept is the same you could exchange cowbell for color or color for cowbell and it would work.

So that ‘s what I did this morning. I took an old black and white image that had turned mostly to grey and I added color. Then I added more color and kept adding it until there was enough cowbell, if you get what I mean. Looking at it made me feel a lot better. I looked back outside and it was still grey so I came back and looked at this image some more. I gotta tell ya, I feel a lot better. I think this could work for you too. If you’re just, like sick, and I mean sick, of this time of year, spend sometime looking at this picture. Or get a picture of your own. Make sure it’s got plenty of color in it. Stare at it a lot and soon I’ll bet you’ll be hearing Cowbells. I know I do.

NOTE: As of 01-10-2018 The link below has since broken, was removed, or just doesn’t work anymore, so it won’t do any good to click it. If you’re determined however to see the video mentioned, google cowbell, SNL, skit, whatever you can think of and it should popup. If it doesn’t too bad, it was really funny.

P.S. if you’re still fuzzy on the whole cowbell thing watch this skit from SNL and it’ll make more sense. Maybe. Here’s the link https://vimeo.com/55624839