Dearly Beloved: MCK tribute to Kenny Le May at his memorial in LA 4/23/16

Dearly Beloved…

We are gathered here today….

To help each other get through this thing called...LIFE!!!

And damn, this thing called life gets hard, in all kinda ways we can’t plan nowadays, don’t it?

But let’s not ever let this thing called life get so hard, that we can’t come together to honor a man who truly seemed to know how to live it right, right?!?

For those of you here who don’t know who I am, my name is Matt Koelling.

I was, no wait, I AM, a friend of Kenny’s.

Yesterday, I was on my way back here to LA from Philly, coming back from another funeral this week, but knew today I was gonna get up here to speak.

Anyone familiar with me, knows I can be prone to terminal verbosity. So on the flight back last night, figured I’d write Kenny, since this is now the longest gap in 15 years we hadn’t been in contact, so I’ll read it to him while with you…

Whattup Ken,

Prince is dead.

My friend Angel (Nasuti’s girl) is too.

You know him, obviously, but met her too, back during my South Bay days, around ‘04/’05 when those two still lived down in Long Beach.

And that help you were telling me to get him when we spoke on it that night, well…much like you were more often than I readily admitted, you were right.

“Never leave your brother behind”-K. Le May

So now that’s something that his sister, brother, and me/we are gonna be trying to do, while for some reason, I feel he’s gonna make it thru.

You may not have been the biggest Prince Fan, but you know that I am.

Sure, you gave him credit on the big stuff: his 80’s classics, his virtuoso guitar-playing or prolific pen, an ability to seize big moments (like the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame or Super Bowl) as a performer, artist, etc.

Not sure why we’re talking music, but while here I gotta say Ken, I’m still mad about that time you said Justin Timberlake was as talented as Michael Jackson, or Kid Rock was an innovative artists for our generation.

You knew that was gonna make me apoplectic.

That was black-belt trolling before social-media.

Just for that, I gotta let everyone here know Kenny LeMay’s favorite Rihanna song was “Pour It Up“.

That’s right, Kenny had a favorite Rihanna song.

I have multiple texts, unsolicited, to prove itt on my phone.

Matter fact, Kenny sent me three messages on RiRi during these first two months of 2016 alone.

But lemme stop trying to play you out in public.

if I had to pick a favorite Rihanna song, mine right today would be “Stay”…much like I truly wish that you….with every fiber of my being, had been able to do, for at least a little longer.

That way, instead of being up here in this crowded crying room, it’d be just another beautiful spring Saturday afternoon in Southern California.

You and me would probably be ready to hit up the pier, or hang out on your top deck, to “Pour It Up”.

Unfortunately, as we learned once again two days ago, “Sometimes It Snows In April”.

Meanwhile, most of us are still trying to dig out from underneath the avalanche that crashed down upon all those who love you in March.

And my bad…I lied when I said that I’m not sure why I’m up here talking music with you.

It’s for the same reason I talk sports with you.

For the same reason I loved to debate with you.

Same reason I tested out my best comedy on you.

Same reason there’s no one else I’ve ever watched more concert movies/documentaries with, exponentially after midnight, in my entire life.

The very same reason that you were always my first place to go, whenever I had that overwhelmed feeling, the one I get whenever I let things drag on too long, so long it became embedded in my brain, in waves that not even an avoidant-behavior ninja like me could repel on my own.

Some seemingly enormous burden that I’d been carrying around LA, on my shoulders, all alone.

Whether it was a job issue, an affair of the heart, or driving around Los Angeles in an untrustworthy vehicle with expired NJ tags, for ludicrous amounts of time, about which I won’t incriminate myself here.

You heard me out and you’d get it…You always did…even when you didn’t…Because if not, rather than smile and nod, you would stop me, pressing pause to indicate when, where, if, or sometimes why, you didn’t get it.

That way I could decode it by articulating it to you, eventually realizing why that worry, or idea, was or wasn’t really worth the energy in the first place.

But we mighta had to toss it around a bit, debate it, for a few minutes, hours, or even a full day or two, while navigating between those two points.

Kinda like I’m now negotiating thru this space.

But how you do that without your sounding board?

Where My Brotha At?!?

My West Coast Consigliere?!?

One of the biggest factors in how I ever survived in Los Angeles over the past 13 years?

One of the main reasons I knew that everything would be cool even before getting here?

The dude who dubbed me “Matty Rapper”, several years before I’d ever written an original rhyme?

It’s been nearly two months since Mitra called that night, but that’s an answer I’m still trying to find.

But who would I be to go all woe-is-me.

I know that time of love, laughs, and life that you provided for many, including yours truly, is much more than 99% of this planet‘s population will ever be blessed to see.

So…Draft Day is around the corner.

Wishing you were gonna be around to DVR it for me, so we could go into airplane/armchair mode per usual, with so many pauses into extended smoke-breaks, filled with excited speculation intermittently in between.

Don’t think I’m gonna bother to watch this year, without having you along for the ride.

Not to mention, the Birds just made a trade eerily reminiscent of one your Skins made for RGIII.

But anyway, Prince is dead.

That’s what the man on the news said.

Still, his music, much like my memories of you, will always play, on and on, till the break of dawn, pumping loudly clear between my ears, whether on some headphones, or in my mind’s eye.

True Legends Never Die.

So consider this just one small way, to thank you, my brotha, because like Little Michael once sang, ”I’m never gonna say goodbye”.