I was killing some time in a nearby record store yesterday when the conversation the owner was having with another customer made it’s way to a fairly common rumor about a friend of a friend. More than just a friend of a friend, the outright best friend of a close friend of mine for over 15 years – so I have some perspective on this. I’m friendly enough with the owner that I didn’t feel too bad about jumping in to point out that I was quite certain that this rumor wasn’t true. There was some is to/is not for a while while each of us casually suggested to the other that we had fist hand knowledge to back up our statements. No names were dropped by anyone but I shifted the discussion “so what?” because honestly this rumor is nothing about this person’s character, in this might be the most untarnished and widely recognized as a honest and stand up guy in an entire scene. Someone who across the board everyone agrees this guy has tried to do the right thing from day one, and been fairly successful at it. There are no stories about deals gone bad, no stories about backs being stabbed. So it’s interesting to me that absent anything negative to say about him personally it’s almost as if the world can’t handle it – how can there be a guy with no dirt at all – and generates orbiting crap that can be linked to him. This is intentionally vague of course, but it made me think about balance and reputations and how these things all fit together.