The Roundball Rock Edition

On inspiration, musicianship, and pop culture

Colin here. I can’t get enough of the clip where John Tesh dramatically plays the answering machine recording he left for himself—a spontaneous melody that would eventually be etched into every American’s brain:

The TLDR: Tesh was traveling to cover the Tour de France in 1989 when he woke up suddenly in Megève, France, with an idea. Knowing how easily it could vanish, he called his own answering machine back home in the States to capture it, humming energetically into the phone. It’s brilliant, hilarious, and relatable:

When he returned home, Tesh took this voicemail, placed the answering machine literally onto his keyboard, and began riffing, gradually bringing in his band to turn a rough voice memo into the iconic, polished composition.

The kicker: NBC had put out the call for a new NBA theme song to legendary composers like John Williams and Hans Zimmer. But against the odds, they chose the enthusiastic melody that Tesh first captured in a half-awake voicemail. It didn’t hurt that he cut it on a video tape with some reference footage of iconic basketball players to add to the drama and cement the sale.

NBC executives didn’t just like it; they ran with it, cementing it as the NBA’s iconic musical signature for more than a decade, becoming the soundtrack to Michael Jordan’s reign and the league’s growth through the 1990s.

Why is this interesting?

Creative ideas rarely show up neatly packaged. More often, they hit unexpectedly: traveling, showering, walking, or just when you’ve stopped actively “trying.” Tesh’s voicemail hits hard because we’ve all experienced the fleeting nature of an idea.

Had he not acted instantly, humming it into a voicemail, that song would likely never have existed. And what differentiates truly prolific creatives from everyone else isn’t raw imagination alone, but their methods of capturing ideas when inspiration strikes: voicemails, scribbled notes, voice memos, sketches.

Externalizing inspiration, like Tesh did, bridges that critical gap between idea and execution. It makes something ephemeral tangible and preserves it for later crafting. But equally impressive is the discipline required to take that raw kernel and transform it into something iconic. (CJN)