Music a Flight of fancy for Cup director Darby

Pity John Darby, the Nextel Cup division's top cop.

Why? Because he has a severe case of selective amnesia.

Back in the day -- waaaay back -- Darby was the drummer for a band called Flight during his high-school and early college years. Mostly, Flight was a cover band, belting out tunes made famous by other, better known groups. Still, Flight wrote maybe 10 to 12 original songs during its six-year run between 1969 and 1975 or so, and by gosh, the band even recorded a few of those originals for a demo project.

That's where Darby's forgetfulness starts coming into play.

What were the names of some of the songs the guys in Flight wrote?

Darby can't remember.

Surely, the tracks still exist, right?

Nope ... or so Darby, a native of Rockford, Ill., says.

"Nah, I don't believe they do," he said. "All the recordings got lost in the fire."

What fire?

"I don't know what happened," Darby concluded.

Don't even bother to ask about pictures from his hey day as a rock-and-roll drummer. That's as taboo a subject to Darby as a 400-cubic-inch engine would be. Publicity stills of Flight and shots of Darby in action on stage have existed ... you can bet your last high-hat on that. But they were evidently lost in that same tragic fire.

Either that, or he just doesn't want anybody to see them. No, that couldn't be the case. Could it?

OK, so it's probably best to try a different approach with Darby about his musical career. Who, at the very least, did Flight sound like? Finally, Darby says that Flight was influenced by Cheap Trick "before they were Cheap Trick." That band, also based out of Rockford, was in its formative stages at about the same time as Flight.

"It was that type, not hard rock, really, but it was rock and roll," said Darby, describing Flight's sound. (Continued)