Chris and Rollo

Chris and Rollo

About Chris Aridas, deceased

    My late husband, Chris Aridas  was a musician, a poet and an avid reader of history, poetry, and philosophy.  He delighted in his enormous library and his many musical instruments, but more than anything,  he loved our home in Columbia County, New York where we lived joyously, with our large family of dogs and cats. We had first met in 1974, when I was in New York studying to be an actress.  We met again in 1985, married in 1986, and in 1990 we left Manhattan, and moved to the beautiful Hudson Valley, where we started a successful business, and lived happily ever after until his death.  Chris was a man of great gentleness, wit and knowledge.  He died at the age of 57, in 2008.  This is for you, Chris. Long may you run.
    As a teenager, Chris began playing guitar and worked for Sam Ash Music, in New York and Brooklyn, while he was attending Brooklyn College.  In 1971, he played guitar/vocals in the band Chelsea, Decca Records, with Peter Criss (later of Kiss). Later, he was involved in the music scene at CBGB’s, and was lead guitarist and composer for the band, Lemur and Flamingo.  While living in the Hudson Valley, he played with several groups, notably, Radio Game with  capital region drummer Michael Caputo. During our upstate New York years, Chris developed an interest in acoustic instruments, and played Dobro, and mandolin, as well as acoustic and electric guitar.  He loved classic bluegrass and early blues music, but his greatest pleasure was in playing the blues, rock style, as he had done since his early years,  and he was noted for his flair for slide guitar, which was the cornerstone of his style in our blues group, the Wild Blue Wolves, and later with Hudson River School artist, James Cramer and guitarist/singer Mark Patton in Patton's Rumble.
    Chris kept a very large library of books of all sorts, but especially ones on western and eastern philosophy, western civilization and poetry from all the ages.  Wherever we went, whatever the occasion, Chris always carried a book with him. His reading list is vast, but he was a student of history and poetry, and in the last two years of his life, read the entire works of Shakespeare, all of the extant Greek comedies and tragedies, as well as the Odyssey and the Iliad.   In addition to his reading library, he built a large CD library, containing not only the rock music he so enjoyed, but also early jazz, classical, and movie soundtracks.   
    Chris was the most loving, indulgent, and supportive of husbands, and our life was filled with  the richness of local chamber music in the winter,  opera in the summer, and many trips to art museums throughout.  But some of our happiest moments were spent aimlessly driving in the Catskill or Berkshire Mountains on a cool, autumn day, a Rolling Stones’ CD playing as we drove; or sitting by our fireplace of a winter’s evening, with each other, and our many cats and dogs.
   
   © Celeste Plowden, 2010