electronpirate
Axe-Master
This is always of interest to me. (Dating myself content...)
My story:
Coming from a musical background (my mother and father met in an off-broadway version of 'West Side Story' (he a Shark, she the moll of the lead Jet ha!), I grew up listening to showtunes and music in general. (Yeah, I still love Neil Diamond...don't judge.)
There were 2 moments where I decided 'I'm going to do this' when it came to guitar.
One, my parents took me to a show at the Paulo Soleri in Santa Fe (small outdoor amplitheater), where John Denver was playing. At that time, I had graduated in my listening to Deep Purple, with 'Machine Head' on constant rotation. I was a bit scornful in my youth, thinking 'I'll be bored'. Wrong in every way. John Denver TOOK OVER that crowd with just him and his 12 string. He told a story with every song, you could have heard a pin drop as people could not wait to hear what he had to say or sing (the only other 2 people I've seen who've been able to do that is Bono, and Springsteen.) For 2 hours, just him and his guitar, I watched someone take an audience on a journey with him. I was incredibly impressed. He was one of the last of the 'folky' types in the realm of Chapin, Guthrie, Croce, etc (David Wilcox can do the same thing, but somehow it's not the same.)
Two: Not long after, I went to a double bill of Foreigner and Styx. In my Tequila and 'contact high from THC', Foreigner was touching the bases...nothing to report. Styx took the stage, and Tommy Shaw ripped things apart from second one. He dealt off mindlessly fast riffs while scooting side to side on the stage. I suspect he was pretty new in the band, and had something to prove (Grand Illusion tour). It's like there was zero boundaries in between him and his guitar; one perpetual motion machine only intent on knocking faces off heads. He looked comically small with his Les Paul White Custom slung low, but to my ears, he didn't miss a thing.
After that, seeing 2 diametrically opposed styles of music, that was something I WANTED. If nothing else, I would live that life even if it would not be my mainstay. Truth to tell, I should have taken that leap (I have the talent, but a problematic brain that makes quite a bit more money running zero's and one's through computers...goldy handcuffs,) but in the end we end up where we're supposed to be. I started as soon as I could afford an acoustic, spent 6 months spending every waking possible hour playing the Eagles Greatest Hits, and anything off of whatever records were lying around, and hit a point where I 'got it'. A year later I was playing in bands filling in for whatever was needed...bass, piano (hey, I cheated and played the guitar chords on the piano...), rhythm guitar, some lead, and most lead vocals.
That was my start. Here I am, years later, and those early memories are why I trudge downstairs as often as I can to fire up the guitar, close my eyes, and find it's 4 hours later...
What's yours?
R
My story:
Coming from a musical background (my mother and father met in an off-broadway version of 'West Side Story' (he a Shark, she the moll of the lead Jet ha!), I grew up listening to showtunes and music in general. (Yeah, I still love Neil Diamond...don't judge.)
There were 2 moments where I decided 'I'm going to do this' when it came to guitar.
One, my parents took me to a show at the Paulo Soleri in Santa Fe (small outdoor amplitheater), where John Denver was playing. At that time, I had graduated in my listening to Deep Purple, with 'Machine Head' on constant rotation. I was a bit scornful in my youth, thinking 'I'll be bored'. Wrong in every way. John Denver TOOK OVER that crowd with just him and his 12 string. He told a story with every song, you could have heard a pin drop as people could not wait to hear what he had to say or sing (the only other 2 people I've seen who've been able to do that is Bono, and Springsteen.) For 2 hours, just him and his guitar, I watched someone take an audience on a journey with him. I was incredibly impressed. He was one of the last of the 'folky' types in the realm of Chapin, Guthrie, Croce, etc (David Wilcox can do the same thing, but somehow it's not the same.)
Two: Not long after, I went to a double bill of Foreigner and Styx. In my Tequila and 'contact high from THC', Foreigner was touching the bases...nothing to report. Styx took the stage, and Tommy Shaw ripped things apart from second one. He dealt off mindlessly fast riffs while scooting side to side on the stage. I suspect he was pretty new in the band, and had something to prove (Grand Illusion tour). It's like there was zero boundaries in between him and his guitar; one perpetual motion machine only intent on knocking faces off heads. He looked comically small with his Les Paul White Custom slung low, but to my ears, he didn't miss a thing.
After that, seeing 2 diametrically opposed styles of music, that was something I WANTED. If nothing else, I would live that life even if it would not be my mainstay. Truth to tell, I should have taken that leap (I have the talent, but a problematic brain that makes quite a bit more money running zero's and one's through computers...goldy handcuffs,) but in the end we end up where we're supposed to be. I started as soon as I could afford an acoustic, spent 6 months spending every waking possible hour playing the Eagles Greatest Hits, and anything off of whatever records were lying around, and hit a point where I 'got it'. A year later I was playing in bands filling in for whatever was needed...bass, piano (hey, I cheated and played the guitar chords on the piano...), rhythm guitar, some lead, and most lead vocals.
That was my start. Here I am, years later, and those early memories are why I trudge downstairs as often as I can to fire up the guitar, close my eyes, and find it's 4 hours later...
What's yours?
R
