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I was born on the east coast about a year after the British Invasion. The influences were good and the weather in the winter was mostly beautifully harsh.
I grew up listening to a lot of music. Of course it all started with with my parents were listening to at the time and I think I got a terrific education.
I moved around as a military brat and learned to know all kinds of people and hear all kinds of music, mostly American. Probably the strangest thing I heard before I turned 6 was The Jefferson Airplane's "After Bathing At Baxters" album. Prior to that I had been furnished a steady diet of The Brat Pack, Julie London, The Kingston Trio and what ever was on pop radio back then. Herman's Hermits and Gary Lewis and the Playboys were big back then. There was a lot of bubble gum music being played too but my father usually turned to something else calling that stuff long haired music. Man,, had he been insulated in the military or what? A few years later he bought the soundtrack to Woodstock and seemed to have no complaints until Jimi Hendrix performed the Star Spangled Banner. Long haired music indeed.
As the years went into the mid 70's I had my own likes and dislikes in music. My folks had taken to listening to EZ-listening crap like the stuff they played in elevators. If I did not know better I would have sworn they were coming down off a long acid trip and this was the way to soothe their frazzled nerves.
Jim Croce changed that for a while and suddenly they were listening to the radio again. The Jackson 5 and the DeFranco Family and Alice Cooper were all being played interspersed with comedy bits from some stoner comedians named Cheech and Chong. My folks would have nothing to do with that counter-culture but they thought those guys were hilarious. The radio stayed on and I closed my eyes and listened and learned.
I was sixteen when I started playing guitar. Before then I played drums in Junior High School and sang in the Grade School Chorus. Nothing has stuck with me quite like the guitar over the years. One gets to smoking or has problems with neighbors complaining about drum sounds late at night and you wind up staying with the guitar. The guitar has been my friend and companion when there was no one else to turn to. Through the guitar I could express myself in a way so much more versatile than drums. Has a drum solo ever made you cry? I mean except for at a military funeral? I rest my case.
I continue my love affair with music of all flavors but am especially captured by the guitar. Of all the things they have manged to replicate in sounds for loop users the guitar is the most difficult to recreate accurately. I can hear the subtle differences and so as technology makes it's great strides and gains in mimicking human nuances I shall use the guitar as a watermark test of whether or not "It's alive!"
Grow ye great computers and nanobites! I shall be watching and listening and waiting for the day when you make original music that stirs the soul. On that day I will shake your virtual hand and hire you to write my music.
Blog 
| Coming Back Soon | September 22, 2010 |
Life gets in the way but the music goes on.
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| Raising Steam | August 8, 2010 |
I hear ya knockin' but ya can't come in!
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| Music/Lyrics/Poetry/Spoken Word/Yet To Be Discovered Countries | March 1, 2010 |
In this space I intend to engage others in diatribes about what influences and or inspires them.
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