Discovering the music......whats your story?

[Monkus]

I don't know if this is the right place for this post, if it isn't apologies in advance. I thought it might be interesting to hear (read) the different stories on how we got started.

I was 6 (or 7) in the Junior choir of our church. My parents made me go even though I hated it at first. There was this old piano and I used to plonk on it to while the time away before I was picked up. I remember hearing "Fill up my senses" by John Denver somewhere and it stuck in my head. I was playing it with both hands before I knew I was playing it. Then I learnt some of the hymns that I had liked.

I didn't realize I was playing music until one of the church organists found me playing. Apparently that piano was off limits but she didn't care and I heard she stood there for about 15 minutes just watching me play. She corrected some mistakes and helped me with some fingering but never tried to teach me theory, which I'm grateful for. If I was forced to learn music theory at that age, I think I would have quit. I wanted to play what I heard.

My dad had an old classical Palmer guitar that I released from its misery from his closet and started to play that. I was playing steelpan, piano and organ in church before I was 10, guitar at around 15, no formal training, but the training I got from my older peers was invaluable.

Play what you like, but play it right - whats your story?

[just strum]

Mine, like many my age was The Beatles. Although I was aware of music before that, it wasn't until they arrived on the scene did I really take an interest. I was about 8 years old at the time, but only dabbled in drums and guitar, never really dedicating myself.

Years later, I am now embarking on my dream to play guitar. Even today, life takes time away from the enjoyment of learning to play, but when I get those times, I truly enter another world.

As for "play it right", I guess I would have to ask "what is right?" I think you will find a number of musicians that don't "play it right", but play it in their style. I let go of playing it right early on, I just play for enjoyment and if it sounds good to me...well, it's right.

[Monkus]

I just play for enjoyment and if it sounds good to me...well, it's right.

Exactly...I had confidence issues early on so I would play really softly, so I didn't "attack" the music as I should. So right for me was getting it to sound like it should in my mind. I totally agree with you.

[street music]

My mother alway had a piano in the house as she played the church piano and my oldest brother was learning when I was about 4 years old. Mom & Dad wanted me to learn Piano but I was more interested in the Beatles, CCR and all the British explosion that was taking place. I wanted to play guitar but they wouldn't hear of that evil piece being in their home. SO I DIDN'T LEARN anything other than my love for evil music.
I have been learning now into my 3rd year and hope , like Strum to someday be able to sit with others and play.

[Spudman]

After my parents would beat me and lock me in the closet I would lay there in the dark and listen to the songs that I could faintly hear on the radio. When we would go visit my moms parents I would dink around on the piano they had. No one ever showed me anything about playing it. Then when I was 8 I talked my folks into getting me an acoustic guitar (Santa really) and taught myself to play.

My love for music all started in 1965 when I got my first Beatles record.

[just strum]

Exactly...I had confidence issues early on so I would play really softly, so I didn't "attack" the music as I should. So right for me was getting it to sound like it should in my mind. I totally agree with you.

To better explain my comment, this is something said to me by one of the fretters here. I only changed "...easier for you to play like Strum" to "...easier for you to play like you"

It's printed and sitting near my gear.

Regardless of who you are, your level of experience, or how much you think you might suck... NOBODY can play like YOU! Your playing is unique... and that's what makes it an art and not a logical exercise.

Why sound like Clapton... the world already has one of those.

Why work so hard at trying to sound like SRV or Hendrix or whoever else... already been done... by SRV and Hendrix and whoever else!

Wouldn't it be easier for you to play like you? You already know how!

Embrace your own muse... don't waste your time coveting others.

I will let the author speak up if he so chooses.

[wingsdad]

I was born into a family of singers of Broadway Show Tunes of the 40's & 50's and of Movie Musicals of the '30's & 40's. My parents didn't play instruments, but they loved their music and there was always music on the 'Victrola' filling the house. We lived down the block from my dad's brother and his family, and they had a Wurlitzer organ that he'd play and lead the gathered clan in sing-alongs. My cousins & I were thrust to center stage at these gatherings as soon as we could stand.

My earliest birthday and Christmas gifts were the typical children's instruments...xylophone, a 'Schroeder' piano, drums...

... then, at age 5, came this particular Christmas gift I'd asked Santa for, that'd I'd seen played on TV by this adult with funny ears on his head, just like all the kids he lead in song, that mystified me until I heard Elvis Presley on the radio & TV in '56...suddenly, I knew what I wanted to do with music, and I 'assumed the position' with my genuine Mouseguitar:

http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b81/wingsdad/TheFretNet%20Pix/c9f09bfa.jpg

The first record I ever bought was an Elvis 4-cut 45 (Hound Dog, Don't Be Cruel, My Baby Left Me, I Want You-I Need You-I Love You). I'd sing along as I thumped hopefully on the hopelessly and perpetually out-of-tune plastic ukulele.

An older cousin (3 years older) gave me a real guitar a few years later, a Sears Silvertone acoustic he handed off to me when he got his Sears Silvertone Danelectro. It was hard to play, but he showed me some stuff that was just amazing, especially since he played lefty, strung righty (chords upside down) and GAS overtook me to this day by the age of 11.

I was happy to make progress for a couple of years, getting sporadic lessons from him with Duane Eddy, Chet Atkins licks, The Ventures, other surf and country stuff, but these were instrumentals, kinda boring to me, and he didn't sing. Then he showed me some Chuck Berry licks until that same cousin, Canadian with early access to stuff coming over the pond from the Mother Country, turned me on to this album he'd just got of 4 young guys in suits and funny haircuts from England in the summer or fall of '63, and one of the tunes on it was Chuck's Roll Over Beethoven...a tune I knew how to play and could sing.

As with Strummy & Spudman, the Beatles kicked the whole thing up a notch.

Sunday night, Feb. 9, 1964, was truly a life-changing experience, and I was in my first garage band within a week.

[just strum]

w88VXGTrQ5c&feature=related

[ted s]

I think I was 6, I had one of these..
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_8ItFDPb3vv8/SFZ3m9uLm0I/AAAAAAAAAto/7Ti3rgj5OeY/s400/mickey%2Brecord%2Bplayer.jpg
Early one Sunday morning while my parents were still sleeping I went through a stack of 45's that were inside one of those big old console am/fm reel-reel stereo's and found The Animals House of the Rising Sun & The Beatles Revoluton. Years later I scooped Eric Clapton's Rainbow Concert from the same stash. I still have it somewhere.

[wingsdad]

Thanks for that clip, Strummy...:AOK:

Gathered around the little b/w set in our living room like so many families did every Sunday night at 8 Eastern for Sullivan, when they pulled 'Til There Was You from The Music Man out of their bag, my folks were hooked...singing right along with a tune from 'the family repertoire'...I remember my 34-year old Mom swooning over Paul, much to Dad's befuddlement.

3 nights later, Feb. 12, they played 2 shows at Carnegie Hall. Living just 30 minutes north of NYC, a friend of mine's dad was a photographer for the NY Daily News assigned to cover it.

The next day, my 14th birthday, when I walked into my 8th Grade English class, that friend handed me this 8x10 and said: "...my dad couldn't use this one, the drummer didn't come out good, and since all you've talked about since Sunday...Happy Birthday":

http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b81/wingsdad/BeatlesCarnegiesm.jpg

I've read somewhere that photographers were banned that night, but obviously, that's not quite right...this was a newspaper photog...maybe that's why he couldn't use it?

[marnold]

You guys are old :)

I took piano lessons but there was no love for it. I wanted to take up guitar because my uncle would occasionally bust out his acoustic and play some hippie music (Peter, Paul, and Mary, etc.). I wanted to learn, but I wanted an electric. That got nixed. I played a crappy acoustic for a few years before discovering the bass. I played in a band my senior year in high school using the school's bass. I got my own before I went to college and played in a couple of bands, but only talent show-level "gigs". In high school I also became a metal head which just increased my desire to play guitar. After I was married a couple of years I finally bought an electric. I've been trying to wrestle with the darn thing ever since.

[cherokee747]

Rolling Stones and the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. That's all it took for me. Yeah I'm old too!!! Mike

[street music]

It appears that the Beatles effect on many of us was the turning point in music. That makes me feel as I am part of a great era of music that transformed this ageless generation.

[Monkus]

Regardless of who you are, your level of experience, or how much you think you might suck... NOBODY can play like YOU! Your playing is unique... and that's what makes it an art and not a logical exercise.

Why sound like Clapton... the world already has one of those.

Why work so hard at trying to sound like SRV or Hendrix or whoever else... already been done... by SRV and Hendrix and whoever else!

Wouldn't it be easier for you to play like you? You already know how!

Embrace your own muse... don't waste your time coveting others.

My vote for sticky !!!

[kiteman]

My vote for sticky !!!

Agreed, We are unique! :)

The Ventures is what got me excited and I told my dad I want a guitar for Xmas. I was ten at the time and when Xmas rolled around there was an F-holed acoustic guitar under the tree.

And that's not all, I also got a "Play with the Ventures" album with 4 songs on it. What a cool dad. :)

Now the Beatles comes around and I wanted an electric guitar. My mom bought me an Airline 335 copy from Wards and a Silvertone piggyback amp from Sears.

In jr high I met some friends and we got together to play.

"We are the Brazen Men!" :)

[wingsdad]

Agreed, We are unique! :) ...

Ah...but with so much in common, we are not alone. There's a tie that binds :beer:

Kiteman, you're 58...I'm 59...and the parallel paths of the beginning of our musical journey are uncanny: From the spark of the Ventures (you were 10, I was 11...so it was 1961), to the kickstart of that first band with Jr. High buddies inspired by the Beatles, that Silvertone amp (I wanted that piggyback, but had to settle for the $80 1x12 combo).

A little difference...I had moved from the $13 Silvertone acoustic to my first electric rig by 13 -- a 3/4 scale 2 pickup Chicago-made Harmony solid body (available from Sears catalog as a Silvertone) with a used Kay combo amp -- for $125 from a little local store, money loaned by my mom that I paid back from a paper route, cutting lawns and snow shoveling. Winning a Jr. High Battle of the Bands with that little rig justified another loan & payback, though, ...for a Gibson ES330 ($260) and a Fender Deluxe Reverb ($169). This time, payback was accelerated with scoring a pretty steady stream of gigs at the local Rec Center, Jr High Dances, House parties...usually for around $50...split 4 ways. Our parents took turns hauling us back & forth.

[kiteman]

Ah...but with so much in common, we are not alone. There's a tie that binds :beer:

Kiteman, you're 58...I'm 59...and the parallel paths of the beginning of our musical journey are uncanny: From the spark of the Ventures (you were 10, I was 11...so it was 1961), to the kickstart of that first band with Jr. High buddies inspired by the Beatles, that Silvertone amp (I wanted that piggyback, but had to settle for the $80 1x12 combo).

A little difference...I had moved from the $13 Silvertone acoustic to my first electric rig by 13 -- a 3/4 scale 2 pickup Chicago-made Harmony solid body (available from Sears catalog as a Silvertone) with a used Kay combo amp -- for $125 from a little local store, money loaned by my mom that I paid back from a paper route, cutting lawns and snow shoveling. Winning a Jr. High Battle of the Bands with that little rig justified another loan & payback, though, ...for a Gibson ES330 ($260) and a Fender Deluxe Reverb ($169). This time, payback was accelerated with scoring a pretty steady stream of gigs at the local Rec Center, Jr High Dances, House parties...usually for around $50...split 4 ways. Our parents took turns hauling us back & forth.

Man, that's just amazing, we're soul brothers. :beer:

You almost described my life. I did pretty much the same thing as to cutting grass, odd jobs for older folks, etc. We played at birthday parties, talent shows, and school functions.

My bandmate never did like me playing Pipeline with reverb and tremolo. I thought that was cool. I was really impressed with that piggyback. :rockon:

[sumitomo]

Good question,I dug the Beatles,Stones,BeachBoys,Turtles(Im 52 and had an older sister who went to school with Love and the turtles were from Westchester in L.A.)but it was that early Grandfunk Railroad that made me want to play.Sumi:D

[kiteman]

Good question,I dug the Beatles,Stones,BeachBoys,Turtles(Im 52 and had an older sister who went to school with Love and the turtles were from Westchester in L.A.)but it was that early GRAND FUNK RAILROAD that made me want to play.Sumi:D

High Five sumi. :beer:

They're my fav band next to Blue Oyster Cult. Luv them 'guys. :dude:

[street music]

Wingsdad, man you are one lucky guy. To be that close to havind an actual chance at The Beatles. I got to Paul Revere and The Raiders as my first LIVE band just by pure chance on a childhood trip with my Dad. The Turtles, Yardbirds, Ricky Nelson and many more took up some of younger years but it was THE BEATLES that really jump started my love for music.

[wingsdad]

Man, that's just amazing, we're soul brothers. :beer:
:beer:

You almost described my life. I did pretty much the same thing as to cutting grass, odd jobs for older folks, etc. We played at birthday parties, talent shows, and school functions.
My lawn & snow shoveling customers were off my paper route...$5 a lawn/driveway...I loved big all-day snowfalls, cuz I'd get at least 3 shots..am, pm, then next am. There were about 6 of us bands in a public school that had about 300 kids/grade. Each band had its 'niche that was the bulk of their repertoire: a Who band, Stones band, Beatles band, Beach Boys/Surf instros...mine was more eclectic...a little of all of those, and we covered stuff that the others wouldn't touchStax/Volt/Memphis soul, Motown (as covered by the Beatles, and a little twisted, like doing Vanilla Fudge's 'You Keep Me Hangin' On'), the Raiders, Grass Roots, Left Banke, Blues Magoos, ? & The Mysterians, Mitch Ryder...then Cream, Procol Harum, the Doors, but NO Hendrix!...we won most 'Battle of the Bands' gigs, cuz we covered all the 'demographics', not just a core.
....
My bandmate never did like me playing Pipeline with reverb and tremolo. I thought that was cool. I was really impressed with that piggyback. :rockon:
And how about rocking' the amp to get the reverb tank to crackle & splash, to kick off 'Wipe Out'? ;)


Wingsdad, man you are one lucky guy. To be that close to havind an actual chance at The Beatles....
And NOT ever see them in concert :thwap: 25 minutes from NYC, 45 minutes from Shea Stadium...90 minutes from Woodstock (without the traffic jam), and I skipped on that, too....I had pre-season football practice to work out for...didn't find out what pot or drugs were til mid-college...

[kiteman]

Ah yes, wipeout. My drummer did the splash thing with his cymbals.

We played a lot of Ventures and started adding the Beatles when my drummer was drafted and the band broke up. I dropped the guitar then because life beckons. I picked up the guitar in 97 and started playing the 70s stuff that I missed. I'm not interested in gigging though, I'm too tired. :)

[Ro3b]

Depends on which music.

4E5Fm-Ad2tY

0TZ_9-rbslo

nnhwIv4-d-Q

SmhP1RgbrrY

All of which I was deeply into at about the time I started playing. Of course my parents made me take classical guitar lessons. :thwap:

[thearabianmage]

Music has always been in my life, but it never meant anything to me until I saw this older dude playing the solo to Crazy Train when I was 13 or 14. He was a lot taller than me, had a 'beard', big bad boots, a cool guitar, and could play really well (classically trained). I just thought it was the coolest thing ever. From that moment on, music started taking up most of my life, little by little.

Early musical interests include: (pre-guitar) Rammstein, Korn, Mindless Self Indulgence, Insane Clown Posse, Prodigy, Nobuo Uematsu, Yasunori Mitsuda (post-guitar) Metallica, Ozzy and Randy Rhoads, Pantera, Dream Theater, Megadeth, Iron Maiden, Yngwie Malmsteen, Steve Vai

[kiteman]

There's something about classical pieces especially the etudes. They're full of riffs. :)

I started out with a Ventures album and after that I wanted more. That's when I grabbed my sis's piano books and later my mom gave me her organ books.

After a while my mom asked me why I'm playing so high on the guitar. I didn't know that a piano piece was written an octave higher than the guitar. That's when I learned transposing (with a lot of paper work. :))

Yea, I luv guitars. :rockon:

[Fab4]

I'm part of the Beatles spawn, too, but I came to the play late. I'm 50 now, so I was a little too young for them through most of the '60s, especially growing up in central Iowa (not a cultural hotbed).

I missed the Ed Sullivan premiere, but I did see the Beatles cartoon show. That meant I was aware of them, and I always looked for their name among all the pictures of album covers in the record club ads in the Sunday newspaper supplements ("Get 12 LPs for just 1¢!").

In 1968 (I think), my brother and I got a record player plus an album for each of us. He got "The Young Americans" (WAY before Bowie. They were a clean-cut teen singing group with maybe 20 members. On the album cover they looked like some kind of Southern California glee club. That's probably what eventually drove my brother to Black Sabbath, Yes and psychedelic drugs). I got the Beatles Yellow Submarine, because my parents knew I liked the Beatles cartoon show and it looked like a nice, cartoony album cover.

From then on, I wouldn't buy another record until I had all the Beatles' albums, and I started playing guitar the next summer. I was already playing trombone in the fifth grade band, a dorky-nerdy-not-ever-gonna-date-much avocation that continued into my first year at college when I realized I didn't have to DO that anymore.

Today, as you might guess from my handle, the Beatles loom large in my musical identity, and I always gravitate to music that exudes strong melody, wide variety and a sense of joy.

[sunvalleylaw]

That was probably my start too, though my close and play sort of record player looked a little different. I remember a record I had that had songs like "Tie me Kangaroo down, Sport" and stuff like that on it. Cartoon music was probably the other start. We would play "guitar" along with the records either on some cheap bongo drums my folks brought back from Hawaii, or on a cheap ukelele. Piano lessons, and interest in the "Peanuts" theme music (Vince Guaraldi Trio) was likely next.

There is a thread around here somewhere where I give a very lengthy and wordy history of my influences. Ahh, here it is. http://www.thefret.net/showthread.php?t=2625&highlight=ray+conniff


I think I was 6, I had one of these..
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_8ItFDPb3vv8/SFZ3m9uLm0I/AAAAAAAAAto/7Ti3rgj5OeY/s400/mickey%2Brecord%2Bplayer.jpg
Early one Sunday morning while my parents were still sleeping I went through a stack of 45's that were inside one of those big old console am/fm reel-reel stereo's and found The Animals House of the Rising Sun & The Beatles Revoluton. Years later I scooped Eric Clapton's Rainbow Concert from the same stash. I still have it somewhere.

[Monkus]

One for the mods: Can we merge these two threads? This one and ...

Evolution of your musical taste : http://www.thefret.net/showthread.php?t=2625&highlight=ray+conniff

[wingsdad]

... Today, as you might guess from my handle, the Beatles loom large in my musical identity, and I always gravitate to music that exudes strong melody, wide variety and a sense of joy.
You sum it up quite eloquently, Fab4 :master:

Dallas, Texas, November 22, 1963.

JFK is assassinated.

The world joins the USA in mourning.

Embroiled in an increasingly costly conflict in VietNam, a poker game with the USSR, and with a century of both obvious and covert racial and religious tensions coming to a head, a nation that had pinned so much hope on the shoulders of the USA's youngest President ever, is suddenly thrust into further uncertainty and what soon becomes a state of psychological depression.

Young Americans...not that fresh-faced hootenanny group you recall, marketing a salve of plastic sunshine and lollipop ideology...but kids like me, street, kite, and all the rest of us emerging adolescent baby-boomers and our siblings...are...

Scared.

Fire Drills become Air Raid drills that interrupt the school day and parents and towns build bomb shelters in basements, stocking them with canned goods. Evacuation plans are distributed in the local newspaper and are topics on the 3 National TV networks.

What if the Russkies drop the bomb?

December, 1963.

This hits that nation's airwaves...

http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b81/wingsdad/IWannaHoldsm.jpg

...followed by a stream of fresh music that exudes strong melody, wide variety and a sense of joy from these guys.

The kids sing along: "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!"

Life may not be much different, but it sure feels better.

So that frenzily anticipated Ed Sullivan broadcast of Feb. 9, 1964, less than 3 months after JFK was taken, was a virtual collective adrenaline rush for an entire generation.

That's why geezers like me recall 'The 60's' so fondly and forlornly.

History has a way of repeating itself.

I've been waiting patiently for the cycle to complete, for the sake of my grandchildren.

Sorry for that, folks, and if that waxed too political for the Mods', or anyone here's tastes, then by all means, you can delete the post.

[kiteman]

Agreed from this old geezer too. I remember that very well.

I don't understand how getting under your desk (during the drill) is gonna prevent you from getting vaporized. :whatever:

[scgmhawk]

Well, got my start when I found an old crappy acoustic in my parents closet. I had never seen anyone in the house use it! Anyway, I enjoyed fiddling around on it (probably since XBOX wasn't invented yet!) and began taking lessons at around 9 years old. I was great at playing Puff the Magic Dragon! I got a Fender Stratocastor in the mid-late 70's and started to get into rock but my teacher was a Jazz instructor. Actually took Jazz lessons for about 8 or 9 years, but didn't care for it. And have pretty much forgotten everything he taught me anyway! Much preferred jamming to Ted Nugent, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, etc. Then Eddie Van Halen came onto the scene and I thought it was the greatest thing I had ever heard! I never practiced enough to get that good but it kept me going back then. Then, I quit playing for like 15 years and recently picked up playing again about 4 years ago.

[Brian Krashpad]

Like a lot of other people here, there was some background of music in my house. My dad played banjo and was into folk music in the '60's. Which is kind of funny because people think of that era and music as kinda a leftist anti-war stereotype, and Dad was an officer in the US Navy at the time. In elementary school we lived out in California, and I can remember hearing my dad's "Wayfarers At the Hungry I" record, while the radio had all the great rock bands of the time.

In junior high school we lived in Maryland, a little bit out in the country, in a sort of enclave where an extended family all lived within about a half-mile of one another. They went to our church, so we knew them all well. Their last name was "George" so we jokingly called the neighborhood "Georgetown." My dad would go over to one of the George houses (all the Georges were my unofficial "uncles") and play banjo and one or more of the Georges, including my uncle Dale, played guitar, and we'd sing old folk songs like "Jimmy Crack Corn" and "Little Brown Jug" and "Good Night Irene" and stuff. Sounds kind of corny but it was a real golden time.

At that point (junior high school, early '70's) I started playing acoustic guitar. My dad had brought back a no-name acoustic from Japan he got on one of his 'Nam tours when we had lived in Cali, and he said if I could learn to play it, I could have it. He had a "Mel Bay" lesson book, so I taught myself some chords. At school, they actually had a music program you could take as an elective, so of course I took guitar. The teacher basically asked if anyone already knew how to play at all, and stuck me and a couple stoner dudes out in the hallway and gave us an "A" for the semester, while the class lessons went on in the classroom. So those guys taught me some rock songs.

I wanted to take guitar every semester, but the program wouldn't allow it. Basically, you had to do the whole program first before you could repeat an instrument. So I dutifully took recorder for a semester and keyboards for a semester, and the following year took guitar again.

For high school we moved to Jacksonville, Florida. My high school had an inter-denominational Christian fellowship group called "Young Life." It would meet weekly in a member's home. We played acoustics and sang. A lot of John Denver action, "Kum Bay Yah," and that sort of thing. That got me used to playing in front of other people.

During college here in Gainesville I had a crappy Sears-type electric, but didn't play it too much. I took a year or so off between undergrad and law school and taught school and lived with my folks, and finally bought a decent electric and a decent amp. Towards the end of law school, I got in a "party band" with a bunch of friends. I played in bands like that, playing the very occasional bar gigs but mostly just parties, during the rest of the '80's.

In '89 I got in my first "originals" band and have been doing that ever since.

[sunvalleylaw]

In addition to the commercial music influences I listed above and in the link above, I should mention my Dad played Alto sax (he still plays Alto, and Baritone sax), and my Grandma on his side played a lot of piano and organ. In fact, they owned a local theatre out in Port Orchard, WA (near Bremerton) where she played the organ during newsreels and for silent movies. My Grandpa on my Mom's side also played and had an organ in his home, where we spent a lot of time. So a lot of exposure there. Piano lessons was just sort of what you did in our family, so that started at a young age. When I started, I really enjoyed "Boogie Woogie" sounding pieces, and of course, the Guaraldi Peanuts stuff.

[Fab4]

Brian and Sun Valley, it must have been great to have music like that as an integral part of your upbringing. My mom played piano a little at Christmas, and we had a record player but we only had like four albums (the soundtrack to The Music Man was one). I often wonder where I'd be now, musically speaking, if I had had live music around me from the day I was born. It wasn't until I took up guitar seriously, followed by my brother and sister, that we became a "musical family."

And today, kids coming up have access to AMAZING stuff - You Tube lessons and performance videos, all kinds of CD and DVD lessons and concerts, internet TAB and song lyrics with chords...

Geeze, I would have KILLED for a close-up glimpse of the Beatles or Chet Atkins at work, and now you can find anything like that you want on a five-second Google search.

As Steve Lukather says, "There are embryos on You Tube who have more chops than anybody you've ever heard of." We'll see what tomorrow's guitar heroes can do with it all...