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

[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.

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.

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 : 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.









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

[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.

[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.ph...ht=ray+conniff

I think I was 6, I had one of these..

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.ph...ht=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 :

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...



...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.

[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...