Chapter One: How it all started

When I was 7, my older brother Frank traded his accordian for an inexpensive hand painted folk guitar. He got ripped off, but it began a journey of my lifes path in music. I immediately thought I could play better than him and quickly proceeded to surpass his technique. Since my left handed brain couldn’t even fathom playing the accordian I jumped at the 6 string in a fit of textbook sibling rivilary. I began howling with the Animals, the Kinks, the Hangmen, the Beach Boy, the Beatles, and James Brown. All though my youth my ear was glued to a portable AM radio, always strapped to my bicycle and usually on WINX radio in Rockville, Maryland.

WINX played Top Forty music, a genre which has disappeared due to the internet and the great mixing and polarizing of cultures and generations. I loved the rock, I loved the bubble gum, I loved the Ventures. It was all good. The novelty tunes of Ray Stevens, the country corn of Roger Miller, the heart and soul of Otis Redding, were spinning around in my head daily.

That and the fact that my brother Frank had a real affection for Bob Dylan and Ravi Shankar (Frank was a deep guy). He played Blonde on Blonde for weeks to the point that my mother started to prance around the house singing Dylan impressions. Of course her favorite singers were Mario Lanza and Jim Nabors (go-lly, that’s right, Gomer Pyle) whom my father serenaded her with whenever possible. While their music played, I was a seventh grader, sitting in my room with a little steel string silvertone guitar howling tunes by the Turtles over and over and over.

In the winter of ‘66 my folks decided to let Frank have a New Years Eve Party. The conditions were that me and my buddy Bill Wood would be the chaperones. That is we took coats, worked the bar upstairs and hung out with some loser guy without a date and watched him get loaded. Frank’s friends had a little band so for the first time in my house was a set of drums, a bass and guitars with amplifiers and a small Public Address system. Thats P.A. for you neopyhytes. The party was great and my folks came home from their night to find the house intact. When the smoke cleared I found that the band had left their equipment in the basement.

Joyously I attacked the drums, and then proceeded to thrash each instrument til I am sure I shook the house. My parents (who are still lovely people now in their eighties) encourged my enthusiasm for music and bought me my first guitar and amp. Within a few months I procured a n electri bass that weighed a ton. I wish I still had it. I quickly learned The Midnight Hour and The Tighten Up.