Status: Single
City: Melbourne / Mars
State: Victoria
Country: AU
Signup Date: 1/29/2007
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Monday, December 03, 2007
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Current mood:  sore Category: Music
My music playing life began in school: all the kids in Western Australia were forced to learn the recorder, a plastic bone-coloured whistle with holes.
After school, in streets all over Australia in the '70s (and probably now??) you could hear - mixed with magpie cries - the shrill sound of kids on recorders, squeaking their way home. What an annoying sound....such an angular induction into the world of sweet, sweet music...(We were frequently swooped upon by magpies, by the way).
Also, there were rotten mass singing classes, where we all sang out of Government-published-and-approved books with bad cartoons and cheesy kids songs. (Notably, the only modern music included was McCartney's awful "Mull of Kintyre", probably chosen for it's mind-numbing simplicity). The books were called "SING!SING!SING!" or "EVERYBODY SING!" or "SING! EVERBODY!" or some other ingenious flaccid title ending with an exclamation mark. The lessons were broadcast on ABC radio, and I guess the biggest challenge was for the teachers: they had to maintain control. Our only problem was being bored out of skulls.
In my school, the classes were eventually divided into 2 streams of kids: "Media" and "Music". You weren't allowed to do both, although I found myself in a darkroom once, printing photos when I should have been at Music. (The shit didn't hit the fan, whatsoever).
My music teacher bestowed these ancient dulled lead-hued brass instruments upon us, and by looking at a student's lips, he could decide for us which instrument was best suited for our mouths, a method he gleaned from the Salvation Army. Mine was apparently the trumpet, and I was given a ratty old dented, dusty silver cornet to cut my teeth on. Those who weren't showing much brass talent were given drumsticks or guitars, and sent to the back off the room: the rhythym section's area...(The area I would eventually own.)
The least talented kid was relegated to the electric bass. I was envious of him, it looked like such a relaxed and easy thing to play. No hours of heavy physical lip practice required! Also, it was a giant gorgeous black Gibson he got to fondle. Besides, I was beginning to notice bass players on the TV, distinguishing them from normal guitars which started to look frail and wimpy to my pre-pubescent eyeholes. I began to clock all the bass-playing singers : Suzi Quatro, Phil Lynot, The Buggles guy, Sting, Gene Simmons....I was talking myself into being a Bass Player, justified by what I viewed on the idiot box.
We commenced "band" lessons, starting with Glenn Miller stuff, progressing to Chicago, Blood Sweat & Tears, Herb Alpert, Santana, Themes from Rocky, Shaft, The Hustle (I got my first solo in that tune!). The Greatest American Hero (the one concession to current music of the time...). The stuff I wanted to play was the theme from Battle Of The Planets and other cartoon faves...We practiced for performances at Speech Nights, and sometimes played in other schools, even. We were truly at the mercy of our music teacher's tastes, which were stuck ever-so-slightly in the early 70's, but to be fair on him, he was a live, regularly gigging multi-instrumentalist who was on TV and in pubs all the time. I respected that. His name was Dave Way (RIP). He died in 2008.
After a while I took some music lessons after school hours at a tiny local hall.
These classes were run by members of my teacher's jazz band; all musos lookin' for a few extra bucks on the side. They had long mo's, fuzzy hair glintin' grey, and were pretty happy and loose about things. We'd get shown a note, a phrase or simple song & were sent outside, told to stand well apart and practise, and we beat and bent that tune into shape, by way of aural torture. By then I could read music. When we got bored (which was pretty quickly), us kids would get together and play stuff out of each other's books, or just make stuff up, and play up, mainly blowin' in each other's ears etc...
I remember we worked up a fucked-up version of "God Save The Queen" (not the Sex Pistols..); it was a sax & a cornet. We were swapping music or reading from one book, which gave a screwy, evil harmony, 'cos we didn't realise different instruments were in different keys. Of course, we got into trouble for this outrageous blasphemy, told to stick to scales. That was the National fucking Anthem for God's sake!
I recall being bailed up by a big, dumb older kid once while walking home. The cornet case attracted him like a fly to shit. It had a big white number painted on the side with liquid paper. Of course he wanted to have blow on it. They all did. Small & frightened as I was, I nervously opened the case on the yellowed nature strip. Then I had to endure lots of those loose-lip fart sounds that come out the end of a horn the very first time you put your lips to it. He wasn't thru having fun when I asked for it back. More yobs/street urchin boys had gathered, summonsed by his laughable cacophony, like a bully's call-to-arms. They started passing the thing around. Keepy-Off we used to call it. And I was the fool in the middle, starting to get very upset: it wasn't even mine, what if they took it? My Mum would be paying that off for the rest of the decade....I was saved by a freckle-faced friend of my mother's, Janice, who shooed them all away with yells from her car window. Was this enough to warn me off Music??
NO.
Parallel to this, I received a 1/2 size variety store guitar for a birthday present. (Uh-oh!) Not knowing about tuning, it was loose strings of random intonation for some time. I tried playing with songs comin' out of the radio(strictly AM, tiny transister radio - Perth didn't receive FM radio until 1983!), or TV.
Soon, I could play some vocal lines from pop songs or TV shows, then I boldly went for some lead guitar parts (thanks to years of daily doses of "Rock Around The Clock" at the end of "Happy Days", I could finally fluff out that solo).
A major breakthrough came when I started screwin' 'round with tuning the damn thing, and it was to a Joan Armatrading song that I found a proper chord! Turns out I'd figured out an open major chord tuning, yeh, the one-finger chord. It was to be some time before realising there was a "proper" tuning for the guitar, that strings had names, and I was allowed use my 4th & 5th finger.
The guitar kept me busy in other artistic ways, as I went ahead and painted the thing in different ways, finally settling on an uneven rough white, achieved by the application of old housepaint with a chewed matchstick. I then proceeded to cut holes in the front, in the shape of words.
In my room, behind the closed door, I started obsessing over this guitar business, and music. (Perhaps I was meant to be doing homework?) I was recording stuff off the radio onto cheap cassette tapes right into the early hours, thanks to headphones. I used to listen to the poppiest station, recording almost every song if I liked the introductory 5 seconds, then I would decide later if I liked the song or not. If not I'd tape over it. So fickle. After 3 listens, I would like a song, remembering the words, paying attention to the chord modulations, and be able to separate the bass lines.
TO BE CONTINUED....
 | Currently listening:
A Whole New Thing
By Sly & the Family Stone
Release date: 2008-04-01 |
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3:48 AM
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