When I was about 14 I helped my brother clear some land where he was about to set up a trailer he and his family would be living on. Rather than have him pay me in cash I asked that he buy me a bass guitar. My thinking back then was I was not talented enough to ever get good at the regular guitar. Bass only had four strings, you didn't had to learn chords or scales(or so I thought) so I'd become a bass player. So my sister-in law and me went first to a local music store to price basses. When she discovered all the cool,Ricky's,Fenders and Vox basses were beyond what she was willing to pay, it was off to the local pawn shop. There we found a budget and I mean BUDGET bass...I think it was a Silvertone with only one string and an ugly dog turd brown color and looked like it had been dragged behind a truck over broken glass. (frankly that would be considered cool today) yep ugly and cheap...but it was a bass...we went back to the store had it restrung with new strings(at least she was willing to give me 3 more strings to learn on) and I insisted on some sort of book to learn from. I got "Mel Bay"s Learn to Play Modern Bass Guitar" frankly the book may as well been written in Greek. It made no sense to me. But it did have one thing that would come in handy later. On two pages were the bass fret board with all the notes spelled out and on the facing page the bass clef where all the notes on the neck appeared on the written staff and what the lines and spaces represented in terms of notes. I had a bass, a book, my strap was two shoes strings tied together,ya ready to rock???maybe.
That Christmas my mom had presented me with a great Christmas present. She had gone to the local department store into the music department and asked the clerk for two things a stereo and a stack of records. Luckily she got someone with a well rounded taste in new music(God forbid she had gotten some twit who would have sold her piles of Muzak,Kay tell,Country or easy listening drivel) she presented me with Led Zep,Chicago,Blood Sweat and Tears ,Sabbath,The Allman Brothers Live at Filmore East, Skynard and one album that would stick.....Grand Funk Railroad...It was so cool this picture with this guy wearing a floppy hat and a large polka dot shirt.....I played that till I wore it out.
Once I got the bass. On would go the records and on would go my bass as I'd play rock star in front of my mirror.....ya ya ya
Walking down the hallway between classes. 9th grade at Ryan jr high. Hair down to my shoulders,biker boots,Levi's and leather jacket...not a friendly or inviting vibe to "higher education"At this time in my life I spent more time in detention and in the school parking lot getting high hustling chicks and selling drugs than I did pursuing the three "R's" reading righting & rithmatic". Up walk these two "preps" from the school band... trumpet players(next to the oboe how un-cool can you get or so I thought until I discovered Miles Davis..the coolest guy on Earth)) "Steve we hear you got a bass guitar"....I'm thinkin...ya but no amp( and no way to get one)and frankly I have no idea how to play the dam thing. ...I go "Ya and your point?" they reply..."We want to add an electric bass to the band it will make us sound better"..."I don't have an amp".."don't worry bout that "..... "OK boys when is the class?"..."3rd period"?...(3rd period...I got this crappy class and the teacher hates me)...ooh...ok...you got a deal"...so the next I show up and meet the band teacher. He attempts to explain the basics of music theory whole steps,half steps, etc...he may as well been explaining how to chart inter stellar space travel...all I could think was "This has to be the most Un-cool guy I've eve met"
Finally he hands me a folder full of sheet music and points to my place on the band stand(next to the tuba the next un-cool thing I saw in that room)
Next day I check out of my crappy 3rd period class,say good bye to the teacher that I knew wouldn't loose any sleep over me moving on and show up for band practice. I found myself parked next to this chubby Latino tuba player(the epitome of all things un-cool)I set up two music stands one with the the music we were working on and my book that my sister-in law had bought me. At least I could try to learn the notes and try to play along because I knew I was on my own to handle this gig.
A word here, as of this writing I have been a professional working musician for 30 plus years. There was not a single thing in school band I ever learned that prepared me for that life. In my opinion k thru 12 music instruction is a joke. Most those kids can read music but there are never any real classes that teach you about MUSIC. Ask a kid what a 1/4/5 in Bb is and they will stand slack jawed. If they even know how to play a harmonic minor scale they couldn't tell you what to do with it. Most of school instruction is "Monkey see Monkey do"...it's like a car mechanic who has no idea how an engine really works....let him change the oil but don't let him grind valves. So with this in mind I spent an entire year in the school band and walked away none the wiser.
My peer group at this time was not my school chums. At 14 I hung around with a group much older,19,20,21 years olds. These were guys and gals that I had met at this down town "youth club" called "The Upper Limits" ran my a couple "Dot and Dave" and their 3 boys. The place was located on 3rd Ave. above the Co-Op drug and featured local live music and served burgers and dogs. What it was really was a place we went to after we hung out at a house party,smoked some doobee,ate some acid,drank a bottle or two of Ripple. The place was were I got my first exposure to seriously LOUD music. I remember the main group that played there was an interesting 3 piece called "The Boston Public Library" of BPL for short. A tall lanky blond guitar player and two black brothers real brothers. One on bass,one on drums. They played Hendrix,Grand Funk, Sabbath,Zeppelin, all of it very well and very loud. I used to dance my feet off there as a 14 year old. And began running with an older crowd as a result.
Every third period I'd show up stand next to the tubby tuba player with a solid body pooh colored bass and beat away not being able to hear a single note. I wondered what the band teacher was thinking. He insisted that I play a pep rally for the basket ball team with the rest of the band. So I'm standing in the gym trying to play along when I hear from across the court"Hey Steve,turn up we can't hear you!"
Enough of this I thought. I had seen a smaller bodied Up right bass in the instrument room one day so after my humiliation at the pep rally I took it down and noticed that it played surprisingly easy. Not wanting to lose my air of "cool" any more I asked the teach if I could play it. Now I was cookin with fire.
I spent the rest of the year playing a bass I could hear but did not play a single song. I knew the 1st measure of "Bach's Fugue in D minor" but that was it. I literally faked the entire year....but hey it kept me out of that other dismal class. Flash forward two years.
The beginning of my junior year these same two trumpeters would once again chase me down in the hall way to draft me for the high school band. By this time the pooh colored bass was gone,I had finally bought my first acoustic guitar and had found my self singing in the school choir. A strange event in itself considering I really didn't know how to sing and no one around me(including myself) ever thought I had any talent,except the choir teacher. I told the trumpeters I didn't have a bass any more. They said "No problem,we got a bass,an amp and this is the best school band in the state with one of the best band teachers in the state" ..."OK what period?....3rd..(another dismal and boring class)....it's a deal...here we go again"..
I say all this because God was setting the stage for an event that would set in stone what the rest of my life would be. Thank God for dismal,boring 3rd period classes!
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