School Daze.

Memories of my year at the Musicians Institute. 1983 in Los Angeles. Hollywood was to put it mildly was a mind blowing experience. I was 28 and newly married with a child on it's way. A struggle to say the least. But here are some of my fondest moments. Daily walking around the school I would hear some of the most amazing guitar playing and see some of the weridest people. There was one guy who I swear spent the whole year in the student lounge,smoking and noodling on his guitar. I never saw him in any class or performance. There was this kid with long greasy hair who had such perfect pitch that he paid his rent learning solos off records for fellow students. There was a guy from Iceland who started playing guitar the same year I was born. As I walked the halls it was hard to stand out amoung so many excellent musicians. It would only be latter that my education there would really help me excell once I returned home to Alaska.
The teachers were an interesting collection as well. My chord melody teacher was from New Orleans which I find odd now that I live here. I recall sitting in class next to these three guys from New York. They were all dressed out in spandex with long hair and these bright colored pointy guitars while Ron the teacher is standing in front of the class with a seven string Benedetto custom made Jazz guitar trying to explain how to play "Misty" solo. The sat there slack jawed with that "Deer in the Headlights"look. We had a teacher named Les Wise who taught the Jazz improve and BeBop classes. Les papered us to death. He would have this table with piles of notes on licks,motifs and all types of improve stuff. I kept it all and 25 years later still look back on some of it now and again. Going to his class was funny cus he approached eat lecture like a science teacher except he stood there with a guitar hanging off him. Our sight reading teacher was this loon who was an ivy league grad. Charlie was one of the funniest guys in school and the best sight reader I ever met. He also taught this class we had on "Music Video Training". This was the dawn of MTV so the school wanted to train us in that medium. We spent a lot of time goofing around in front of a camera and standing in front of the class doing werid exercises that Charlie came up with. The one I share here was one of the funnest and fondest I remember. We were learning how to lip sinc to a series of short music clips(two minutes) One of the clips was the Police "Every little thing she does is magic". There were a dozen or so tunes to pic from.I did something by ZZ Top. A lot of the class picked the Police. Let me tell you how this went down..as each student started doing the song unprompted the other students started getting up and goofing behind the guy lip sycing. As the class moved on more and more students jumped up and when the chorus "Every little thing she does is magic" kicked in the whole class would be dancing behind whoever was singing throwing papers scarves in the air and someone had produced liquid string and was spraying that everywhere. It was such a spontanious out brake of joy that I stood there thanking God for the chance of being there and seeing this.