I get old and I have to tell people this now, “Stop me if I told you this story because I don’t remember if I did or not.” The same applies here. I have written much about my joy with music and I’m sure I’m repeating snippets there and there...hell...maybe an entire themes as well. No problem. I can write what I want here. If you read it before, skip ahead. I may also absentmindedly post YouTube music vids I posted before too.
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I was told that my first response to music was when my brother remembered our Mom saying, “You and Ronny marched around the kitchen table when the Beatles’ I Wanna Hold Your Hand played on the radio.” I was told I three years old when I did that. It started that early for me and the Beatles wasn’t a bad beginning. At that time, my brother had been learning the guitar for three years already yet I have no memory of him playing it till I was five.
My brother was their first child and hence became the Golden Child where they fostered and encouraged his interests. When I came along five years later, I found out much later I was the mistake of a missing condom and a “whoops!” child. This meant my parent’s intense adoration was spent on the first child which was a new, first experience for them. When I came along it was, “Been there, done that.” For many families, the family album contains hundreds of photos of the first kid, anyone showing up after that is an afterthought and probably found in background shots.
Sooo...at five, my parents got my brother a cheap Harmony guitar and lessons to boot at Ray Mullin’s Music Store in downtown Pawtucket. I was told he had a minor, natural gift for it but still had to practice faithfully to become proficient. Playing became a lifelong joy for him where even near his end, I, and the neighborhood, had to listen to him play through a 200 watt Marshall amp, that was based in the cellar. I remember once turning the corner to my street in my car and clearly hearing, from sixty yards away, the lead solo from Prince’s “Purple Rain” roaring from our house.
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I loved music as a child and since my brother played and bought albums to learn new music, I was surrounded by it constantly. There was always something playing in our home and I was forever introduced to newer music due to that. However, I had no interest in playing any instrument it was not kindled by my parents.
Until…
Honky Chateau by Elton John had been released in ‘72 and my brother scarfed that up quick and of course, he eventually learned every song on it. One song, Slave, caught my attention because in the mix, an instrument was brought forward and I couldn’t identify just what it was. This particular instrument usually is buried in the mix of most songs. I had asked just what that was my brother says:
“You dummy! That’s a bass guitar!”
To me the opening riff of that deep booming and rhythmical sound was alluring. I loved it as it was catchy as hell.
I wanted to learn bass.
I had my brother show me something of the guitar and in a rare instance of allowing me into his room while he practiced, he showed me how to play the riff from Smoke On the Water using that top thick E6 string. Within a few moments, I could do it.
“Hey! It worked! I played it!” I tell him.
“Great, now play it without looking at the fret board.” he then says.
I try it and blow it, I’m all over the place. I try again but look and it works.
“No! You have to learn it by ear memory! You have to learn the notes by ear!” my brother protests.
I get tired of his impatience real quick and leave. But he hadn’t managed to kill my interest in learning the bass.
I had told my Dad I wanted to learn it and his response was, “Well, we’ll think about it...someday...perhaps.” At seven I knew what that meant. “Yeaaaah..I don’t want to spend the money on that now and in your case, it may be good money thrown down a rat hole.” Add to that my brother said that the bass guitar was just a supporting instrument, not as crucial as the guitar and the only music that really featured the bass was reggae.
“What’s...reh-gay?” my Eisenhower era Dad asked, sort of puzzled.
More albums appeared in our home over the years and I heard them all. At ten, I pestered my parents again about learning an instrument and by that time I suggested the drums.
They were more amenable to that idea. Drums seemed, to them, something not so difficult for their talentless second-born to learn.
I went to a music store just over the border in Seekonk (ahh, I can’t remember the name but it was near the “Good Seed” healthcare/trippy hippy/waaay overpriced bee pollen herb/vitamin store). The teacher my parents hired looked like 1959 NASA engineering geek with a tight crew cut and he was forever dressed in grey slacks, short sleeved white Oxford shirts and sensible black shoes. Had he thought to put a pocket protector in his shirt pocket, that would’ve finished out the look.
“What music do you like?” He hopefully inquires.
“Oh, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Zappa, Grand Funk Railroad...the Allman Brothers.” I tell him.
His response was a disappointed “Oh...”
The first lesson started with something called a paradiddle. If you ever heard that quick, long military drum roll, that sounds like a machine gun, that’s it. It’s done by hitting the left stick on the drum twice, then followed by the right stick hitting twice. At first you do it slowly to get the feel of it and try to increase your speed, keeping it regular. It took me two weeks to get that down where it sounded like the real thing.
The next lessons were in learning time signatures, note reading and other tricks of how to do various drum riffs, ratamacues and triplets. After a month, I had said to him that these lessons felt like I was being trained to be a drummer in a high school marching band.
“I...was in a high school and college marching band.” he tells me. And to tell the truth, I had learned later on it wasn’t a bad way to get the basics down. Karen Carpenter was a fabulous drummer who started off marching up and down the grid iron playing schmaltzy, middle America peppy cheer songs. In her own time after, she could keep up with and then surpass, Buddy Rich, John Bonham and Chad Wackermann (THE drummers of the time).
But I wanted to play to rock songs, not play ‘50s marching music. But I kept that criticism to my 10 year old self.
I started to lose interest in it due to his teaching style. Which was. “NO..that’s WRONG! Do it AGAIN!” Jesus, what a temper this guy had I thought to myself. As a kid I had a very dim view of most adults, especially ones who lorded there age and supposed maturity over children, when since I knew so many of them who were absolute alcoholic/gambling problem/wife beating/can’t hold a job losers. This guy’s temperament wasn’t scoring points with me at all nor keeping my interest in drums up...and hence my practice suffered as every time I practiced, as I had to think of that guy.
I can remember sitting in 5th grade, on Wednesdays, dreading that short hour I’d have to spend with him, only to hear him denigrate my abilities and put up with his impatience. I think we grew to dislike one another secretly.
I finally told my Mom I wanted out but didn’t tell her the real reason, that I hated the guy. I told her it was just a loss of interest. I think she was disappointed but secretly happy she wouldn’t be handing any more money to him anymore, nor having her Wednesday afternoons broken up with having to drive me there as well. By 1975, her ideal life was to be left unbothered by the whole world and my giving up on the drums, fit her fine.
I never took another paid lesson again with any instrument. Though at times I had tried, on my own, to learn guitar and piano, but in doing so, another fact was borne out to me, I have the coordination of an epileptic and always did.
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Here’s an aside I have learned over time and surprised me, though it fit in with how I responded to certain teachers. I had thought I had sucked at math and the classes I took in school. I found myself struggling to get a C or B- in most of them till I met math teachers who were patient, and had that amazing ability to translate math to English.
In order to achieve my BA in Psych. I had to take “Probabilities” course. Any psychological testing method used that kind of math and if I was to graduate, I had to demonstrate I knew and could do it by designing a simple test and run the data through a computer program and make it work.
“I’m fucked.” I told myself when I signed up for it.
That..until I met Earl Simpson, the professor of the class.
This guy, could explain clearly, simply, Spearman rho correlations, degrees of freedom, sample sizes and their significance. This stuff…
After luckilly having a few more teachers cut from this same cloth, I was astonished I could do it easily and this revelation hit me, if the teacher was patient and could clearly translate his ideas across, I did phenomenally well with math or any class. So..it wasn’t me...it was those asshole short tempered pricks who never should have ever taught any class to any kids whatsoever. Those classes I had the hardest time with. It was all about personality. AND I pubically name YOU, Richard Pascucci, as KING Asshole of them All! I ended up hating geometrical proofs in high school.
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| How I Hated Doing These. |
HA! Now that I have given that deep seated anger and hatred a voice, a chance to air, I can let it go and heal! Hey...it’s a joke!
