The Gift Of Music (Part 1)

     I have been playing music for nigh on 47 years now. My family has always had some music playing, whether it be classical, flamenco, show tunes, movie soundtracks, pop, jazz, I was exposed to all kinds of music from birth. And we always had an upright piano in the house which was played often. My musical activity, actually playing something, all started with my sitting next to the piano and listening, gradually being shown a few notes here and there. It was around Christmastime in 1969. Our first Christmas in our new house in Larchmont, New York. The song was Winter Wonderland. For real, I remember this. I remember who was playing and who had me on their lap  to try to show me the basic melody. Every so often I would try to bang something out. But it was just banging.

     When I was in the first grade at Murray Avenue School in Larchmont, New York, my class was introduced to the recorder (a flutelike instrument.) We were all given basic lessons over a few weeks and learned a few songs.  We gave a performance as part of the school's Christmas programme.

     Off and on, I would sit at the piano and try to read the strange black dots on the page. I even tried to teach myself to read music. But I had it all wrong. I knew the little black dots represented notes, but I interpreted them wrong. My parents saw my frustration and gave me some guidance. They tried to show me where on the piano those notes actually were. I remember them showing me where "middle C" was. Periodically I would come back to the piano, bang away, try to remember what the little black dots meant, and skulk away in frustration.

     I was eight years old when I first picked up the guitar in July of 1973. I remember because my family was making the big move from New York to California. While they were loading all our stuff into the family Volvo, I sat with my younger brother upstairs and tried to play the guitar. I had seen a picture in the Guinness Book Of World Records, which I enjoyed looking through. It was a picture of The Beatles on stage. It really stuck in my head. They were playing guitars on a huge stage in England. As for me,  I knew next to nothing about how to hold a guitar, where to put my fingers, what a chord was; I just happily strummed the open strings and sang whatever I wanted. I could be like the Beatles in that picture. I think I was singing songs from The Wizard Of Oz. Of course all it sounded like was some 8 year old kid banging on the guitar.

     We had hired a moving company to carry the larger furniture and stuff, but my parents had miscalculated on the rest of the stuff. The car was overloaded; the body was grinding against the wheels and would hardly move. So we needed to rent a U-Haul trailer to ease the weight from the car. It was already late at night. That meant staying at least one more night in New York at a friend's house, the Ripley's, before starting the long trek to California. We had two guitars in New York. But by the time we got to California, there was only one. ...to be continued