TVCR Musicians

[jimbob92c]

OK....
I'm an old (cough...cough) musician of the bar/tavern variety.

Started guitar back in the mid 60's, am crazy about it to this this day.

Guitars are not everything..............let's share our various musical backgrounds. What, where, and when did you get the bug. what have you experienced, who influenced you, what kind of equipment do you use ( or did use), what are you doing now, where are you headed music wise...???

I expect Sparky to start this conversation....didn't I once see you with a Kazoo?



again...(cough cough)...


Jimbob

[Joe_WaZoo]

Well I played trumpet all through grades 3-12. By senior year I ranked 2nd All City band, behind some rich brat with a very expensive trumpet. My beat up old Crown souded just as good. Now I have a Yamaha horn. I had offers to play in college but instead dropped the horn to focus on engineering.

When I moved from Omaha to Minneapolis in 97 I discovered a group called Minnestons for Nebraska (www.mn4ne.org) that meets on Saturday's in the fall at Joe Sensor's Bloomington to watch our beloved Huskers (rebuilding year). The group has about 500+ members and some of us (8-12 people) play in a pep band at the bar to make it feel like being in Lincoln on game day. Although I typically only make it to the late season games because I usually am doing something else on Saturday. But in Nebraska on game days the state focuses on the game.

This weekend I am headed to Ames to catch the Huskers take on Iowa State. We will also get in the Van Halen concert tomorrow night.

Joe_WaZoo

[Old-timer]

I played guitar and harmonica in a couple of bands in the cities, 60's era. The bands I was in were Underdog, and The uncalled four. We played some of the teen clubs around the cities and some dances for the YMCA. We also played at the fire hall on Minnehaha Ave. Also played some private parties. We were in a battle of the bands at the Barn once and got an offer to go to Chicago, but that never happened. I haven't played a note in many years, just seem to have lost the drive when I started having family obligations.

[tulschmid]

Trombone until Freshmen year and then Tube. Good time! Most of my musical talent was discovered my JR year @ Frazee High School! I was in the school play "Grease" and in all the small group choir through out my Sr year. College I was in the "Mad Jazz" we performed in New York and New Orleans my 1st and 2nd year. Tore my knee up during my Sophmore year and lost the desire to continue school with out Football. Sing for weddings still.

My son (14) plays guitar. I took him to the Van Halen consert in Fargo on Holloween! Eddie had a 19 minute solo-HOLY SWEETNESS!!!!!!! My son is still smiling.

[Sparky_Bill]

OK....
I expect Sparky to start this conversation....didn't I once see you with a Kazoo?


Well I was a little late to be the first to respond. I was poor back then, we could not afford one of those new fangled Kazoo's. We kids had to settle for a comb and a piece of paper. Coming from a paper mill town the supply was endless.

Played a squeeze box when I was young. A fellow in my class went on to play with Laurance Welk. Not me!!!!

[jimbob92c]

Lawrence Welk?
I stopped by a garage sale a few weeks back in St. Paul....it was great!
they had old board games ( from the 30's on up) for a buck apiece, I found an old Marx Lumar toy grader...the same one I had as a kid ( the folks gave away our childhood toys for the most part)...and of course I bought it ($10),
but the thing that caught my eye was a 8X10 old colored shot of the Lawrence Welk Orchestra. It had to have been late 50's or very early 60's. The tip off was the guitar player's Stratocaster. It was a two-tone brown sunburst, single ply pickguard with small headstock. That puts it '54 to early 60's. The kicker is....it was hand signed by the bubblemeister himself. The inscription is great..."Happy 99th Birthday, Best Wishes, Lawrence Welk".
Wow! wonder what that particular meeting was like. I got the photo for $1.00.

Nope...no kazoos for sale, sad to say.

Well, I'll have to throw my 2 cents worth in with the musical past here pretty soon.
Great reading! I knew we had musicians here. Tuba? Where are you?

Jimbob

[sstodvictory]

I sing in the shower and while driving sometimes, does that count?

I no longer play an instrument but I took up the baritone starting in junior HS, because my older sister had a crush on a baritone player and said I should play that. Evidently I hadn't learned anything from her. This was after the time she talked me into holding my nose and drinking vinegar. I was uninspired as a player until I entered the U of M concert and marching bands, which I had to audition for. I remember leaving the audition thinking "you suck", but they admitted me.

I came under the influence of Dr. Frank Bencriscutto, the director of bands at that time. He taught us all something I'll never forget. If you can get 250 people playing like they mean it, precicely on the beat with no exceptions (not an easy thing), anything you play will knock their socks off. That applies to other things as well. One of the marching band traditions was to pass out apples so we could all bite them at the same time. It was always directed to get the timing right, and it was always really impressive. Being in a marching band the size of the U of M's was exillarating. Anyone else remember Dr. Ben?

http://www.uservices.umn.edu/heritage/finearts/conductor.htm

Anyway....now I'm back to singing in the shower.

Steve
.

[JoeGopher]

Yes, I remember Dr. Ben. When I was in High School he came and held a clinic at our school. Some of us were lucky enough to get a private lesson with him and I learned more about music (and other things) in that half hour than in two years of high school!

I have played guitar for about 30 years ( I still stink, but can play a mean Smoke on the Water and Stairway to Heaven) and played low brass (trombone, baritone, tuba) all the way through my first year of college. I worked in a music store for about five years and even toured with a rock band for three years. It wasn't anyone that you would have heard of, but I did get to play my trombone every night playing the solo on Todd Rungren's "Hello, It's Me." The highlight of my musical career...

[jimbob92c]

An amazing amount of horn players!
It just grates on me when I hear about elementary school music programs being cut, as well as junior bands, etc. It's usually a rewarding experience even if music doesn't become a later career choice. It's the personal aspect of it.

I tried drums in junior high school, got as far as the practice pad. I quit because our instructor was a jerk. ( amongst other things...like my attitude) The "old days". If you came in chewing gum he made you roll the ball of Doublemint across the gym floor with your nose. He seemed to take great delight in showing off his knowledge and admonishing his students for the lack thereof.
He finally married the home ec. teacher and split town.

But I was already advancing into the guitar.

It sort of started this way;

My older sisters would buy 45's at the town drug store and we would have a great old time dancing and acting out tunes. One day they brought home "I want to hold your hand" by the Beatles. That was it!! Instant Beatlemania in the house. I remember watching the Ed Sullivan Show for their American debut. I was about 11 years old and my brother and me set about making a plywood Rickenbaker (John) and a plywood Gretsch (George). Now we looked pretty serious acting out the Beatles tunes with our new twine-strung magic marker sliver specials.

Later that year two of my best buddies at school got cheap little guitars for Christmas. My sister also brought home a poor forlorn '50's National arch top with 3 strings on it. I laid immediate claim to it. Went to town and got a set of Black Diamonds from the drug store ( try to do that now!) and cinched 'er up but didn't have a clue how to tune it. My buddies helped me learn the system and off we all went learning Hank Williams and Lefty Frizell tunes. Later it was "Gloria", "Little Black Egg", "Sloop John B", "Walk Don't Run", etc.
We finally got a little combo together around 1969 and rented the town hall and did our first gigs. The hall had light sockets on the wall, of all things, and we went to the hardware store and bought 'flashers'...the little discs that you could put at the bottom of a light socket and screw in the bulb on top of it...and it would flash steadily. We couldn't get colored lights so we spray painted clear 150 watt floods with Testors model spray paint. This of course burned off the bulbs once they got hot and put up a terrific stink. To this day the smell of burning paint brings back a flood of memories.

We built speaker cabinets incorporating old car radio speakers ( boy, did that suck)
and generally scrounged whatever we could beg, borrow, or steal. We actually played about a half dozen times until somebody smashed a coke bottle in one of the toilets of the town hall. Since that nearly broke the city for repairs, that was the end of our high school band days.

But that's just the start.............

Sorry for being so long winded...

By the way...during those days I was now playing a 3 pickup Teisco DelRay that was purchased from Aldens Catalog. I did it on credit, my Dad co-signed for me...and it took a summer of mowing jobs to pay it off. I still have the original order papers. It cost a whopping $39.50.

Ahh...those were the days..
more later if anyone wants to hear it.

Jimbob

[Butch]

:gunrev: drums,timbales,congo,bongo,wore out 3 drum kits beatin the life out of them,all late 60's and early 70's.heavy buddy rich,ginger baker,mitch mitchel influences.Lot's of santana and zeppelin.played with 3 bands,a few gigs outside the garage.Had the cops on me a lot for making too much noise to late at night.I would bring my timbales down to golden gate park on sat.in San Francisco in the early 70's and a group of us would play for hours,all percussion,what a freakin chick magnet !!!

[sstodvictory]

A recent edition of the National Geographic magazine presented a review of biological evolution and Darwin's obsevations of species, and his theory of natural selection. In it, a statement was made to the effect that a unique feature of organisms, as opposed to other collections of objects, is that non-living collections such as musical instruments (as one of the examples) lack the natural relatedness as revealed by similar morphology, and indicating evolution from a common ancestor.

Anyone agree with that?

[Butch]

:gunrev: It appears from your statement that the National Geographic has evolved from the pictures of topless tribeswomen i used to see,but that's another story,innanimate objects don't morph,they are refined.But i might be missing the point, having not read the article.Can i take potpurri for 200 ?

[Chris 2]

I played an old clarinet in the late 60's. My father had gotten it from a down on his luck musican on washington ave, some years before, the man had just been booted out of some name band downtown. Told my father he had had it with music and was going back to being a comedian, sold that clarinet to my father for 20 bucks, turns out as my father tells it, that guy was Jay Leno still have that ol thing still can't play it either (L)

[sstodvictory]

:gunrev: It appears from your statement that the National Geographic has evolved from the pictures of topless tribeswomen i used to see,but that's another story,innanimate objects don't morph,they are refined.But i might be missing the point, having not read the article.Can i take potpurri for 200 ?In this sense "morphology" means the physical shape of an object rather than real-time transformation of shape. The National Geographic analogy struck me as a bad choice because musical instruments do show evidence of evolved design from older forms leading to families of related instruments. In this case the selective factor is the preferences of musicians, since not all designs become popular. It seems that with respect to mechanical object design we are mostly incremental. Witness how long it took car designers to break free of the motorized horse buggy concept.

Steve

[Old-timer]

How about what goes around comes around. All this talk about our musical past has me thinking and I have ordered myself a guitar similar to what I had a long time ago. I am going to try to relearn what I ounce had.

[jimbob92c]

Old-Timer,
What kind of guitar?

Long suffering "gear head",

Jimbob

[Old-timer]

What I ordered is a Oscar Schmidt Delta King made by Washburn. It is a semi-hollow body with dual humbucker pickups. Got it for less than half price on e-bay.

[John Ritter]

I played percussion is high school. Drums mainly, triples and quads my last year for pep band. Wipeout is still not a problem.
I wished I never would have given up piano lessons in first grade.
If I had a lot of time my next instruments would be the violin, harmonica, piano and the list goes on....

[Choirguy]

I don't sing or play anything.

Actually, that's false. I'm licensed to teach music education of all kinds (voice, band, strings, and general music) K-12, and I'm finishing the PhD to allow me to teach at the collegiate level.

My earliest recollection of actually "figuring out" music go back to singing in church where my Dad (who is also a singer) was singing, and I realized that when the little black shapes went up in pitch, so did he. Since then, it's been a process of re-creating what those little black shapes mean into real music.

I don't play much more piano that I have to. I was forced to play at home and at high school...had I been left alone, I probably would have enjoyed it more and learned more. As it was, I didn't learn any more than I had to. As I use the piano every day, I'm naturally getting better each and every day, but I'm still not good enough to be a true player.

My primary instruments are voice (operatic lyric tenor) and tuba. Although I don't play much, I sing with the Minnesota Opera and Minnesota Chorale, so that should be some indication that I can hold my own.

Although I enjoy performing, I get my main kicks out of teaching music and helping others to reach their full potential. Although I could DO the solo opera route and make a living (likely better than the one I have), I would miss the interaction with my students and being a positive impact in their lives.

Although choir is my main gig, I can teach band...and I also enjoy teaching music theory and music history when I get the opportunity.

Where am I headed music-wise? Well, I continue to study voice and will likely accept more solo roles in the future, especially for opera (i.e. the Serious Stuff), operetta (i.e. Gilbert and Sullivan), and oratorios (i.e. Handel's Messiah). I plan on finishing the PhD by December of 2005, and then hopefully moving to be a collegiate director and teacher (and perhaps music chair) by 2007. Most likely that will be in a Christian college, such as Northwestern College (St. Paul, my alma matter) or Bethel University (St. Paul).

So, unlike those of you who participated in music growing up, or still goof around on the guitar or occasional jam session, music pretty much IS my life. Fortunately, I'm pretty happy doing what I do.

[sstodvictory]

Although I enjoy performing, I get my main kicks out of teaching music and helping others to reach their full potential.
:floor: :floor:

Man, does that remind me of something. My first instructor was the band director of my junior high school. He had a belly. His method of teaching breath control, important for everything but especially low brass as you know, was to put his students' hand on his belly while he played his intrument as a demo.

Now that's commitment to helping students reach their full potential!

Steve

[Choirguy]

Steve, just as long as it's not the teacher putting his hand on the student...

At least not in these times!

For anyone interested, there's a 7mb .avi file available on my webpage showing my big "solo" with Amahl and the Night Visitors...

just go to www.choirguy.com, and you'll see it.

Happy Holidays!