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My Story
begins with my first guitar. It was a
Silvertone acoustic that cost about 17 dollars. I
took ten guitar lessons at the age of nine, and
my grandfather bought my first electric guitar.
Now I was ready to start playing in my first
band. My earliest memory of my first bands were The
Enchancers and The Electric Hairspray,
back in 1965. There were many other jam sessions
with friends |
from school, but
they weren't officially considered bands. The
Enchancers and The Electric Hairspray was the
beginning of a band called The Metallics. I'm
the one on the right with the trumpet. I started
playing the trumpet when I was 12 years old in
the seventh grade. |
My music teacher, Bobby
Newton, had  been teaching us tonette
in the sixth grade. He picked a few select people
that he wanted to draft into the high school
band, so I was one of them. I was playing the
guitar at the time |
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when they let me out
of the 6th grade class room to play at an
assembly for the 7th and 8th grades. They started
throwing money up on the stage and that made such
an impression on me. My mind was made up as to
what I wanted to do in life. By the end of the
year Mr. Newton had me playing trumpet with the
jazz band at the high school and I was in the
seventh grade. While I was developing my music
education, I would also wire up turntables, and
cassette recorders with my father's |
help, and I started
developing my engineering skills at a very early
age. I was the the one who owned the100 watt
Bogen PA system that The Metallics used. It later
became the stereo in my hatchback car! The
Metallics won 3rd place in a talent show and
continued on with a couple of personnel changes.
For more on the Metallics visit the link on the
left or click
here.
By the time I was going on 15 or so, it was time
to move on. It seems like I was always playing in
bands with older, players, |
and the next band
was no exception. The Downstairs Minority
was my next band. Although I had been an original
member of The Metallics, The Downstairs Minority
had already been formed when I joined. In fact,
if I recall correctly, The Metallics rated better
in the talent show, than The Downstairs Minority,
our competition! It must have been our uniforms,
because The Downstairs Minority didn't have any.
Shortly after |
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