Halloween

I can't wait to go trick or treating with my fairy princess and my baby frog tonight. The fairy princess is so beautiful that people will wonder why she's running across the ground on her feet, instead of effortlessly flitting through the air from door to door as her true nature obviously allows.

Musical Milestone #3: Speed

The revolution continued, and the long hairs of the world regrouped into two specific camps: self-respecting human beings who liked music, and totally lame dipshits. For the next few months, I continued to play the bass as fast as hell, and the Zenmasters guitar prowess evolved at a scary rate. He was a blazing blur of angry fingers that strove to keep up with the increasingly powerful orchestrations in his head. We were onto something, but we didn’t know what.

One day after school, Zenmaster and I left campus and were kicking back at the adjacent park before we went home. A girl that I had my eye on all year showed up. She was like a heavy metal supermodel with long blonde hair, a million dollar smile, super tight jeans, black vans, and a different Iron Maiden baseball jersey for every day of the month. She walked up with a jam box and pressed play. The music that came from that blessed stereo gave me a new will to live. It was loud, and it made Iron Maiden seem like a lounge band. The singer sounded mad. The guitars were thicker and faster and meaner than anything I’d ever heard. The zenmaster and I were dumbfounded as we shared an epiphany… This was the next level….This was what we’d been looking for. It wasn’t just heavy metal… it was SPEED metal. It was Metallica, and all at once, we knew that everything was gonna be OK.

The Iron Maiden Era

I listened to “Number of the Beast” thousands of times that year. I finally got permission to go to my first concert when Def Leppard came to town. It was fun and good. My juvenile exuberance took over, and briefly led me to believe that they were the best band in the world, but I soon fell back to the purity of Iron Maiden. My family left the US and moved to the Panama Canal Zone. Soon after we arrived, “Piece of Mind” came out. It was even better than NOB, and my infatuation was complete. I couldn’t get enough, so I bought their first two albums also. I couldn’t stop listening………

Time passed in the tropical climes, and then one fine day, my Mom came to my brother, the Zenmaster, and me. She told us that we could both order anything we wanted from the Sears catalog. I know that sounds funny, but it was the best news we’d ever heard. We grabbed the ragged dog-eared catalog and opened right up to the skinny musical instrument section. Zenmaster chose a white Explorer shaped guitar, and I chose the only bass they had. The guitar and the bass both came with little amps. I couldn’t wait. I passed the time by learning Iron Maiden bass lines on my acoustic guitar and beating up Zenmaster, he passed the time by taunting me and listening to Rush.

The packages finally arrived one day, and I ended up locked in my room for weeks on end. My favorite bass line was from ”Phantom of the Opera”, so I sat there and played it over and over. Since it was on an album, I ended up learning all the songs on that side of the record. Eventually, I flipped it over and learned the other side too, then I learned all the songs on all the albums.

In 1984, my family left Panama, and moved to sunny southern California, and Iron Maiden put out “Powerslave”, a great album, which I quickly added to my repertoire. I was getting to the point where I needed more and I needed it now, so I bought every thing Iron Maiden ever made; every import, every picture disc (remember those?) and every EP I could get my hands on. I learned those songs too. I got a job at the Taco Bell in the mall, and bought a killer black Gibson Explorer and a new Peavey combo amp with my earnings. Me and Zenmaster started a band called Beowulf, and it was good. But something awful was happening; something vile, absurd and disgusting was creeping into my world and I wanted to kill it. It was afflicting the people I knew, it was changing them, it was making me sick. It came to a head when the drummer of Beowulf came out with his hair curled and suggested we start wearing spandex and acting like a real band. That was it. I moped around bandless for months, wondering how my leather jacketed brethren could be overtaken by the eyeshadow wearing, lip puckering, pose striking, sock in the spandex idiots. I appeased myself by jamming with my Iron Maiden albums at 45 rpms instead of 33 rpms. Of course, it sounded like chipmunk metal, but I had a new goal…………………… to play the bass as fast as hell.

Musical Milestone #2 (continued)

Before I say what it was, I’ve got to explain why it hooked me. When I was a kid, songs were comprised of two things: singing and music. Then I learned how to hear the drums, and the guitars. But the bass? What’s a bass? My first instrument was a little acoustic guitar that I got for Christmas when I was a little Kiss fan. I never played it well, but I would sit on the bed and play one-string versions of songs. A few years later, I went home with a friend after school, and his mom had a surprise for him. It was a new amp, and a bass! His mom said it needed to be tuned, and asked me if I knew how. I told her I knew how to tune a guitar, so I picked it up….I was in awe of the large guitar. It was foreign and wacky and big. We plugged it in and turned it on, and I tuned it like a guitar. “Tom Sawyer” by Rush came on the radio, and I tried to play the one-string version of the song like I always did on my guitar. Instead of feeling like I was playing the guitar part wrong, I realized that I was playing the bass part right! I’d been playing bass parts on my acoustic guitar. The bass emerged from the ambiguous back corners of my mind, and took a place in the spotlight. From that moment on, the bass parts jumped at me from every direction, every song has a bass, how come I never got it? .. I learned to dig the bass by listening to Rush. The band I heard in Freds car that day took my bass joy to the next level.

It was darker and chunkier and new, the singer is singing his lungs out about epic adventures, scary dreams, and medieval battles. It has 2 guitars, not a rhythm and a lead, but two guys dualling back and forth and playing harmonies like classical music, the drums are pounding, and the bass……………holy crap….this bass is like a damn machine gun or something.

bubudidly bubudidly bubudidly didly didly bubudidly bubudidly bubudidly didly didly


”whoa to you oh Earth and Sea, for the devil sends the beast with wrath for he knows the time is short. Let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human number, it’s number is six hundred and sixty six” ……whoa! What did he say?….

It was Iron Maiden.

Musical Milestone #2:

It was 1982, and I was 3 years wiser than I was the day that “eruption” changed my life. The Kiss posters had long since disappeared from my bedroom walls, and I had inherited my Dads old stereo complete with an 8 track player. I’d been listening to Van Halen, AC/DC and the standard radio fare of the day, but I was really hung up on Rush since the release of “Moving Pictures”. This music was important. Listening to it was a completely different and foreign experience to me. There were only 3 guys, but they made more music than bands twice their size. There were new sounds arranged into more interesting patterns than I was used to, and I was becoming aware of the magic of musical chemistry… The more I understood the individual pieces of the music, the more I realized that the music was more than just the sum of its parts. There was lots of music out there, but my tastes were narrowing and pulling me towards something. I was looking for something heavier…. something faster…something different …. something new….…

I had some friends up the street that were older than me, and one day Fred got a car! Up to this point, we always rode our bikes everywhere, but on this particular day, we had plans to engage in some specific mischief. After school, Fred pulled up to the curb and honked the horn. Mom didn’t like the idea of me going off in a car, but she let me anyway. Fred was looking under the seats and all over the place for something. I climbed in the back. Just as he was telling me that he just bought a new tape, he spotted it by the stick shift and popped it into the tape deck.

The music totally freaked me out, it was what I’d been waiting for. It was something heavier…. something faster…something different …. something new….…

For the sake of interactivity, I want you to guess what it was.
Post a comment with your guesses and then I’ll finish the story.

The opposite of relaxing

The company I work for is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. No biggy, lots of companies are that big. We’re presently up for sale. A number of prospective buyers have expressed interest, and are starting to pay visits to assess the company and make decisions. On Friday, I got an e-mail telling me to prepare a presentation. Then today at lunchtime, as I choke down my last Pringle, here they come; 30 people wearing a million dollars worth of suits, looking over their glasses and waiting for me to explain how I do what I do. Amongst the prospective buyers were the president of my company and all his Veeps. Anyways, I started yammering professionally, then they started asking questions, and I answered them. They smiled and nodded approvingly, then thanked me and continued down the hall……….wheeeeeew. This group represented only one possible buyer, there are many yet to come.

I found the experience to be the opposite of relaxing

Musical milestone #1

I heard an interesting interview with Jack Black on the radio the other day. He was promoting his new movie “School of Rock”, and talking a bit about his past and how “rock” influenced his life. He made reference to one particular “rock” event that changed his life forever, and as I listened, I was flooded with memories of the same event as I experienced it:

It was 1979. Cable became available for the first time in our neck of the woods, and my folks promptly hooked it up, complete with HBO. One of the random movies on all the time was “Over the Edge”, a tale of distraught teens trapped in a rapidly growing community that focused on growth and industry, and ignored the needs of the youth. It’s a good movie, and it had an awesome soundtrack. One of my favorites songs was during a party scene, and I had to find out what it was, so during the ending credits, I would put my face right up to the screen, and read the names of the songs as they scrolled past. I eventually figured out that the song I was looking for was Van Halen playing “You Really Got Me”.

A few months later, I begged my mom to let me join one of those “record clubs” where you got 7 albums for a penny. She eventually agreed, against her better judgment, and I placed the order. Among my choices were Kiss Alive II, Steve Martin’s Wild & Crazy Guy, and of course Van Halen I. I was still a little kid at this point, and couldn’t stop listening to Kiss. They were the end-all be-all of rock music as far as I was concerned, and I believed they were some kind of superbeings that lived in a Kiss castle somewhere.

After eons of waiting impatiently, the box finally arrived. It was a cardboard package the size of an album and a couple inches thick. I ripped it open and pulled the albums out as I ran upstairs to the white and orange plastic record player that was my window to the world of rock. I peeled the plastic from Kiss Alive II, which was the one on top, and put it on the record player. I’d heard it many times, and seen the cover before, but being the owner of the mystical disk was new and exciting. While it played, I started opening the rest of the albums one at a time, looking at the covers, reading the lyrics, and feeling like a big kid.
Finally I picked up the last one, it was Van Halen I, with that super cool winged VH logo and pictures of each of the dudes in the band. They didn’t look like aliens, devils or cats, but still…….they looked pretty cool. As I scoured the cover, I noticed “You Really Got Me” in the track listing, it was the 3rd song on side 1, and I was ready to hear it, so I took off Kiss Alive II and put the record on the turntable. The 1st song came on with some crazy sound that seemed to descend into madness……. then the bass……then the guitar crunched in…. its wide open gnarliness slithered down the middle of my back and I melted into my bunk bed to enjoy the smooth sounds of “Running with the Devil”. It totally blew me away, or so I thought ...........

The next song started. It was Track #2, and it’s called “Eruption”. It started with a drum roll and then guitar....…..ripping and tearing…....sliding and grinding in explosive flurries of musical mayhem. I sat bolt upright on the bottom bunk and busted my head on the top bunk as the sonic smelling salts opened my musical senses. I rose unphased, and stood there with my mouth wide open, staring at the record as it spun innocently on the same turntable that used to play my Pinnochio album. During the next minute, I succumbed to waves of elation as visions of fingers and guitars and stacks of amplifiers carried me to a realm where the Gods of music keep their secrets hidden from the uninitiated. As I shuddered with enlightenment, the gates opened wide, and I was invited to enter. I was in the presence of a greatness beyond my comprehension. I was witnessing something that was way beyond normal human experience. This is what Jack Black was talking about. I was in Rock heaven.

Hairy who?

One of the highlights of my work day is when there's a page for Eric Hunt
"Eric Hunt....call 1-2-4.......Eric Hunt....1-2-4 please"

Many folks turned out for the fun at George's saturday night. It was fun. It would have been better if we beat Auburn, of course, but it was still lots of fun. My bro came up, so that made it even funner. While talking with a group of strangers, he accidently segued into a discussion of Madonna, and commenced telling them that he likes one of her CD's a lot. After that was said, we left. The only impression he left them with, was that he loves Madonna and her music. If you know him, this should crack your ass up.

My daughter is in 1st grade now, and is quickly becoming her own person. She's super smart and talented, and I sometimes realize that I have as much to learn from her as she does from me. I wanna pick her up and hug her all up before she gets too big.

Party Time

Jive Market will be playin’ at George’s Majestic Lounge this Saturday night. It’s Homecoming weekend, and it’s gonna be a gnarly high five slappin’ good time. Especially after the Hogs open up the woop-ass on Auburn. So bring your happy faces to Georges and get all crazy-like!

Can I borrow your forehead?

Hmm…..let’s think of a new way to exploit idiots and promote business at the same time…..

It really grosses me out when someone walks into the men’s room at work while they’re eating something. “Dude….get your cookie outta here.“ especially the ones who cram the remaining food into their mouth to temporarily free up their hands. It’s just not right…………

waiting patiently.............

I took that blasted putty knife, broke off the plastic grip, and mounted it on the end of a 2 foot long piece of 1x1. As a result, the rest of the caulk has been removed without excessive effort or force. I went to the ER yesterday to have the stitches removed. Almost makes me feel normal again. As I waited patiently in the aptly named “waiting” room, I made the best of my time by observing humans. When I see the people sitting there, I have to wonder what their story is: the kid with the towel on his arm; the bug eyed lady about to jump out of her skin; the laughing hillbilly family who keep getting calls on the payphone; the lady in the wheelchair with the worst headache face you ever saw; the guy watching the football game like he was home in his la-z-boy. They all converged in the waiting room at the same time to deal with their tragedies. No one saw me there, just as I didn’t notice anyone last week when I was dealing with mine.