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My first Rock Bands Concert … a KISS tribute one at that!

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I mercifully skipped grade 7 for you all and went right to the good stuff.

Well I just have to let the cat out of the bag and swallow my pride on this one! Yes I was playing in a KISS tribute band and was Ace Frehley. Well in all honesty, the majority of the tunes were KISS tunes. I was the only one in the band who did not belong to the KISS Army though.

I was into more challenging music but the only guys I knew that could play were these guys! Don’t get me wrong, these guys were my best friends for the longest time! Eddie, was the drummer and had extensive gigging with a “Polka Band” and Brian, the guy in my previous posts was the other guitar player. We didn’t have a bass player at the time due to the fact that no one we knew played the bass.

When I was in grade 7, I remember playing with the Muroz brothers. It was fun because they had taken lessons and could play their instruments well. I think we played some Queen, Led Zeppelin and some pop tunes of the day. I forget why we broke up but I guess that is how it goes. Sorry, I just had to write a bit about the grade 7 thing!

Anyways, we would practice and practice for hours on end. I keep trying to get these guys to slow down and take apart the songs that we were playing and it did sink in to some degree. I’m sure that they would tell ya differently but it’s my blog so there!

As we grew older we found that other schools had band and that they were playing live at their schools so we had no choice, let’s do a live show. Our first and only show was to be played at “St. Bernard’s” school. This was what we thought was our big break!

During this time I had been introduced to another band in the making. They were both in high school and they were just who I was looking to play with. They were Tony, the keyboard player who sounded like a god on that thing, and Harry the guitar player who could play quit well technically but lacked the feel that you need!

Anyways, when we played the show, I had a blast! My soon to be band mates where in attendance and the show went on. Brian, who was like Gene did this wild guitar solo in the audience with the help of MANY GUITAR EXTENSION CHORDS while i was lying on the stage moving these knobs on my old ” BOSS BF-1 FLANGER”. Our band was named “Duce” and when we played it to start off the show, the words go something like this, “Get up and get the hell on out of here!” and there goes Brian singing it directly to a nun, I almost blew a nut laughing so hard on stage!

So, how was that?




My first Rock concert I’ve ever played in … in grade 6 that is.

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Well I remember that being in grade 6 was quite a musical experiment to me.

A new kid named Brian came into our school that year. He seemed very cool but different from the rest of us. He spoke with a funny sound in his voice (that’s how I explained it when I was in grade 6 anyways). He was smart and a good soccer player. He also had a older brother who started hanging out with my older brother.

His brother liked and had all of the same music that all of us listened to, as well as some UK sounding style bands that we never had hear of. The guitar playing and singing was quite interesting. They also lived besides my brothers girl friend at the time. Soon we would start going over there to see them as well as her.

Brain and I got along great from the start. One day while in class, the teacher gave us all this assignment that was a report on what we liked and had to do a report on it in front of the class by years end. So, being off the wall as we were back then, we both thought that we should do a report on “Alice Cooper’s” new album, that everyone had, called “Schools Out”. We both thought that the best way to do a report was, not just to bore our fellow class mates by talking about it but, to sing it to them! This was also appropriate because it was almost the end of our school year.

We talked our teacher into letting us both do the same topic and that we would do it together in front of the class as well!

This was very exciting! So we listened to the words on it and sang it over and over again. We also knew that we had to give out information to the class for their own notes and asked my mother if she could do something for us. She was working on this thing called a “computer” at her work. I remember her bringing home papers that she read so, I asked her if she could go to work and do what ever she did with that computer thing and print these words out so we could give out to the class for the assignment. So, she did!

The day finally came for our report to be recited to our class and boy I was just bouncing off the wall with excitement! We had told our older brothers what we had in plan and they just laughed at the idea and said that it wouldn’t fly. By them laughing at our idea, it drove us with even more determination to make this the best report ever!

So when it was time for us to go up, we then gave out the copies of the song and walked up to the front of the class!
We had the teacher sign out the record player from the library so we could have the song playing while we sang it, in front of them. She then put the record in it and put the needle down! We had chosen ” Schools Out ” and sang our little hearts out! We even moved around like rock stars and ended our first rock concert, so we thought, with an screaming grade 6 class so much so that the principle came down just to see what the hell was going on.

Ahhhh, the simple things in life!

What was your first concert that you gave and how did it turn out!

Keep on Jammin’

Oh my God, what the hell, it’s got 2 necks

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Now that I was in grade 6 and my brother was in grade 8, other musical influences came into view for me. My brother Tim was the popular guy in school that everyone wanted to hang out with. He was an unreal defencemen in hockey, good looking and a very likable link of guy.

I too played defense and was quite talented. He had won more valuable defense men awards then I did but I had to try harder because I was much smaller then him. He was a rushing type of defense men and I was the crazy stay at home and take no prisoners type. As usual, I tried to be like my older brother, like most people in the pecking order of life. I always strived to catch up to him as much as I could. I even played on his team one time and that was really some so I thought.

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Anyways, he started out listening to music that did not get much airplay. Bands like early Zeppelin and bands of that era. I thought that if it was good enough for my older brother then I got to listen to this stuff!

At first, I was a bit of a pain asking him to replay some songs so I could think of them in my head and for the most part he did because some of the girls in his class thought that I was cute and that I was a good guitar player and in those days guitar players were someone who they liked to hang out with. So I ever so slightly gravitated towards hanging out with my brother and his circle of friends.

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One day one of my brothers friends, whose uncle happened to live on the same cul-de-sac as we did, had heard that I played guitar. As luck would have it, my life long friend John E., lived right beside him. We were playing soccer in his parents back yard when I fired one into the back yard of this guy.

When I went over to get the ball I met this guy, real skinny and with long black hair. He said “you must be Tim’s little brother?” I never met this guy so I said ya? He said that people on the street say your player too? I thought for a second and then said “oh ya, guitar”. He just laughed and said do you want to see something that I just bought, and I said sure! So off he went, inside his home, he lived with his parents and they of course knew my parents VERY WELL through the church.

It was a very warm summer day with a bit of a breeze, honestly I really do remember it, no shit! He came outside with this big black skinny box. I thought that it was one of those keyboard/organ things that was in the band that I saw, but it wasn’t!

He walked over to the standard back yard table in the 70’s, and placed this big black thing with one handle on it, on the table. He said “stand back because this thing will blind ya!” What hell is he babbling about! He was washing his motor cycle at the time and I saw a couple of dead soldiers beside the bike so I thought he was drunk or something. So I moved back and he began to open up this thing.

As he opened it up, the glare that this thing gave off was unreal! I was slightly blinded. When my eyes started to re-focus, I saw what I believed to be as a guitar but this was VERY, VERY DIFFERENT! Oh my GOD, what the hell, it’s got 2 necks on it!!!

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It was a candy apple red double neck guitar. The name on the top where the tuning heads were said “Gibson” At that moment, I realized that it was the same guitar that the guitar player Jimmy Page had! Holy shit, this must be Jimmy Page that I’m talking to!!!

I started to get that same feeling that I had, had when I saw that Christian Rock Band, flash pots went off to start the show. Now I know what their called, at the time, I had no idea what was going on but it looked sooo cool. I slowly approached this mythical device with eyes and mouth WIDE OPEN! He then said “What do ya think of it kid?” He then brought it out of it’s strange home and begun strumming it! He was strumming the 12 string part of the guitar and it was a strange but wondrous thing that I heard for the very first time. He began to play “Stairway to Heaven” and in my mind that clinched it, he was Jimmy Page, but his face was off a bit.

Has anyone had an experience like this before?

My first real guitar lesson

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Boy, was that exciting and boring all at once.

I went to this older man for lessons, who had me start on slide guitar because he thought that my fingers were too small to chord. I thought that he was an idiot but he knew what he was doing, so I thought. This was one of those “Royal Conservatory” school of guitar that I was enrolled in. It was a class none the less.

I honestly thought that Mrs. Lord showed me more then this guy ever could! He keep teaching us the dreaded “THEORY” stuff that drove me nutz! I could play everything that he wanted us to play BUT I memorized it all in my head, then went at it. I used the lesson that the Christian Rock Band guitar player told ” start out SLOWLY and the speed will come later”.

This drove buddy over the edge every time. He said ” Chris, why aren’t you looking at your sheet music that I gave you when I played it?” It was at that point that I told him what advice that someone gave me and he said ” I could do that later”. I kept trying to do it his way but I just found it way to hard!

A couple of years ago when I was going to College, they had found out that I had a learning disability, I was dyslexic! I also had a grade 9 mathematics trying to do college physics! They just thought, what the hell is he doing?

Anyways, I wish I knew that then so I could have done something about it at an earlier age.
Music and math is one of the same, so we are told, but every good musician that I ever met was pathetic at math.

I honestly think that it is half math (or just being able to remember patterns better then most, that is where I think I fit in on this) and natural ability.

So after getting totally frustrated, I quit!

Hey, does something like this sound familiar?

The Christian Rock Band

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Mrs. Lord, I think, arranged for a Christian Rock band play at our elementary school one time and this is what sent me on my journey to where I am today. To this day I am still trying to to find out what the the name of that band was.

They had showed up at our school with this touring bus that looked like the Partridge Family bus and it was amazing to look at. It had real groovy colours and patterns in the design. It looked like the Big Top just pulled in, well to a little kid anyway.

They were a 5 piece band with long hair. There was 3 men (guitar, drums and bass) and 2 women(Keyboards,flutes and tambourines).

When we went into our class, after the beginning/morning bell rang for us to go in, the anticipation was so thick that you could cut it with a knife! The morning had pasted and we where called in for the afternoon. As they were doing their sound check, my heart was racing so fast and I was literally bouncing off the walls! Mrs. Lord knew that I was going to go inter ballistic so, to make sure I wasn’t anymore of a distraction then usual, she asked me if I would see how the band was doing. Thank God the door was open or I would have bolted right through the damn thing.

As I entered the gym, the regular lights were out, the bands lights were being worked on and they were tuning and talking to each other. It was at this time that I think that I had an outer body experience!

I just stood there right in front of the stage and absorbed everything I could. I saw these glittering drums these big tall black things with lights and knobs on it (it must have been a Marshall, full stack) these things that a women was playing on the right side if the stage, that sounded like an organ one time and then the next moment sounded like a whole herd of violins that sounded much better then the grade 8 class ever did!

I had never heard a keyboard with such a full, wild sound like that before. Our church organ/keyboard had a traditional sound and feel, but seeing and hearing this electric keyboard\organ thing was wild! This was a change from the organist at our church which was always a man. I was trying to listen to both the guitar player and keyboardist but I was just in ahhhhh with what they were doing.

Finally the whole school was asked to go in and the event that was going to change my life was about to start!

When we were all seated on the floor, I didn’t sit with my classmates. I sat right in the middle and if anyone would have tried to ask me to go to where my class was sitting, I think that … well they wouldn’t be with us anymore.

The lights then went down and this very eerie music that made me feel very strange and scared, started to play! Then after minute pasted, a flash of light appeared and the transformation had begun. The lights were flashing and the POWER CHORDS brought me to another place in my mind!

Throughout the whole show I thought that I was the one that they were playing for, nobody else! I watched intensely as they played, the drummer was sooo powerful and the guitar solos made me feel like I was literally floating in the air. I finally looked around and saw kids holding their ears and running out of the gym, what the hell where they running from?I thought, GREAT, I hope they all leave and I can have this experience all to myself.

When the show was over I started screaming like some crazy girl at a Leif Garret show. For those not familiar with this guy, go and google him! Then everyone started screaming and screaming! Finally they came out for an ovation! They did this acapella thing that was a lot better then the harmonies that we did for mass and that stuck with me too!

After the show, we could go up and ask them questions and I told the guitarist that I too was a guitar player and he said that was great! He said keep practicing the basics and go VERY SLOWLY with it at first and then I will get faster later. Mrs. Lord then added that I was a good guitar player and she wanted to see if he would listen, and he said yes. I wasn’t nervous about anything back then so I played the band some songs and they liked it!

I got a chance to see them pack things up, and I watched them drive away. The guitar player drove away with one of the women in the band on the back of his motor cycle, wow, I knew then that this is what I wanted to be!

Has anyone ever had an experience like this in their life that changed them in such a drastic direction?

Keep on jamming everyone!

In the begining … part II

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If memory serves me correctly I started off playing guitar in grade 5 @ St. Pius X elementary school in Brantford. I was 9 years old.

My teacher was, believe it or not, Mrs. Lord, yes that is correct! What a name for a Catholic school teacher. She was a guitar player who played for us in our music class. She played a classical guitar and at the time I thought she was GREAT! She played and we sang songs for the radio, which was in the early 70’s and they sounded perfect. Songs like ” Seasons in the Sun”, ” Starry starry nights”, ” Alone again, Naturally”, which is a song that I still play today and is a long time fav of mine, and I think she also played ” Natures way” as well.

We all started off learning the basic like how to hold the guitar and the pick. This I found odd because she didn’t use one, she said that she felt more comfortable playing like that. I thought nothing about playing without a pick for many years to come. She then taught us the strings that we would be playing.

Now she started out with chords! They were very basic.

She broke the class into 5 groups of 4 or 5 students. Each group had their own guitar and we each got a chance to practice on it. I can’t remember how civilized we were about sharing it, but I do recall that it was a blast.

The one thing that I do know was that, it was as easy as walking is to most people in the world. I remember having my fellow students look at me like I was cheating or something like that. I can see in my mind, a buddy who was having so much trouble in trying to play it that I went over and told him to relax then I broke it down to show him and then he finally got it. To my amazement I recall everyone looking at me and then they followed what I was saying! It got to a point where I was the top of the class in something!!! Mrs. Lord seemed to be so impressed that she eventually let me play guitar with her at our school masses that we had in the gym.

I don’t know if I told you this but, I, supposedly, was a LITTLE BASTARD as a kid! I found out through a cousin of mine that my grandfather, on my mother’s side, use to say Oh no, here comes that LITTLE BASTARD again~!@#$%^&*()_+!!! So, I was a little hyper-active kid. I’m man enough to admit it now! I guess as the old saying goes, we are the people that our parents warned us about. I was a very athletic kid at the time but not always the brightest light on the tree!

Keep on Jammin’

In the begining …

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Hello everyone on-line!

This is my second attempt at blogging on my own so wish me luck, I’ll need it!

So, my name is Chris and I’m originally from Brantford, Ontario, Canada. This site is dedicated to the progression (or regression) of my journey on becoming a guitar player.

This page is here to express new idea’s on how to look at guitar playing from a different approach as well. I am known for being quite a task master in my approach to teaching. In a way you may say that I’m an old school teacher in how I teach/practice, ask my wife.

I take apart every song that I figure out and put it back again. I attempt to have/play as many strings as possible to give it a FULL FAT sounding tune. I love to input as many parts (little obvious runs) from the other instruments into this as humanly possible, instead of just playing/strumming a simplistic melody.

I try to incorporate inverted chords that allow playing in other positions on the neck that make it easier to achieve what the other instruments are doing in order to have that BIG sound. I know that you’ve heard this before but going over and over and over the very basics will help you achieve this easier, and in some cases, when you break down a song and put it back together, some of the basics that you were taught and did not get at first will come roaring back into you head saying “that’s what that thing is used for!!!” It’s like when you were in school and your too afraid to ask the teacher to go over as certain part of a study because you think that your the only one in the room who didn’t get? Come on, everyone has been there, done that and got the t-shirt right? You want to ask the teacher to repeat something and you look around at your fellow students and they look as if they got it, but more then likely they didn’t! this reminds me of the words ” when I look in their eyes, they’re running too” from Jackson Browne running on empty.

So that’s the end of this lesson, so until i blog again, when figuring out tunes on your own, listen to what every instrument is playing and pay attention to what licks each one is using when approaching a certain part of each song!

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