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Author: tooth on September 18 2006 Viewed 882 times. 13 people liked this blog. You can rate it below if you haven't already.
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...it was a blood red Ibanez Destroyer II my dad had bought from the little music shop in our sleepy hometown in Norfolk for an hundred quid. I should tell you about my dad.
My dad, to whom I owe a lot, played guitar every day. I grew up to the sound of fingerpicking and bluesy acoustic guitar doodles. I'm not sure how many songs my dad knew but I think he might have been playing the same five songs for the last 30 years. So he plays them very well and since there was no music played in the house when I was young except on the TV, that was my music. If you want to witness DNA in all its disturbing glory, visit my family at Christmas and you will find my dad, my brother and I, all sat in exactly the same position, same tight concentrated expression on our faces, all picking on our acoustic guitars (until a passer by asks the way to the station only to join the party of frozen corpses in the cold store). Fortunately I'm joking. We don't kill people.
Anyway, age 16 (might have been 17) I suddenly started playing the guitar too. The past 4 years had seen me become slightly obsessed by "heavy" music. The first album I ever bought was Megadeth's "Countdown to Extinction" when I was 13. I think I listened to it a few times a week for about a year. I eventually moved on to bands like Metallica, Therapy?, Sepultura, Paradise Lost etc. but I would listen to the albums in the same way, over and over and over until I knew every note. I think after 3 years of owning a CD player, I only had 4 albums. But that was enough.
The "heavy" sound of the guitars was a sound that effected me like no other. It was probably inevitable that I would attempt to learn to wield it myself and one winter evening when I was 16, dad taught me to play the main riff from Smoke on the Water. It's three power chords. For those of you who don't play guitar, power chords are a fifth and an octave and on a guitar sound like this "DVVHHFUCKYES!!!!". That was the first and last thing he showed me on the guitar. I figured the rest out from there and immediately began making my own riffs and melodies.
I found it easier and more natural to make my own music than to fiddle about trying to learn other people's so that's what I did. I played almost every day until I was 18, when playing the guitar was about all I thought about. If I wasn't playing the guitar then I was listening to guitar music or reading guitar magazines or day dreaming about being able to play like Andy Cairns or James Hetfield. I knew every single guitar, amplifier and effects unit on the market, their specs and their prices at the biggest retailers (it felt so wrong yet so right). Although I didn't realise it at the time, this obsession was something inside me pulling me, very hard, towards what is now my biggest love...making music. This is starting to sound like a Kevin Costner film. Sorry about that. Next instalment tomorrow! | |
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09/19/06
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astroid
hahahaha!
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