....And we're back!

                                                                 
                                                              Part II of my story.

  This just about brings us to 79-80. That's when music really blew up for me. I discovered that the world was much larger than Kiss, Aerosmith, etc. Van Halen, ACDC, Judas Priest, these bands opened my eyes to a new heavier soundtrack to life. Punk rock also played a part. I remember when the Sex Pistols came to America. I was 10 and was completely amazed, how could these weird looking guys with the crazy clothes get away with all this shit! And the music, it was so violent and angry. I loved it from the first note! Getting to junior high was like opening this huge door to a room filled with musical discoveries. I learned how to be an individual, picked up on new music from the new friends I made. The NWOBHM was happening around tjis time, and I loved some of these bands. Def Leppard(who hate being included in this, apparently), Saxon, Iron Maiden, and Motorhead. I loved Motorhead, fast, violent, angry and totally different from any other band. Still do to this day. Those beginning riffs to "Ace of Spades", forgetaboutit! Still makes me get "the leg" going to this day!

  Ozzy, The Scorpions, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, all these band were about to blow up. It was, in my opinion, the greatest time for music. Punk bands like Black Flag, The Germs, The Exploited, all were prominent as well. We had a large amount of punks at school, all turning me on to bands on a regular basis. Around this time I really got into playing. I got my first "real" drum set. Some piece of crap my parents picked up somewhere. Blue flake, mangled cymbals and hi hat, crappy pedal, but I didn't care. This was my way into that brotherhood of music, and I dove in headfirst. I never took lessons, or took band in school, which looking back, was a huge mistake. I never learned the basics. 100% self-taught. I had a friends teach me a paradiddle, which is kind of like a basic exercise in drumming. Other than that, I learned by putting on records (those black things that spin and music comes out of), and figuring out the beats, fills, etc. Judas Priest's album "British Steel" was the best learning tool. Very basic, so i got to learn simple beats and song structures. Living After Midnight was as basic as it gets for a drummer, but perfect to learn from. Got the basic 2's and 4's after a while and stretched out a little more, bit by bit. Such a great time for music, I miss the feeling of discovering  a new band, or a new song.

  Me and my friends were so into music, and each of us had certain things we got into first, and shared with the others. I loved the heavier stuff, and my best friend loved the more melodic side of music.Thin Lizzy, Blue Oyster Cult. The next couple of years were cool. We'd go around the corner to a friends house, put some speakers out his bedroom window, and play baseball listening to music all day. We probably listened to ACDC's "Back in Black", 1000 times that summer. Radio in our area at that time just flat-out sucked! It was AOR, Top 40, Classic Rock hell. All that started to change in maybe '82 or so. You started to hear the stuff we loved every now and again. And then 1982-83 rolled around and changed the music business forever!  This amazing string of albums came out, all in a year's time. Blackout, Screaming for Vengeance, Iron Fist, Breaking the Chains, Black Metal, Mercyful Fate, Metal on Metal, Scarred for Life, Vandenberg, Black Tiger, all in 1982.  1983 brought us Bark at the Moon, Holy Diver, Piece of Mind, Balls to the Walls, Melissa, Show No Mercy, All For One, Born Again(underrated album, in my opinion), Pyromania, Fastway(Still one of my favorite albums of all time!), Queensryche, Power and the Glory, Steeler, Never Surrender, At War With Satan, Mean Streak, and of course, the album that changed it all for me, Kill 'Em All! It still blows my mind to this day that all these great albums came out all around the same time, and I'm sure that there's plenty I'm leaving out as well. This was maybe the best time of my life, and the beginning of the end as well.....

Let the music do the talkin'....

  I really want to get to some stories and experiences I've had, and I'll do that soon, but I want to talk a little about something that's always been the love of my life. Music. I've always had a HUGE love affair with music. Music of all kinds. Growing up, music seemed to always be a big part my life. My grandmother was a huge big band fan, my uncle a big fan of the music of the 60's, and my mom of music of all kinds.  It gave me quite an eclectic taste in music. I loved Gene Krupa, The Beatles, Janis Joplin etc. As a kid, I spent many weekends with my uncle, going to various places, and doing a lot of outdoor activities. Music was always a big topic of discussion between us. Sunday mornings with him would consist of breakfast at this deli in Glendale we loved, listening to Breakfast with The Beatles, telling each other what our favorite Beatles' songs were. He was a Philosophy major in college, so the discussions tended to be deeper than how a certain song was better than another etc. The Doors was a band we really dove into the lyrics of on that level. Jim Morrison seemed to speak to him in a language he could decipher on a deeper level.

  My mother, on the rare times I would see her, always had the radio on. In her home, the car etc., and she liked to sing along when a song hit her the right way. She loves to remind me about her experiences at live shows, seeing bands on the Strip when they were club bands, going to Frisco in '67 when she was pregnant with me, seeing Hendrix, Joplin etc. I always wondered what she "did" while I was cooking in the oven, so to speak. I got many albums from her (I stole quite a few). My first two Sabbath albums, Paranoid,and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. Those albums changed the way I looked at music at the age of 10 or so. Up to that point, my musical interests consisted of Kiss, Aerosmith, and Ted Nugent, sprinkled with a little Fleetwood Mac, and The Eagles. Sabbath opened my eyes to a larger world of music, taught me that it could be darker and more dangerous than my safe little 3 chord existence.

  The very first album I ever bought was Kiss Alive, when I was seven. I remember seeing it on an end cap at Kmart, picking it up and being totally engrossed in the cover, these four guys in kabuki makeup and crazy costumes. It kinda scared the shit out of me, and I liked it. I liked the feeling of it being dangerous in a way, evil. That album set me on a life-long journey that I still love to this day. It made me want to play music, be the guy on the cover of an album. Never got that far, but I had a hell of a time trying! I wanted to be Peter Criss, a drummer, the engine that propels an unstoppable machine on the verge of going completely out of control! I had the posters, albums, pictures from magazines like Circus taped on my walls. Music was what I wanted to do, I just needed an instrument to get started.

  I got my first "real" drum set when I was 11 or so. I had taken piano lessons before that, and hated it. My teacher was this old man who could barely keep himself awake long enough to pay attention to what I was playing. I wanted to quit every day, to play something else, anything but the piano. The guys on the posters in my room weren't sitting behind some POS piano, they had guitars, drums, and the world in the palms of their hands. I had an out of tune upright piano that I dreamed of lighting on fire. My grandfather wouldn't let me quit, telling me "if you learn the piano, you can play anything, any instrument, it all come from this!" I was a stubborn little kid, whodidn't think that old man knew shit about anything. After a while, I got my way and quit. Of course he was right, and looking back I really regret giving it up, because I actually took to it rather quickly. I guess I was meant to take a different path, but I always wonder what could have happened had I stuck with it.

  To be continued...

Out with the old, in with the new...

  Another year has passed, and I'm beyond glad it's over. the new year brings a clean slate. It's funny how the passing of a year to the next brings some sort of feeling of the weight of the previous year being lifted from  your shoulders. Like somehow turning the calender's page make it all better. But it does, even if it's all in your head. It's a chance to hit the reset button on your life, to wipe away all the problems that the year gone by has presented you. i like that feeling, knowing that I can just pretty much erase everything that went wrong, that blew up in my face the previous twelve months. It doesn't matter; you get a do-over, and I'm o.k. with it.

  I look forward to setting goals for myself at the beginning of each year, then assessing those goals as the year comes to an end. Most times, I've missed the mark on what I wanted to accomplish that year, but there's always a few things I got right that makes me feel good about myself. I didn't fail, just came up a little short. As long as I'm moving in a positive direction, even it it's only an inch, it's progress in my mind. I'm hardly an optimist, I consider myself a realist more than anything, but I do like to feel that sense of accomplishment. I still have my wife, my house, my job and health, and those are good things for sure.

  This year I want to take a bigger step forward in all aspects of my life. I don't believe in New Year's resolutions, so I'll leave that crap to someone else. And I'm not going to list most of my goals here, there for me. I do want to make every effort at work to make some hay in certain areas for sure, and I don't need some of the dead weight here holding me back. Eliminating that (or them) will not be a problem, if it comes to that. I want to get our financial house in order by the end of the year. We've learned to pay A LOT more attention to what we spend in the last six months, and that will help up throughout this year as we work to right our listing ship A baby would be very nice this year. I feel that window closing on me rapidly, and I'm quite disappointed we have gotten there yet, but we will, and I'm hoping this is the year!

  So I look forward to a prosperous and successful year for us, and wish anyone who see's this the same as well. Happy New Year, and here's to a clean slate we all can enjoy!