Please, you don't have to apologize to me, and here offline, as I always say,
if you start apologizing to me it never ends.
You know why I'm such a Jimi Hendrix fan, after seeing him live in Toronto?
He had two amps for guitar and bass on each side of the drums.
He had two mikes on his vocal stand, each aiming sideways, he would move between.
There were two tables with two roadies in front of the stage,
each one having what looked like a copper album in front of them.
There were no P.A. speakers onstage, wires going to the four corners of the arena.
When Jimi moved to one side, the roadies would turn the copper discs,
and the sound moved that way.
When the angel flew away at the end of Little Wing everyone was looking up at the rafters.
He had the seats arranged in sections so everyone was part of this quadraphonic... axis of sound.
I know I'm not just long winded.
I'm going to go to my grave thinking I never had a chance to say everything I want to say.
I know my epitaph already. "I shoulda had storage".
As a teenager, I had fifteen jazz albums I would jam with, Elvin Jones "Agape Love" a favorite,
McCoy Tyner and a couple of John Coltrane with Miles Davis "In a Silent Way".
I saw Elvin Jones at that time.
I took out symphony, classical piano, violin, jazz, and pop albums from the public library.
My parents took me to Hamilton so I could buy a set of Koss lightweight studio headphones,
what pros were using in music and stereo magazine articles, and listened to albums with them.
I never had one volume complaint from my parents or brothers.
I never bought a Beatles product, or Rolling Stones, Who, Cream, my pop music being r'n'b.
Even grandmothers with console organs at home had The Golden Beatles songbook.
When I wanted to learn some jazz songs to be jazzy, when I was in grade seven,
I mailed a money order to a New York song house to buy the original sheet music,
getting "Misty", "The Shadow of Your Smile" and "Summertime".
As far as me now making YouTube videos of me playing electric guitar, that's a desperation move.
I'm living alone by myself, and in Welland, there are no local bands playing in public to sit in with.
Do you remember phone sex? There's some of that feeling when I'm recording myself.
If you're younger than me, you might not remember phone sex, maybe into the stalking era.
elderpiano... despite the inspiration Frederik Magle gives to me, why I'm really here...
I have to say, when I was a teenager, McCoy Tyner, doing solo piano, "Naima", on "Echoes of a Friend",
is still my favorite solo piano. That's comfort listening to me, even if I'm not hearing anything new, now.
I spent twenty minutes between sets talking with him in Toronto.
As far as taking albums out of the library, Vladamir Ashkenazy was my favorite solo classical pianist.
My favorite jazz guitarist was and still is George Benson, even if he got too pop and too stage slick for me.
He took me backstage with him in 1970 to help me decide how to play left-handed or left-handed upside down.
If you had his 1955 Gibson L5, I think you'd want to try strumming it a little bit.
When I say a lack of posts is my fault, it could be I see myself as a thread killer.
I don't like seeing my name on top all the time, and create threads just to type away for myself.
You know what my favorite words to hear onstage were?
John... keep playing... play some more solo... don't stop, I'll sing when I want to...
Eventually, I might look around to see where the lead singer went, but that was good for me.
I never did an original Jimi Hendrix song onstage, even if I used a lot of electronics for effects.
I have a really good sound for steel guitar, violin and banjo.
I'm hoping there's something here that you're in tune with, to keep your thread going.
If there's one thing I wonder about, when it comes to piano, was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart left-handed.
In the movie, he sits under the piano facing out and reaches up backwards to play.
I can do that easier than most because I'm left-handed.
I used to sit in front of the TV as a child and play along with pianists on the carpet.
When I showed my parents guitar playing with Jimi Hendrix moves,
my mother would say I should do that in my bedroom.
Life in the Watt house. My mother was lead singer in the adult choir,
for a Scottish church they were founding members of.
Other women said she sang with a savage beauty.
Here's a scan of a photo I used to carry around in my wallet.
It got a little wrecked when I fell out of a canoe and my wallet drifted to the bottom,
scattering stuff around, not too deep. That's when I lost my Jimi Hendrix ticket stub,
and I can only blame the ghost of Nicolo Paganini for doing that.
I like to go advanced. Click it up big!
If you read this far, show me your mailing address because you qualify for a free guitar pick.
