i saw the beatles the first time they were on tv. i was four. i havent been right since. mom bought me sly and the family stone STAND, joe cocker!, rare earth, and lots of beatles. the guess who and grand funk railroad were my earliest purchases. then, at 11 years old, zep three came out, and i listened to that album forever.
I could play violin in the first grade, but so what?
my first perfromance was on a small organ (it wasnt mine...) in the fourth grade in front of a hostile audience of worcester school kids, rotten little bastards, and i played Silent Night feeling like Charlie Brown.
I was in my first "band" when i was 11 or 12. i was in my second band in high school, SAGE in New Beffa, with Jimmy Souza. I taught myself a lot of the Jimi Hendrix Smash Hits back then, but nobody knew about it.
I will be goddamned if i will detail everything that happened since, except that once I met certain BU students in 78, I went from Hotel California and Bob Welch to Roxy Music, Iggy Pop, the Blue Oyster Cult, Zappa, Devo, and boston rock.
i can sing like farner, mercury, plante, bowie, ferry, and ozzy, but so what?
i play like jimmy page and wish i played like joe perry too. eddie was a major influence, but i never left garage rock for loftier goals. if i could shred like that...
i attended berklee when i was 30, but it didnt hurt me none.
i became reacquainted with rock and roll at 33 when Rock And Roll Rick took me to see Iggy on the American Caeser tour. Iggy validated every note i had ever played or sang, all in one performance. he had no qualms about the integrity of the rock he performed, which is but garage rock, and so why the fuck should i? it is a white kid's soul music. his eyes said 'this is what i do...FUCK with me!...." and i said "ahhhhhhh!".
RNR Rick is largely responsible for getting me back to rock performance, much as it grieves me to admit it. he knows it, that lousy spic, the come mierde. He turned me on to GBV, took me to see NIN, got me into Nick Cave.
The Vineyard knows who I am, and that is not necessarily a good thing, but they know i can rock. i am otherwise largely unsung. awwwwwww.
i have never stopped writing songs and recording demos, which means i have a catalog of original songs going back to 1978. i've got some really good songs, and have always felt that i needed a george martin/todd rundgren-type producer to round me out, to make a better sound. hooks are great, but arranging is the thing, really.
so i am a decent to really decent songwriter, but so what?
my whole life's dream has been composing and performing music for others to get their rock on, but i am a bit shy about things, or about promoting myself, so i do not perform much at all, although i always play, write, grab an ax and grind it (through a diezel einstein now, ah heh heh heh).
i am a songwriter, a guitar player, and a vocalist. i aint no agent, not by a long spit. that means that every day that passes without my having a gigging schedule, i have more and more of an underlying desperation that i will die before i realize my life's ambition, which is not really that outrageous or unattainable - and i know i am not alone in this. i do not need to be famous, i just want regular gigs so i can say "i do this for a living". what a pussy, no?
this is the first time i have written an honest bio, but so what?
thanks to mark farner, burton cummings and randy bachman, zep, the fab four, buck dharma, sly stone, joe cocker, the cast of JCS, ritchie blackmore, ozzy, heart, and way too many more to list, in all the genres that have developed since hotel california times. i slept through fugazi, but i get it now. nirvana...oh yeah, nirvana....they brought back that raunchy garage rock, thanks be the gods of thunder.
you know who i listen to these days? ME. dude, i ROCK!
did you really read this far? cool. thanks. rock and roll is older than me, and i will go into the next age as a rocker, which is a relatively new position among humans. people were coopers and horseshavers, now they can be rockers too, right up until the very end. i saw some 70 year old jazz cats play tonight, and a musician is truly forever young. you should have seen the rock in these guys' faces as they kicked that shit out. too cool.
i will keep writing until i cant. i will always have songs in my head, that i wrote or learned. i will always remember the first thrill of the beatles on ed sullivan. i will always want to please a crowd with a tight performance, even if i am the only one in the band prepared to do so.
but so what?
