Phil

Myspace Contact Tables Myspace Backgrounds The first thing I remember is lying on a blanket between my grandmother and mom. I was too young to walk so I just laid there. The very next thing I remember is being with my parents at and open-air place where a band was playing at Atlantic Beach, NC. I was wondering what was making the bass drum go boom boom when I never saw the drummer hitting it. So I snuck away from my parents and crawled through the crowd and got on stage and crawled around the drummer and discovered that he was stepping on the bass drum pedal that kicked the drum. About that time he was rescued from the kid by my parents. In the blink of an eye I was playing around the barn and watching everyone doing all kinds of chores in farming tobacco with my grandparents in Wilson, NC. My favorite part was dinner for everyone under the big oak tree on Friday afternoons. I never tasted a better watermellon than the ones that came from the farm. After summer, school began and I was in the first grade. For a music project I made a set of bongos out of two coffee cans and lots of tape. Back then it was ok for a teacher to spank us for misbehaving. She would take a kid into the coat room and the chatter began with "ooch ooch, ouch ouch, ya ya ya" as the kid was being spanked. I would take my bongos and play along with the sounds coming from the closet. We had a grand ol' time. School and summer seasons came and went. When I was 10 I got hit by a car while riding my bicycle to the movie theater to see "Rocket Man" one Saturday morning. It whacked me pretty good and I wore the bandages for about a month. I formed my first band, "The Rythemics" in the 5th grade. I had saved all my money that summer from the farm work and bought my first Sears Silvertone guitar. The guitar case had a built-in amplifier. Our first gig was at the log cabin party house down by the Tar River in Rocky Mount, NC close to where I lived. Everyday at school that same year, Mrs. Vick, would assign a different student to lead the class in physical exercises. One day she assigned me for the next day. That night I went home and practiced the different exercises while I was listening to music on the record player. I got into the groove of doing the exercises to the beat of the music and thought it was pretty cool. So I took my record to school and lead the class in exercises to the beat of the music. The teacher thought it was so neat that she ran down and got the principle to watch us. He thought it was pretty cool too so he had us show the whole school on the stage in the auditorium. That was the end of it. Many years later somebody from somewhere came up with aerobics set to music and got rich I guess. Years came and went and when I was 16 and could drive, I got into my first good band. I played barritone sax in that band. The sax belonged to the school where I played it in the marching band. On Friday afternoons when everybody went home I'd break into the school and steal the sax so I could play in my band, "The Vibratoes" during the weekend. On Sunday nights I'd break back in and put it up so I could use it during band rehearsal on Monday. The Vibratoes won third in the state battle of the bands in Raleigh and we opened up for a few famous bands. A few years ago I came across an old poster in my parents attic that advertized a concert that we played at. We opened for the "Dells" and "Intruders". I noticed that our band's name was mispelled. Instead of calling us "The Vibratoes", they called us The Vibraters"! Back in those days we were innocent and didn't know any better. I recall that our only concern was how they mispelled the name. By my senior year I was in a pretty hot band that opened for several big acts. That was the most fun part of music for me. Somewhere after high school I quit playing. Only a few years ago I bought another guitar and started playing again. Recently I bought another sax. In late spring of 2007 I moved to Richmond and now work in historic presevation. I've discovered that my only regret is not moving here many years ago. There's music everywhere! Being the history buff that I am I love it here. I also do driftwood art and maybe someday I'll even do a display on a "First Friday" event.