Gordon's Musical Journey

My musical life started out with 6 years of piano lessons as a kid. I particularly liked Beethoven and ragtime. My parents and/or school took me to a few classical music concerts, which I actually enjoyed. I also had a cheapo acoustic guitar on which I learned a few chords from a Mel Bay book. Plus, my dad had a cool old Slingerland drum set he no longer really played, that I banged around on some, too. Oh, and I sang in the Alamo Boys Choir for a couple years. Really!

But eventually, I got burned out on lessons, partly because I never really got the chance to understand that a lot of the fun was in jamming with other people! I played clarinet in middle school band, but that doesn't count. The band director wouldn't let me play drums since there were too many drummers. So right before our last performance in a parade in 8th grade, I was swinging my horn like a golf club, the lower half came apart, flew into the air, and crashed to the ground, bending the keys and rendering it un-playable. I was o.k. with it.

Ultimately, just like every other disaffected white middle-class suburbanite teenager in San Antonio, Texas, I discovered heavy metal. I didn't really play it at the time, but I went to a bunch of concerts in the last two years of high school.

Fast-forward to my 1st year attending the University of Texas, in Austin. I was working at a punk/new wave club called Club Foot. This was where my musical eyes were first opened. That club had many great acts play there in its short life, and so I was exposed to a variety of music I'd never heard: from the Stray Cats to X to Burning Spear to Billy Idol to the Neville Brothers to The Germs. Plus a ton of other acts doing some crazy styles. I loved it!

It was at Club Foot that a few of my bartender friends were getting together to jam, and asked me along. I borrowed my housemate's Farfisa electric keyboard, and went over. I pretty much sucked at improvising on keyboard, as I only learned how to play from written music. But they also had a drum set, but no drummer. I jumped on them, having done the aforementioned banging on my dad's set, and suddenly I could jam along with people!

The whole punk rock ethic at the time was "make your own band!", so that's what I did. While playing in groups with such names as My Fat Sister, Lorfpen, and Separate Men, I decided I wanted to write my own songs that we could play. I borrowed the guitar player's axe and began plinking along (with the help of my remembered Mel Bay chords), and started writing songs.

Go To Part 2 of G's Journey