Mark's Pages

August 15, 2008:

Apartment life: kids aren't allowed to be loud.

She bought me a faulty kids-sized Vox acoustic with nylon strings that couldn't be tuned. I put the microphone from my cheap GE portable cassette recorder into the sound hole, and ran a wire from the cassette output into the auxiliary input of our cheap Sears portable stereo. Instant Johnny Thunders, about five years early.

Sent to lessons: learn to sight read Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and On Top of Old Smokey. After about a year of my obvious depression and lack of motivation, the instructor at last asked what I wanted to play. Beatles! Instead of Twist and Shout he taught me to sight read Michelle, limited, apparently, to whatever was in his book. There really are inept people like that who are mistaken for experts by people even more inept than them.

The first person who ever taught me something I wanted to play was the college roommate of a high school friend. Chuck Berry's Carol, which I can still play.

This is how you develop a distinctly personal, idiosyncratic style.