[Brian Krashpad]

Reading and posting in the "What's in your mp3/cd player right now?" thread I can see we have a lot of varied musical experiences and tastes here. And in the "Promote Your Band" forum we can see what everyone is doing now, for those in bands.

But how did we get here?

For those in bands, what was your first band? How many bands have you been in? What songs or type music did they play? What was the instrumentation/gear you used? Where did you play? What are some great gigging or touring stories you may have? Pics of you back in the day?

That was my original idea for this thread. But what about people who've never been in a band, or maybe have no intention of ever being in a band? They have a musical history too! What was your first guitar, or what style of music did you like first? How did your style of playing, gear, and tastes in music and/or gear change?

Tell us Your Musical History. Take your time in the telling.

Photos encouraged! As well as discussion.

Beware, my own long and "storied" musical history will be included! But I expect to hear from you as well.

You've been warned!

[MrSandMan]

Oh wow, great thread idea Brian!

I was around 11 or 12 years old when I got my first guitar. It was so cool to me at the time. It was a used Peavey T-15 brown metallic with cream pick-guard. Totally country and western guitar, but I didn't care. It had a built in 15-watt amp with like a 6x9 speaker built right into the case. I took very good care of it, never put stickers or altered anything.

I took about 6-8 guitar lessons to get me started. I remember it was $12hr for a 1-hour session. It was in the basement of the music store that my parents purchased my T-15.

The main reason I started playing was to simply to impress the girls. My first cool cassette was Metallica -Kill em' All. Then I got some Ozzie albums, like Diary of a Madman. I loved watching MTV's headbangers ball, and was totally inspired by the RATT song "Way Cool JR" --because of the chicks in the video =)

My first 'real' riff to learn was Black Sabbath "Iron Man" and the good ol' classic "Smoke on the water". The first song I learned all the way through was Metallica "Seek and Destroy".

I first started jammin with my cousin's best friend, who played his older brother's drum kit. We jammed loud and proud and had no idea what were doing really (at least I didn't).

I've played in small basement jam sessions through-out high school. I'd play for hours up hours in my bedroom. I lived behind my guitar. It went where ever I went.

I never played out in live gigs, done some parties for drunk people. Thank god they were drunk, because my timing sucks. That's my weakness in playing guitar, I was mostly a bedroom player that never realized that timing was another skill to learn.

Now in my older age, I realize that guitar playing is a passion and a life hobby of mine. I love music and enjoy playing guitar. I don't pressure myself to learn new stuff... I just like to play what feels good and entertains my ears.

...and that pretty much sums up my story.

Next.

[Brian Krashpad]

Well done Mr. Beers!

Though we'll expect some amplifictaion (pardon the pun) and additional stories from you as we go.

I'll start with my early pre-band history.

My dad was a career US Navy officer, starting off as an airman recruit in Elvis/Sun Records-era Memphis in the late '50's (for reasons I still don't understand, there was and/or is a "Naval Air Station" in Memphis, Tennessee, USA), which is where I was born in 1958.

By the time the early 70's rolled around, Dad had become a US Navy officer and was off on tours of duty off Viet Nam. While on his travels (and on previous travels during the 60's, when he did a couple tours of duty with the spy organization, the National Security Agency, where he went to Europe to eavesdrop on the Eastern Bloc), he picked up a variety of acoustic instruments. He was mainly a banjo player. But never a "natural." Learning instruments came difficult to him, and he had to work at it.

Dad's rule was, if any of his (5) kids could learn an instrument he brought back, he would give it to that child. I had a slight advantage being the oldest. Dad had a "Mel Bay" guitar book, so I took that and taught myself with a (very) little bit of help from him. In junior high school, my school actually offered a one-trimester guitar course. By the time I could take it, however, I already knew everything they taught.

But that was a good thing, for a couple different reasons.

First, since I already knew the course material, what the teacher did was round up everybody who could play even a little (only a few people), and send us out into the hall to jam. So I got to sit in the hall with some stoner dudes and learn stuff from them. Easy automatic "A."

Second, they would not let you re-take the course every single grading period. Instead, before you could take any instrument over again, you had to take a trimester of the other TWO instruments. So the first year I took guitar, and then recorder, and keyboards. I wasn't very good at the other ones, but it got me more well-rounded musically, and more motivated to take guitar again and get another easy A. After I took guitar a second time, I just took shop.

During high school I continued playing guitar, mainly acoustic. At some point my parents got me a small amp and a horrible Sears electirc guitar. But the electric was so awful I mainly stuck to acoustic. There was an interdenominational relgious group called Young Life at my high school. It was very low-key, just 2 or 3 dozen kids, and met at people's houses, not at church or anything. I was one of a couple kids who could play guitar, so we provided the musical accompaniment. No PA's or anything like that, just totally acoustic playing and singing. We did a lot of folk-song type stuff-- "Kum Bay Yah," "If I Had a Hammer," "Michael Row the Boat Ashore," even John Denver songs. It was great fun. Plus there were some really cute surfer chicks (my high school was 3 blocks from the beach) that attended. I didn't know it at the time, but by doing Young Life I was becoming at home with playing in front of others, albeit on a very intimate level. In my senior year, 1976, we all took a trip (from Florida) up to the mountains of North Carolina for a weeklong camp/retreat, and of course my trusty guitar went along. I still have a songbook from that era with lots of folk songs and simple religious songs.

Next up: The College Years and my First Band! Beware '80's photos!

[Brian Krashpad]

During my undergarduate college days I didn't play too much guitar. I still had my crappy Sears electric guitar and my acoustic.

I taught school for a year and lived at home, giving me enough money to buy a decent guitar and amp. When I went back to university, for law school, I joined my first band.

The Atomics was my first band, begun in the Fall of 1980. Everyone else in the band was undergrad age or younger (our drummer was about 14 or 15!). We played a bizarre batch of covers that basically just included anything we liked, from hard rock to punk to power pop to new wave.

Our first show was to have been at Lake Wauberg, a receation area for the University of Florida located just south of Gainesville. We agreed to play for free (as was true of almost all our shows) since there would be food and beer at this party hosted by some law school group. After schlepping our PA to the hall, tearing through our soundcheck ending with our deconstruction (most Atomics songs were deconstructions, as we seldom if ever attempted note-for-note covers, and hadn't any keyboards despite that numerous songs we covered did!) of Led Zep's "Rock and Roll," the noise complaints from the rich folks living on the other side of the lake began pouring in.

We were unceremoniously asked to leave, since the "guests" there had all paid a few bucks to get in and we had not. It was not even sugggested that we kick in a few bucks to stay, much less that our efforts in practicing up 4 sets of material and hauling and setting up, and then striking and loading out, our PA and backline might've been worth something. Our drummer, Chad, and our bassist Frank both wanted to commit a little mayhem in return for such shabby treatment, and in retrospect, that's exactly what we should've done. But I prevailed on them to simply eat and drink as much as we could during an extended load-out.

The Atomics' actual debut came a month or so later at another kegger, this time at an apartment complex then called Maracaibo Manor. We played 4 sets, marred only by my vocal mangling of the Records' "Starry Eyes." My brother Kerry and Kerry's friend Mike both sang leads on several songs. People danced and had a good time, and George Tabb [who has subsequently become semi-famous in punk rock circles via his column in the punk zine "MaximumRockNRoll" and his friendship with (and extremely short duration employment as a roadie by) the Ramones] and Bob Fetts of the local punk band Roach Motel slammed to our rendition of the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated."

After we ran out of material, George Tabb somewhat sheepishly approached me and asked if Roach Motel could play a set on our equipment. Frank, who also played in RM as their drummer, vouched for them so we said OK. They played a short set of 5 or 6 songs including "Burger King Is Dead" and "Brooke Shields Must Die."

Here are some pics of that fateful night!

Me:



Roach Motel playing our gear:



We need more stories, people!

[Brian Krashpad]

During the '80's, after the Atomics, I was in a bunch of what I call "party" bands. These were mainly friends, housemates, and friends of friends. Like the Atomics, we played covers, basically anything we liked, and a couple of the guys had an original song or two. Most of the time we played at house parties that were thrown by us or our friends. Every once in a while we would play a gig in a bar or something, but not often, maybe once or twice a year. From '84 to '86 I was in a bunch of these, these are the names and what I played:

Band of Fools - guitar, vocals (1984-86)
Special Guest - guitar, vocals (1984)
Generics - guitar, vocals (1985)
Tycho - bass, vocals, guitar, keyboards (1985-86) originals and covers in a synthpop vein
Grandfathers of Punk - bass, vocals (1986)

Band of Fools was a 5-piece, guitar, nass, drums, keys (synth), and sax. Here is a highly unflattering collage of all 5 of us:



Here's a photo of 4 of us (sax player not present) taken about 10 years later, at my house in the 90's for a reunion jam:



The keyboard player made a little webpage that actually has a couple snippets of 2 original songs, recorded live at a party, no doubt on a boombox, along with the above photos, if you're really adventurous:

http://www.afn.org/~afn19202/band3.html

I'll see if I can scan and post some shots of some of the other "party bands" later.

[MrSandMan]

You have great history and, from the stories, it sounds like you had lots of fun. Do you have any old recordings?

..lets see if I can rethink up some old stories.....

During my high-schools days I met up with a couple guys (guitarist and a drummer) --drummers are hard to find and guitarists are a dime-a-dozen in this area.

Anyhow, the three of us would rig up during mid day (after school) downstairs in the living room, at some peoples house. Don't even know who they were, never met them, they were parents of the drummers friend (I think) --they were never home, I think they abandon their kids?! Seriously, they were never home, we were always there. The house was a big old two story, all wood floors, and located downtown (but the town was kind of small).

We would plugin and play loud! Our theory: "the louder, the better". The guitarist had a Peavey 5150 full stack and I had a 120-watt Peavey Stereo Chorus 2x12 (which was loud enough to be heard =).

The house was on "Main Street" and I remember neighbors weren't happy, yet kids from all over the city were riding their bikes, skateboards and scooters to come see what was going on. I remember kids crowding the front lawn while we putting on a show (the house had a huge picture window) and we had our wireless, so we could walk around on the patio porch (we were afraid to leave the house--because we thought if we stayed on the property, we wouldn't get in trouble for being so loud).

Needless to say, we probably didn't sound very good at all. We were doing some random 'excerpts' of Metallica covers. And we would do the same riffs over-and-over again until exhausted... but we were loud! =)
..oh being young and dumb.

[Brian Krashpad]

Haha, Chaz it sounds like y'all were the local rock stars!

Let's here some more stories people!

Below is one (actually two) of the handful of known pictures of one of my party bands, Special Guest. This was taken at a party at my house, The Pit, while I was in law school. As the signage behind us indicates, the Atomics (another party band and my first band) also played that night. I'm standing on an end table. They were made of 2x4's and were very sturdy. At another party there, we took the two tables and put a plywood sheet over them and set the keyboards up on them The keyboardist could sit up there and had the best view in the house. (That band was yet another party band, the Band of Fools, which had keyboards.)

The personnel pictured, left to right, "New Wave Dave" Terasavitch on vocals and guitar, Steve Ovenden our drummer, my roomate Doug Keesecker playing bass (wearing a shirt he borrowed from me, as he had the most atrocious clothes you could imagine), and me.

[Brian Krashpad]

Well, it's been kinda dead lately, so I'll put anoher post here to see if I can kick-start things a bit.

After '86 I had a period of several years where I wasn't in bands, and eventually I grew to miss it, even though most of the bands I had been in were "party bands" that didn't play in "real" venues very often. I had written a couple original songs but hadn't really yet learned the best of way of doing that for me. So I started looking for a band that would do originals, preferably one that had a songwriter in it already.

Now, because I'm lazy, I'll let the lead singer of Camp 7 tell the story, as it appears on the Camp 7 myspace page ( http://www.myspace.com/Camp7 ):

CAMP 7 was a Gainesville, FL band from 1989 to about 1993. The two founding members, guitarist-vocalist Douglas Jordan and drummer Jeff Schwartz, first played together in Fools of the Earth, an aptly-named fledgling trio - also featuring bassist Dan Redman - that played several house parties (and one guerrilla-gig at UF's Orange and Brew) before disbanding due to general laziness on the part of all three members, who were at the time students at the University of Florida.

After a couple of months, Jordan called Schwartz (or Schwartz called Jordan - neither is quite sure) wanting to put together another band, and CAMP 7 was born.

Jordan posted a flyer at local record shops looking for a bassist, and before too long, a highly talkative and enthusiastic Jeff Barker called, thanks in large part to the inclusion of Echo & the Bunnymen on the list of influences. Barker showed up to try out with a brand new, shiny blue Rickenbacker bass and dozens of publicity schemes to make the group - which didn't even have any songs yet - world famous.

The group began practicing over the summer of 1989, and after a half dozen sessions, decided that a second guitar player was in order. Another flyer campaign was launched, and this time they fielded several inquiries.

As it turns out, you can't swing a dead cat in Gainesville without hitting a guitar player.

After several tryouts, they narrowed it down to two candidates - a young guy named Paul with a very nice tobacco sunburst Fender Stratocaster and Brian, a slightly older dude who resembled Elvis Costello and sported a strange, baby-blue, ax-shaped Ovation guitar called a "Breadwinner."

Thing was, though Paul definitely looked the part and was the same age as the others, he couldn't really play very well. Not that the rest of the group could either, but the whole point of adding another guitarist was to improve the musicianship of the band and add some leads.

Brian Kruger (affectionately known as "Kroog") actually seemed to know how to play lead guitar, and he was a super nice guy to boot, so he was eventually chosen. Though no professional gigs were on the horizon, the band set about feverishly working on a 10-song set list - all written by Jordan.

CAMP 7's sound in the early days was decidedly simple, owing as much to Jordan's love of R.E.M. as to his limited songwriting skills.

After playing a house party at the home of friend Robert Johnson (no, not the King of the Delta Blues) which also featured Johnson's new band The Screaming Helens (formed along with fellow Plastic Age veterans Tom Miller and Steve Varosi). The group felt ready for more gigs.

Of course, in those days, there were not many opportunities in Gainesville for bands playing original music. However, there was this brand-new place downtown, called the Hardback Cafe, that not only allowed original bands, but booked them exclusively.

Thus it was that CAMP 7 played its very first professional performance, on Thursday, Nov. 2, 1989, at the Hardback, opening for the progressive instrumental duo Monopoly.

Jordan, who worked at a local restaurant, was able, through shrewd marketing skills ("You've gotta come see my band") to pack the place with several of his coworkers, a hard-partying bunch who consumed copious amounts of beer and tipped generously. Accordingly, the band was asked back.

More about Camp 7 in subsequent posts. Here's some pics. First official/paid gig, at the Hardback Cafe:





Third show, back at the Hardback, apparently all I owned back then was a pair of black jeans and a black t-shirt:



NOW SOMEONE ELSE share some of your history! I knows you got stories, people.

[Brian Krashpad]

Hmm, still dead, here's some more history. Though I'd rather hear yours.

Anyhow, so Camp 7 played some shows as a 4-piece. Eventually, tempers flared between the lead singer and the rhythm section. They both quit, iirc on a Sunday after a Saturday night gig. The only reason I remember is that I thought of it as "Sunday Bloody Sunday" as a private joke to myself.

So now we were left with 2 guitarists and no bass or drums. The drummer from my very first band, the Atomics, Chad, had been out in California for several years. While out there he founded the band Neurosis, which became pretty big in punk rock circles, though I think he got out of the band before they did many or maybe any recordings, and certainly before they became semi-famous. So anyhow Chad was back in town and I looked him up and got him to play drums for us. I switched over to play bass and we became a trio.

Iirc our first show as a trio was on Doug's back porch in what was then called the "Student Ghetto:"



Here's a shot from a rare show where I played my backup bass:



This is us playing on July 4, 1990. The show was actually out of doors, and we went on at dusk. It was really hot out. In this pic Doug (our lead singer) has blacked out all the background so it looks like we were on a dark stage or something:



Here we are back at our fave haunt, the Hardback. It looks a little different than in previously-posted pics because they moved the "stage" from the back corner up to the front side wall:





Let's here some stories, or see some pics!

[Brian Krashpad]

Still no stories! No pics? C'mon people!

OK, so after awhile the Camp 7 lead singer decided he was going to move to the big city and become a rock star. Obviously I couldn't do that, since I had a day job and such, so I was out. The singer brought in an old buddy of his to play bass instead. The new bassist also bought them a drum kit and a new PA, iirc. Eventually they moved downstate for awhile (Orlando I think, maybe Tampa), and then up to Boston. Later the lead singer came back to Gainesville and our musical paths crossed again, but that is for another post.

So anyhow, I was out of Camp 7 sometime in 1990 or so. I decided that it was time to front a band doing original material that would include songs I would write. (We had done one of my songs in Camp 7.) I first got together with Dave, who had been in the early version of longtime Gainesville fave Tone Unknown (in fact, he had come up with that name). Dave quickly repeated his previous band-naming success by coming up with "Smart Bomb" for the fledgling project.

The rhythm section was rounded out by Neil, a jovial heavy metal-rocker type on drums, and Chris Ticknor on bass. Chris was considerably younger than the other members of the band and left after only 3 shows. Wade, a portly drummer in the UF marching band, known for wacky onstage clothing and antics, replaced Chris on bass about five weeks after our debut.

Smart Bomb made it's debut on Saturday, March 23, 1991. The show was very unusual in that we played in a backroom of the old Skeeter's restaurant on NW 34th Street. Dave, who was an abstract painter, somehow talked Skeeter's into letting him have an art show/band show there. Smart Bomb played with three other bands we subsequently gigged with at other venues around town: Bicycle Thieves (another band that included a former Camp 7 member, original drummer Jeff Schwartz; Brian helped them record their first 3-song demo on his 4-track), Unidentified (Dave was friends with Rich Groene), and the Youngies.

This version (Brian, Dave, Neil, Wade) of Smart Bomb lasted until Dave moved, in August of 1991. This version of the band was heavily oriented towards Brian's material since Dave only contributed a couple songs and Neil had not yet begun writing. Gigs during this phase of the band included Gainesville clubs the Hardback, Gravity and Club Demolition, plus a two-day stint at Admiral Spacolli's in St. Augustine (who dicked us over pretty badly and then tried to have us arrested despite that we'd packed the dive).

Dave managed to get the "oldies" radio station he worked at to let him have a local music show, which he called "In The Bunker," and on which he played Smart Bomb live unreleased recordings, plus those of our other local band friends. Dave even interviewed the other members of Smart Bomb once, without ever noting that he was the fourth member of the band! Wade took over the DJ spot when Dave moved.

On to the pics! Here's the debut "art show" gig:



Here's a street party we played, Dave was so plastered he could hardly stand. I have no idea how he managed to play guitar:



Us, with second bassist Wade, at a place called "Club Demolition," which in fact imploded a couple months after opening due to licensing issues:





Let's see some pics from y'all, people!