In my fourth-grade music class each student was given a white plastic recorder called a “flutophone.”
Guided by the music teacher we practiced as a group and learned a few songs for some sort of parent program. At the end of the fourth-grade year, after a meeting with the school band director, those of us who seem to have latent musical ability, the desire and the parents willing and able to pay the fees were fitted with an actual band instrument. It was suggested I play a coronet. So I did.
These were the first of many instruments I have played throughout my life. By the time I was in the seventh grade, the Beatles came on the scene and I was done with the cornet and ready to play guitar. My mom managed to wrangle an inexpensive guitar from Santa for Christmas, and I bought a book of Beatles songs, “The Golden Beatles.” It had lyrics and guitar chords to many of their songs up to that time including songs from their latest release, “Help.”
I practiced in my room for hours a day and listened to music over and over. I am sure I drove my mom crazy, and this was before I got an electric guitar. It was during that time that I learned “loud” is a relative term.
I eventually got a pretty good guitar which I kept until I sold it to a friend and got another pretty good guitar which I then traded for another guitar. Over the years I stopped buying, selling and trading guitars. I got to the point where I thought if I could afford it, I would just buy another guitar and let it live at my house with the rest of my collection.
I am drawn back to those early days of musical instruments as I talk to my 14-year-old grandson Phineas about Nirvana. He has become fascinated by the 1990s trio: posters on his bedroom wall, vinyl Nirvana records on his turntable and hours trying to figure out how to play their songs.
He called Grandma Becky not too long ago asking if we had any work he could do for us because he wanted to earn money to buy a nice guitar to replace the small beginner guitar that Santa brought his sister Lorelei a few years ago. Lorelei soon lost interest in it and it eventually ended up in Phineas’ hands. (He’s already six feet tall with long guitar-ready fingers. I admit I am jealous.) He called grandma because she is a soft touch. He also suspects — rightly — that Grandpa Norman is a soft touch when it comes to music.
He showed us a picture of the guitar he was saving for. It was a Fender Jaguar, a model that Nirvana singer and songwriter Curt Cobain played. I mentioned to Grandma Becky that I have a Fender Stratocaster that is very similar to a Jaguar in shape and — I would suspect — sound. I told Grandma that I could tell Phineas (and his mom and dad) that I could let the Strat “live at his house” for the time being with the idea that it eventually could be his guitar. Earlier I had given him an amp to use so he would be all set. Oh, yeah. I also had an old foot pedal that makes the guitar produce a loud, distorted “dirty” sound. He could let it live at his house, as well.
Mom Rachel mentions he plays his guitar all the time. That’s the way it starts, I thought.
She also says you can hear him everywhere in the house. Hmm. I don’t think he has yet internalized that “loud” is a relative term.
Norman Knight, a retired Clark-Pleasant Middle School teacher, writes this weekly column for the Daily Journal. Send comments to [email protected].
