My First Band

I started playing the piano later than a lot of kids I went to school with. I was really interested in music from a young age because of my dad who was not only a high school clarinet player, but also a community musical theatre director. Other kids were doing private lessons and recitals with printed programs and cookies but I was never drawn to that. When I was in 4th grade, the staff at Bandland music store came to Johnson Elementary and demonstrated each instrument available in band the following year. I chose the clarinet as my instrument, partly to follow in my dad's footsteps and partly because simply growing up Jewish in West Virginia wasn't quite torment enough.

I remember vividly when I started to resent the clarinet. One day after school in 8th grade, I watched Patrick Burnett on the gymnasium stage at Bridgeport Junior High with a swarm of kids, mostly girls, hovering around the piano as he played "Great Balls of Fire". Up to this point, I had merely learned the Clarinet 1 part to "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" by Wang Chung which isn't recognizable with out the rest of the school band. That day I raced home and asked for a keyboard and shortly after, my parents came home with a brand new Yamaha PSR model keyboard with 100 sounds, several beats and built-in speakers. One of the first things I did was to flip on the auto chord function, which allowed users to play one or two notes and the keyboard automatically filled in the rest of the chord. I "wrote" my first song, an instrumental, no lyric or title, with the chord changes: Am-F-G-C to a "16-beat" ad nauseam.

As I got older and more proficient at piano, my dad would challenge me to learn songs. One evening after dinner he may have asked for "Piano Man" and the next night it was "Anything off of Revolver". I'd put on the cassette and stop and start to pick out each note and chord by ear. Then after a short while, he'd check back in to hear me perform the song along with the recording while he stood in the doorway of my bedroom and beamed. In the coming years, if we were at anyone's house with a piano, my dad would beg (read: make) me perform from my repertoire he had steadily crafted with post-dinner requests at home.

Not too long after I turned 15, I joined my first cover band. While other kids at my school joined bedroom or garage bands with people their own age, I joined a band of older, more experienced musicians. There was the attractive singer Cheri, from Liberty High School, who I think was part Native American and loved Southern Rock. There was Ken, the virtuosic Berklee-bound electric guitarist who could play every Yngwie Malmsteen and Eric Johnson lick note for note. There was the leader of the band, the drummer Joey, a Clarksburg veteran musician and Berklee grad, who before returning home to West Virginia served as the backup drummer on Michael Jackson's BAD tour. Lastly, there was 15 year old me: just evolving out of my Young MC/MC Hammer phase into the potent and highly flammable mix of The Beatles, halftime marching band arrangements, showtunes and current Casey Kasem pop/rock. With wrap-behind-the-ear eye glasses, button-up shirts, a meticulously hairsprayed wave of hair and an Ensoniq SQ-2 76-note keyboard, which I split to cover all the keys parts, horn stabs, string pads and left-hand bass lines, I was ready to rock the bars and restaurants of Harrison County underage.

We named ourselves "Generations" and with the help of my dad we booked ourselves a New Year's Eve gig at his friend Tony's restaurant downtown. I can't remember if we ever did any other gigs. I can only remember this particular night and hours of practicing Toto's "Hold The Line", Lynrd Skynrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" and Eric Johnson's "Cliffs of Dover" alongside cover band staples like "Shout" and "What I Like About You" - which is almost always sung by the drummer wearing a headset mic, a tradition Generations did not dare to break. One idea leading up to the gig, was to live up to our name and change outfits each set that represented a different decade. The concept died a quick death when I was reminded that this wasn't "an Art Center production" but rather Clarksburg's finest menu venue fledgling rock band.

In preparation for the December 31st gig, I was told to have Auld Lang Syne sequenced (recorded into the keyboard) ahead of time so that once 1992 gave way to 1993, we could all dance with our significant others - or in my case, my mom. I went the extra mile and made the last chord of my shuffle feel Auld Lang Syne joltingly segue into the ubiquitous dance-hit "The Electric Slide". As the Saint Charles Place restaurant revelers drunkenly counted down from 10, I loaded my keyboard sequence. As soon as I heard the mass "Happy New Year!", I punched the grey "play" button and left the stage to search the sea of balloons and sequined nightgowns for my mom.

Generations didn't last much longer after that gig. When I got to college, I quickly joined a new cover band called "The Inner Groove Collection" - West Virginia's premier 7-piece funk-rock band, which is a whole other story. However, the experience of my first cover band still sticks in my head because it gave me the first taste of the instant gratitude you get from performing live while simultaneously making me aware that keyboard bass always sucks.