There's a Radio Station in my Head

(or, "Why the hell do I bother?")

I may be the greatest guitarist you’ve never heard of.

Mainly because learning guitar at 13, and playing in various basement and garage bands, I never played an actual gig. So you wouldn’t know, would you? It’s ok, how could you? Never played out. Practiced for years. Never left the bedroom. Not in a WWII-Japanese-soldier-left-in-the-woods-unaware-the war-is-over kind of way, just in a never-quite-got-up-the-nerve-and-was-too-scared-of-being-embarassed kind of way. Loved the guitar. Classical, rock, jazz – didn’t matter. The guitar was MY instrument. I studied everything. Played everything I could. Took up all my time. (Actually, some of this time was spent practicing not real guitar, but air guitar, to the point that a nosy neighbor across the street, who could see my shadowy kneeling-below-the-stack-of-Marshalls activities through the bedroom window, once called my parents to let them know that I was having an epileptic fit.)

But I still never played out and then I stopped playing guitar. So as good as I thought I was, no-one else ever knew.

Went to university. Got a degree. Got a job. Moved to America from Scotland. Got married. Had kids, Went to Grad School. Got a bigger job. Got divorced. Fifteen years of grown-up life slipped by as easily as those twenty-five words.

Then I started playing guitar again.

That last part sounds quite dramatic, doesn’t it? But to be fair, I also broke out my old train and slot car racing sets, started wearing my Boy Scout uniform and re-read all my Paddington Bear books.
Right about then I saw Lou Reed interviewed on TV saying “there’s a radio station in my head – and I’m always listening” Turning to my girlfriend I said “ I know exactly what he’s talking about! You know when you hear a song for the first time on the radio and it starts out really well, then it takes a turn and it’s NOT quite so good anymore, but in YOUR head you can hear exactly how you think it SHOULD sound?” She stared back at me and said blankly “No. I don’t. In fact, I think there are very few people that can do that”

Once I got over the idea that maybe I had been doing everything wrong for 40 years, I decided: It was time to take this music “thing” more seriously.

Turning forty, I decided to record a CD of songs. Instrumentals, mainly, that I loved and had loved for years. With this first “Slim Pickings” CD, I’m just getting started. My plan is to release one CD (or whatever medium will be used in the future – probably some form of iTunes-controlled audio telepathy) of music – whatever I’m hearing in my head - every year.

Les Paul is still playing in NYC at 91 years old (You really need to get out there to see him, by the way.) Chet Atkins once introduced himself by saying “If it weren’t for the guitar, I’d be out running wild, practicing law or medicine someplace” . They're onto something. I figure I have a few decades left to keep playing music; to do what I’m supposed to do.

As I enter the second half of my life, I’ve found what I truly want to do. Making and playing music. Playing guitar. Sharing what I hear in my head. I wish I could be more sophisticated and revelatory about it, but it really is that simple (and hokey.) I do regret the fact that I never got to thrash around onstage as a kid. The music I’ll be playing for the rest of my life probably won’t lend itself to that style, but you never know. Hell, if someone puts on Queen’s “The Prophet’s Song”, you will SWEAR on Led Zeppelin’s first four albums that I’m having a seizure. Ah, heady days indeed, my friends.

It’s time for me to pay attention to that radio station in my head. And you get to listen.