The Starting Line (First Post)

For those that don't like origins stories, press the fast forward button on your remotes and skip passed this shit. For those of you who think "the book is better" than you're in for a t

reat.

From the age of 9 I played every venue, bar and club in a 25 mile radius of my home. To better understand me, it's probably best to throw you directly into the mosh pit of my past, starting with my heaviest memories. (this won't take long, I promise fuckers.)

Boring Flashback Story:

My dad taught my brothers and I (myself being the oldest of 3) how to play any instrument we were willing to pick up after he disbanded hopes of rock-stardom once we were all born. He had a great ear for harmony, amazing guitar chops and incredible voice. I played piano, next to youngest brother drums and youngest percussion and harmony. All classic rock music, all the time. We were made fun of for some of our tastes in music since it clashed with the mid 90's - 2000's radio pop that pre teens are brainwashed to listen to. We though were indulged with another era of music, classic rock, metal, and hair metal between the 50's and 90's. We had the mullets (yes there are pictures), knew that Cinderella was more than a fairytale, and

being a fat kid that didn't mesh with the in-crowd during the day didn't matter, because at night everyone loved us when we were on stage.

Enter Adolescents:

This all lasted until high school. All of our tastes in music changed. and there was nothing our parents could do to stop it. I wanted to play guitar badly. I'm left handed. The closest guitar shop was 2 hours away, and rarely a lefty is in stock. For some reason MTV was on in our house, a channel rarely turned on due to the popular music it played. This band came on, they were all naked, and sang 2-3 part harmony, I was hooked. The song was "What's My Age Again?" and it was of course blink-182. I wanted to play every song, I wanted a bass guitar.

Enter Punk Rock:

Shit escalated like an industrial house fire after that. Luckily around that time, it was the revival of punk in the early 2000's. There were very limited resources to find new bands due to living in suburban Pennsylvania at the time of poor internet (that's right kids, we still had dial-up) and narrow minded top 40 radio. Myself and some friends sought out every new band we could using illegal internet downloading sites.

(Enjoy the SONG while I just take you back for a moment.)

*Napster

*AOL MUSIC

*KAZAA

*Myspace

*Limewire

Bands:

It came natural when I was younger, and it did then too, I played in punk bands in high school with my brothers of course. Everyone tries to develop their own sound, but later realized we were just copying blink-182 and Green Day with our own lyrics. The latter stuff in our writing got better, but of course, we disbanded like most bands, and then we regroup and then we break up again. My parents were totally supportive, even my dad who felt like at times we abandoned him, as long as there was a keyboard and a harmony in it, he was happy. It actually helped me develop my sound as a musician.

Baby Kid (listen up dads):

My daughter happened after a crazy drunk night around Halloween I was Cokie the Clown that year, we had the time frame mapped out. Totally not planned. Also not planned was the fact that both sides of our families hated each other, and the girlfriend's side of the family was moving, from PA to Texas. With limited income, and what was best for our daughter, we both agreed the best course was to leave. Her family problems led to a departure in Texas, and off to Vegas which was a brief visit with some friends in order to get to Michigan with some family.

My daughter was born in Royal Oaks Michigan in 2012, and sadly I couldn't be there. I spent weeks leading up to that being a complete piece of shit binge drinking and partying pretty hard. My dad was about to go into surgery for a biopsy and I thought "what if he never sees his grand daughter." About 3 weeks after she was born where I just had enough, said fuck all of this "Romeo and Juliet" family shit, and left at 1am, borrowed 300$ from some friends and left. I took my car, left a note and went and got them. I had one horrible phone call after the next the whole ride back on how I would be the black sheep from the family. Until I stepped foot in the door with our daughter, the second they saw her, everything changed.

I still had music, they both lived with me, things got went well, and we've had ups and downs since then. My father passed away later that year from complications due to the surgery. My gut told me to go, luckily I went. I didn't listen to my family. In closing this little "getting to know you" my best advise in all of this parenting.

"Fuck everyone who tells you what to do" Listen to your gut & heart, and do what you feel is best for your kid and your partner. Everything else is just static and noise; you can either figure out how the melody goes or get swallowed whole by the mosh pit.