FLASHBACK TO 1968

I have a passion for music. Some people may find that unusual … After all I am only seven years old.

You could always hear music playing in our house. No one really spoke too much; they seem to express themselves by either listening to music or playing different instruments.

I grew up listening to all kinds of tunes, but it was the blues that I first remember as it was played in my bedroom since my early days in the cradle. I shared my bedroom with my brother who was a musician. He played his guitar all night every night till the wee hours in the morning. Guitar licks have been laced into my earliest memories.

My brother is in a blues band, and our parents allow him to rehearse with his friends in the basement on Saturday afternoons. There were other things I could have been doing, but I loved hanging out during rehearsal. They have a fully staged setup down there. And this gave me the opportunity when no one was around to fool around with all the gear …

In the basement we also had our main turntable/sound system and my brother kept his album collection down there. Of course touching the LP's or any of the instruments was strictly forbidden, but I had trouble understanding this notion. I couldn’t help it. Something inside of me needed to experiment with them.

There are too many LP’s to mention, but just to give you an idea there were albums such as East West from Paul Butterfield, A Hard Road by John Mayall and The Blues Breakers, Truth by The Jeff Beck Group, Wheels of Fire by Cream, and A Man and the Blues by Buddy Guy… Just to name a few.

I have a secret to tell you … The past few weeks whenever my brother isn’t home I’ll grab his guitar, cue up the turntable, sit down, and plug his axe into his Champ Amp. One of the songs on an album in my brother’s collection compelled me. The album is entitled West Side Soul and the song is called "All Your Love." Something about the song grabbed a hold of me and it was bigger than any of the warnings I received telling to me to stay away from the stuff. I started to play …