I was a latecomer to music. I didn't really start listening to the radio until i was about 11. I got my first CD player around that time too.
It was cruel. It was a present one Christmas Day, a Sony Discman, it was the height of technology at the time. Unfortunately nobody thought to buy any CD's to play on it.
In those days nowhere was open on Christmas day or even Boxing Day, not anywhere that I would be able to buy CD's from anyway. So I waited as long as I could but I had to get something to play on it. So i went to my local supermarket that had a selection of CD's for sale. Had they been in a proper music store they would have been in the 'shit' section. I got a UB40 album and a Spandau Ballet album, not there latest ones, just some old crap ones.
Now I don't want to offend anyone. These were probably actually very good albums but they weren't cool at the time.
It's a wonder I didn't give up on music then really but a hobby of mine saved me. There was a big thing in the UK for CB radios around the late 80's early 90's, and I owned one. I had the worst equipment ever and really could only speak to anyone who was close enough that if they had just shouted out of their window I would have probably still heard them.
Just around the corner from my house lived a lad called Sparky....'cos we all used pretend names (mine was Pegasus....no idea why). His real name was Dave. He used to chat on the CB to a few other people further away than I could hear, so I only ever heard half of the conversation. So one day I interrupted his chat, probably by talking right over the person that I couldn't hear. We got talking and it turned out he loved lots of cool bands like The Beatles and the Rolling Stones. He also played a bit of guitar. Anyway one of his favourite bands was Guns 'n' Roses. The next two albums i would buy would be Use your Illusion 1 and 2. I say I bought them, I may have just permanently borrowed them from good old Sparky!
After obsessing over the band for a few weeks I decided I wanted to play guitar and Sparky never missed an opportunity. He sold me his Shergold Masquerader for either £80 or £100......we constantly argue over this even to this day.
I'll discuss this guitar in more detail later.
Slash became my first real hero and still is one of them today. I can't play like him or actually even try to but he set me off on my playing career and that has led to some great memories and hopefully there are still loads to come.
In the next post I will talk about learning to play......and the wrong way to get a band together! Ol' Sparky features throughout. ;)
Dx