Picked The Bass Up Again

     I usually have this musical instrument always stored away neat and tidy in it’s case when I have no use for it. But lately I HAVE had use for it.

     Playing my bass is fun now that I have given up on the dream of being a rock n roll god. I bought it when I was 13 with money I saved up from being a paperBOY!!! (Remember those?)

     I have a Fender Squire and a Peavey amplifier that I have been rockin’ out on consistently for over a year now. I had them packed away for the longest time. Many years.

     I have a pretty well insulated basement that allows me to crank up the stereo with my iPod and I blare my amp and just jam! Nobody upstairs can really hear me, which is how I like it. They don’t get annoyed and I can just be left alone (with 20,000 imaginary fans screaming for me to take off my shirt and spit and sweat on).

     I know alot of Led Zepplin from my early years of playing because I always thought they were easy to figure out. But now I have recently added Marilyn Manson, Radiohead, Tom Petty, Judas Priest and The Cult, just to name a few, to my resume’.

     Before anyone comes filling up my inbox, I do not have any desire to play in your band. That dream is dead. I just do it now to enjoy myself and brag to my friends and in my posts that I can play songs that are heard on the radio.

     Now if you excuse me, I must go now go so I can suck back a fifth of Jose Cuervo, smash up my hotel room, do a line of cocaine, have sex with a groupie, and pass out on the bathroom floor while covered in my own vomit.

     Actually I’m off to bed. I have errands to run first thing in the morning then help my wife do housework and then spend the rest of the day with her and my kids.

My Story…Part 2

     I attended Ferris State University during the 1991-1992 school year. It was some good fun going there. I really learned alot about life in that short school year. I learned what I wanted to do with my life, because upon arrival on campus, I had no clue yet.  I wanted to be a journalist. I wanted to write the stories the newsanchors read on television.

     I also learned how to live on my own but in a little room with a complete stranger who I became friends with fairly quickly because most of the stuff in that dorm room was his and if I wanted to use any of it without bringing my crap up to school and further cluttering the room, I needed to play nice! He was a good guy. It’s too bad me and my suitemates abused him the way we did one particular drunk night. Shame on those guys!!

     And speaking of drunk, I also learned how to drink. I mean REALLY drink. One, and only one example of the learning I experienced was shooting back Tequila. It included courage, peer pressure, loud music, a fifth of Jose Cuervo, shot glasses, and the desire to get good and fucked up in a hurry for whatever we were doing that night.

     We lined up about 5 of 6 shots of Jose on our bathroom sink. With salt on thumb, we licked, shot back as many of those glasses in a row then hovered the toilet…just in case. Fortunately no one ever hurled their’s back up. And yes! We could make it all the way down the line of those glasses after a couple of weekends of playing this game. By the end of the school year, I was doing it without the salt and without the lemon and without the security of the nearby toilet.

     That school year was a really fun year. I made some really good friends I wish I had stayed in contact with. The main reason contact was lost was because I didn’t go back. It was my choice. I was to room with this one guy and his phone number was the only one I had going into that summer. We were supposed to make plans on what we were to bring back the following year. I called him only once. It was to inform him that I wouldn’t be returning. He invited me up to visit. I never did. THAT I regret doing. I never talked to him again after that call . 

     I hope all my friends accomplished the great things they were going to school for. If they didn’t? Then I hope they love what they are doing instead, and maybe one day they can reach those goals. I am still striving for mine.