The Fast Track

It appears that my son is a bit more advanced than his dad in some areas.

I always loved music, but I didn’t get the whole “I need to join a band” thing going until I was at least 13 or 14.  My son is already there.  Last week he was bugging me to “have band practice” with him, so I relented.  He wanted to play the bass, so I shortened up my bass strap and set him up, while I took the acoustic guitar and showed him how to play “E-E-E-G” over and over.   He improvised himself by using the same pattern on all four strings.

I then tried to show him to play “E-E-F#-G” but apparently that was too much for him.

For the next few days, he kept calling me back downstairs to practice “our song.”  When I noted that I’d be gone at the end of last week, he said “It’s okay.  You taught me that song, now I can teach it to Mom and she can practice with me.”  Great.  So I’m the session player here.

After we finished our practice on Tuesday night before I left, I asked if we were famous yet.  He rolled his eyes and, with patience sorely tried, said “NO, Dad!  We have to practice at least 20 times before we’re famous.”

Part of his inspiration is a book he’s reading lately, in which the older brother of the main character plays in a band and spends a lot of time reading “heavy metal magazines.”  So he turns to us on Tuesday night and says, “I want a heavy metal magazine.”  I of course think of all the time I spent reading Circus and Rip in high school and internally say “Oh Gawd.”  Dys, on the other hand, immediately says “Your dad probably has some he can give you.”

Which I don’t – but I do have several guitar magazines buried in a box in the basement somewhere.  So I said, “Hmm, yeah, I’ll tell you what – I’ll get you one on my trip.”  So of course there were Guitar Worlds in every newstand in every airport I flew through on the way out, so I figured I wouldn’t burden myself until the trip back…at which point there wasn’t a Guitar World to be found.  WTF?!?

Long story short, Dys had to make a grocery run and bought him one that evening.  He devoured it, at least superficially, for the next day as he lay on the couch sick.  From time to time he’d point out a photo of a guitar he thought was particularly cool.  On Sunday evening, he called us both over and said, “Hey, you guys, check this out!”

It was a couple of ads, one for some guitar geegaw and the other apparently for a 1-900 number.  Both featuring young women as well-endowed as they were scantily clad.

“It’s a chick with boobs, son,” says Dys.

“No, Mom, it’s a hot chick!” was his reply.

She rolled her eyes.  “Fine, it’s a hot chick with boobs.”

The boy’s developing all sorts of fascinations at 10 that I didn’t really get until 13, apparently…