Comments on: My Teenage Daze

By: Arnie

Arnie — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:43:04 +0000

My wife just turned me onto your blog - I love your writing style and reverence for the blues. My teenage years were 1959-65. I took piano lessons from age 6 and began playing in bands at 15, just before The Beatles exploded onto the pop scene. My early bands played a lot of blues, sometimes just jamming on a blues progression when we ran out of prepared songs to play. Here's the song list from one of my earliest bands in 1962: http://arniereed.googlepages.com/theredlighters Notice that one entry says simply, "Jimmy Reed songs" in the key of G. I believe that playing bands saved my sanity during my teenage years. It made me feel special then and continues to give me a transcendent sense of purpose. The band creates its own world apart from our material existence. Its waves of positive energy can infuse a crowd of people, making them dance and smile for a few minutes. Last year I posted a blues-related story from 1992 at: http://runawayimagination.blogspot.com/2008/06/my-visit-to-chicago-may-11-1992.html It tells the story of my blues adventure in 1992 on the south side of Chicago while on a business trip. I moved from northern Virginia to Nashville in 1998, toured the country with a country-rock band the following year and am still playing at age 63. My current band ("Two-Bit Eddie") specializes in 1960s rock. (see http://arniereed.googlepages.com/two-biteddie) I expected to climb a steep learning curve when I first moved to Music City, since I had never played much country music. However, I discovered that a grounding in the blues prepares any musician to play any style of popular music. The blues is the well from which we continue to draw inspiration, and this well never runs dry. Thanks for helping keep the blues alive! Arnie

By: DarioUP

DarioUP — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 19:24:46 +0000

Enjoyed the article. Great combination of music review made more interesting thanks to you telling us about your personal life as you experienced the music back in the 70's.

By: Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 00:49:36 +0000

My daughter is 22, going on 45. I call her, little miss I know it all. She is a good kid though, and when I was her age I thought I knew more then my dad too. LOL.

By: The Blues Blogger

The Blues Blogger — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 02:32:21 +0000

Fitz--- I appreciate all your support and positive words. Thank you! You're a good man... How old is your daughter? RTF lost a lot of their original fans when the above albums were released. But they also gained an entire new group of listeners. It was around this time frame that I started getting interested in sound mixing. And I would hang around all the music stores checking out the gear.

By: Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 14:58:09 +0000

Great post, I hope all goes well for your son. My daughter has high-functioning autism, so I understand. And thanks for introducing me to RTF, I've never really been a fan of fusion. It took Miles Davis to get me to start listening to that, I had heard of Chick Corea and Stanley Clarke of course, but just never knew that they were in a band together. At that time in the seventies I was knee deep into soul and rhythm and blues. Being from Louisiana, I'm kind of a jazz purist, but as I've gotten older, I've started to go back and retrace some of the nontraditional branches.