First Bass

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First Bass

I hope you enjoyed my Christmas story. If you haven’t read it go back a few blogs and start with “Snow Part I” and meet us back here. It'll be totally better than this post.

Go on, we’ll wait.

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Are they gone?

Haha –suckers! Lets move on without ‘em

Today is the day after Christmas, Boxing Day in the UK and Canada. In America it’s the day we play with our new sh… stuff.

I have a remote control helicopter, an iPhone, a cool shortwave radio and a book on paper airplanes to keep me busy. Not to mention I’m sitting on a largely empty 100 X 55FT sound stage. Great for indoor flying!

But wait? It’s Saturday and I don’t have a blog ready!  I was so busy writing my story earlier this week (and then there was that whole Christmas thing) that I wasn’t thinking ahead to the next blog: this one!

What am I going to write about?

I know, I'll talk about my first bass!

A while ago in my old Myspace blog I wrote about the first bass I had ever played. Though it was originally purchased for my use in 1978, that bass belonged to the Canandaigua Jr. Academy. I didn’t own a bass of my own, or any real instrument for that matter (my upright string bass was also the school’s) until over a year later.

Canandaigua Academy, sounds like a private school doesn't it? And as far as you know and the suckers that read my resume, it is! 

Christmas 1980: I had asked for a bass and amp for Christmas. I was -not- told “no”. In kidspeak, that’s as good as a “yes”. However, when I was around eight, I asked for a drum set which I got, but they were effectively toys with plastic sticks, sheet metal shells and cymbals and paper--no I'm not kidding--paper heads. Within a day, after playing what I thought was normal, I had broken every one of the drum heads. I was crushed. So were my drums.

A real bass was going to cost more than my parent’s usually spent on Christmas. Was I going to get another toy? Did they even make 'toy' basses back then?

Maybe it would be like the hamster to the dog: “Here’s a harmonica. If you can manage to feed, take care of it and clean up it's crap for a year without killing it, maybe then we’ll get you a bass.

By-the-way I actually killed a harmonica once: Christmas cookie crumbs… it was never quite the same.

Remind me to get permission to repost: "Dogs and Basses, A Comparison" written by my friend Jim.

There were several especially memorable Christmases in the gift department. I remember getting a yellow Tonka truck when I was very young. One year my father bought an American Flyer train set for my brother, me and, of course, himself. That was an amazing magical gift that we loved perhaps more than any gift we had ever received.

One year my brother and I got a stereo with AM/FM radio, BRS record changing turntable and an 8 track cassette player -that also recorded!

After that it was official: we were cool!

Then there was the year we got walkie-talkies. An awesome gift for any pair of brothers (that actually get along). We were constantly on 'spy missions' from that time on.

But then there was the Christmas morning I was hoping for that bass guitar. It was close to a sleepless night Christmas eve. I remember rounding the corner at full speed and seeing it in the dining room just outside of the living room. It was leaning against a small amplifier. It was a blond Hondo II P-bass copy with some extraordinary wood grain; quite unusual for Asian-made basses at that time.

I’m not sure I ever made it into the living room and to my other gifts.

I remember my excitement as plugged it into the amp. My parents’ looked on, happy to watch a dream of mine come true, but possibly also wondering what they had done to their peace and quiet.

The amp was a Peavey Backstage 30. It was a guitar amp but affordable practice bass amps didn’t exist back then. My dad told me as I adjusted the knobs, that turning up the pre gain gave it a more “rock and roll” sound, meaning to you and I: distorted. I remember thinking: “Aha, he must have got it home and spent some time paying around with it himself. Way to go dad!”

That night as I went to bed, I looked at my new bass leaning in the corner. Maybe it was because of the feminine contours of a P-bass or maybe it was just the reality that, at last, I had my very own bass guitar. It looked positively, magically, stunningly beautiful to me.

In later years I would come to refer to that bass as “Tex”. I don’t know or remember why.

Tex & Me in 11th grade.
"CA" = Canandaigua Academy. See, I wasn't making it up.

I have owned… -letsee: Tex, Hank, The Beatle bass I altered and shouldn’t have, the black G&L with a Kahler! the white Cort bass with the Lita Ford autograph that was later stolen, Floyd, Spanky, Woody, Darla (my only 5-string), The other Variax I sold when times were tough, and Bridget my year-old Schecter Stiletto- …eleven basses so far.

The whole lot cost less that five grand total including estimated cost of the three that were gifts.

Thanks Mom & Dad.

Thanks  Mom & Dad.

Thanks Jim!

Of those eleven basses I still have six. I’m happy to say that, even though he may be unrecognizable after all the alterations I’ve made over the years, I still have Tex.

Baseball puns and sexual analogies not withstanding, there really is nothing like your first bass!

Tex currently. His customization, including a fretless mod, is still not complete.