Learning music with friends

The sociology of group learning and music making.

A short story.

Those of us of a certain age remember that playing in a teenage rock band was a rite of passage in the 1970s. Fueled by macho images, on TV, of rock gods playing to legions of screaming girls ignited our imaginations. With visions of world dominance and female adoration playing in our heads we strapped on guitars, picked up drumsticks, and congregated in shag carpeted suburban rec rooms and formed bands. After a few weeks we had weeded out the hopeless, the nerds, and other misplaced posers. This left the rest of us newly minted teenagers to begin our quest for social significance.  



Here is a timeline.

Year one: We were gawd awful but enthusiastic. We began with Smoke on the Water. We argued and shared bits and pieces of the thing, slowly stitching the thing together. Later, I remember bringing my little radio shack cassette recorder, and proudly recording our band, and listening to it back. Kirby, our drummer was so traumatised that he quit on the spot and was never known to have played again. Even worse it was his rec room, so we needed a new place to practice too.
Year two: The music started to come together. However, there were many more personnel changes over disputes around commitment to the band, artistic differences, and widening skill levels.
Year three: We played in public for the 1st time. Thankfully this was before social media and cell phone video. So, in my memory we were formidable rock gods. (However, I’ve heard some musicians of my early acquaintance play in the last few years, they were gawd awful, which tempers my memory.)
Year four: I’m at Berklee College of Music in Boston and the rest is history.

Postscript.
A few of us from North Bay made it in the end. One of us, the late John McGale, even became a certified rock star and guitar god. And yes, music did take me around the world though not as a rock star. 
 
If you would like to start your quest for music world dominiation, call me, I'll teach you to play. Music lessons were a crucial step we missed back then, we tried to teach ourselves because we were 13 years old and full of self assurance. 

David

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