“A thimbleful of red is redder than a bucketful.”
- Henri Matisse
If you play an instrument, I'll bet you remember the first song you ever learned to play. I'm not talking about those simple learner songs that everyone starts out with. They have their role, but I'm talking about the first song that you wanted to play, a song that made you want to pick up the instrument in the first place.
I started playing guitar in 1994. It was a barren, pre-internet landscape. You had to learn how to play songs like everyone always had, by either having someone teach you, by listening to a song and trying to dissect it, or by finding sheet music, tabs or chord charts. All those options were hurdles in some way.
I took a few lessons early on and learned to clumsily play a few basic chords. My instructor certainly knew his stuff, but he mainly focused on scales and technique exercises and such, all of which were appropriate, and BORING. I wanted to ROCK! What to do? I didn't have any guitar-playing friends that could teach me cool songs and I certainly wasn't skilled enough to listen to a song and deconstruct it. I decided to check out the music store down the street.
They had a good inventory of chord books by popular artists, The Beatles, The Eagles, James Taylor, all dynamite stuff. But, as I was flipping through the bins something caught my eye. It was just a single fold chord chart, the front cover reading, Bad Reputation/Freedy Johnston. I had Freedy's just released debut cd This Perfect World which contained that track. What were the odds I'd come across this unicorn? Being a weirdo, I like obscure stuff that most people don't recognize. What better thing to learn to play? Plus, it cost $1.99 and not $19.99 like the Neil Young book. I snatched it up like the last cupcake at a party.
It was a good song to learn. It was five chords with a couple of minors. It had a rich feel. I learned it fairly quickly. I will say, being able to actually play a song you like all the through and have it really sound like it's supposed to is one of the great feelings in life, at least to me. In my mind's eye, when I hear the song now I see myself sitting in the chair of my sunlit bedroom strumming along and smiling. I had found the grail, at least partially.
Not long thereafter I went to see Freedy. He was playing at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on a bill with Shawn Colvin and Patty Griffin. I fought the urge to yell to him that I could play one of his songs. As an aside, Patty Griffin was new on the scene. She had just released her first album, Living With Ghosts. I had it and I adored it. It is still in my Top-10 of albums I'd want to be stranded on a desert island with. She opened the show and played maybe 5 songs, just her and her guitar. She was quite shy. At one point between songs, she bumped the mic stand with her guitar and it wobbled around precariously but she was able to grab and secure it. After a moment she said, “I'm sorry. I'm so nervous I can hardly stand up." It endeared me to her forever.
Freedy is below, RP
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Name That movie: "That's a bingo! Is that the way you say it? That's a bingo?
“You just say bingo.”