Slappin da bass mon!

My brother is extraordinarily musically endowed. He picked up the trumpet in 4^th grade, the guitar in middle school, currently attends the prestigious Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester to study trumpet performance, and will be attending Yale for graduate studies in the field of ethnomusicology (basically an anthropological and sociological study of music). In middle school, he was focused more on guitar than trumpet, but he is nearly virtuosic on both instruments. This story is not about him, however.

John is three years older than me, and has always been the image of “cool” in my eyes. So, as a 5^th grader who played the trombone, yet wanted to emulate his cooler, rock-star older brother, I wanted to put aside the ultra-lame trombone and learn how to play the bass guitar:  the more mysterious, less glamorous, but still-necessary cousin of the guitar.

The experience of receiving this amazing gift is still picturesque in the reels of my memory: it was a cold and overcast spring day (weather not reflective of my mood, however), the Friday of our spring break. That morning, my mother, brother and I drove from our town of Libertyville down to a town closer to Chicago, Schaumburg, to meet up with my dad and get lunch at Maggiano’s Little Italy. I had lasagna there, and relished it. It was raining as we drove back on the highway. We exited the highway and drove through the downtown of Libertyville which is not the usual way we’d go home. When we got to the music store (aptly named Libertyville Music) my face must have lit up as I tried to pick my jaw up off the floor of the car. Weeks of careful asking and good behavior must have finally paid off.

I got a Fender Starter Kit, which came with a red Squier P-Bass (a cheaper model of the standard Fender Precision Bass,) an amplifier, and a gig bag, along with an instructional video. When we got home, I went to the basement (my boyhood Man-Cave) and proceeded to watch the duration of the 5 hour VHS.

I played bass guitar fairly consistently all the way through high school, acquiring a darkgreen Peavey Fury IV, and an acoustic Ibanez 5-string bass guitar (traditionally they have 4 strings). I did not bring one to TCU so I’ve gotten rusty, but I still love to “slappa da bass mon."