FULL SPEED AHEAD (eBook)

Screw the Swimmers

Gerry Benoit (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2020 | 1. Auflage
152 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-0983-4144-2 (ISBN)

Infos

FULL SPEED AHEAD is a compilation of random life events not in any life order. Every chapter will take you on a different journey. Experience a fun life growing up with great dogs. Get near some fire, and fireworks along the way. Learn how hood surfing was one of the crazy events of our youth. Take some motorcycle journeys that will make you go hum, others that just make you realize your angels 'had' to be there. You will be blown away by a drift, if not by aircraft that have 'issues'! Come live the fun of playing drums in a band for decades with a perfectionist brother. Yeah maybe that had something to do with the Hit Job! Life is fun and fast lived but when toxic relations happen, uh oh! The remarkable part of life is when it comes fast and fun and you lived to talk about it. Enjoy the, oh no it's 'You Again' moments and memories with good old friends that still make them laugh until they cry still thirty and forty years later. Come for the 'Fireworks' of life's display, oh yeah, it was a fun time. Just remember hit that throttle it's, FULL SPEED AHEAD...Screw the Swimmers!

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FULL SPEED AHEAD will take you on exciting journeys over land and sea. You have to hang onto your seat as you fly over the Key's in a stunt plane. Later only to top it off jumping out of one! Chapters that make you laugh followed by a tear flow, so have some tissues ready. Experience the fun and all out craziness of playing in bands from the sixties through the decades until the nineties. This adventure will take you into the Air Force for a grand experience, if we tell you all, we'll have to kill you! Come scuba diving with this book on some deep technical dives that would terminate you with a mistake. You will ride the East Coast on a Harley adventure of a lifetime, you'll be glad your angels came! Enjoy the fun of having 'Toxic' relations, you just never know. Stories of planes that have 'issues' in midair make you happy you actually made it back! Long road trips to never forget, and skydiving to top it off. It's a FREE FALLING WILD SURVIVAL LIFE, come and live it up!! Fun Times!

Textauszug

Pipeline

proof of the third rail

OUCH! Another three stooges prank on me! That’s what sharing a room with older siblings was like! That will be another chapter. My brother, CW was a self taught guitar player. For a young teen, as it turns out he wasn’t all that bad. His old tube amp of choice, a Fender Twin. That amp delivered a particular sound. The exterior of the cabinet had this certain beige plaid look to it. The corners had nice finish with metal pieces. Yes, this amp was made to be used for the long haul. Etched in my memory is the ‘pop’ sound it made when that rear toggle switch got flipped, and it came to life. As we grew up that amp was just part of my being because CW never stopped playing through it. I was dreaming of being taught how to play guitar by him as well, but every time he just reneged. On Saturday afternoons we would get dropped off at a music store in Fall River. The owners of Hall’s Music store liked to have the aspiring new musicians to the area come hangout and play instruments all day. Maybe one of these kids would be a big star someday. Who could tell, but they would be laying claim to finding them for sure. CW would sit there and play guitar for hours. Tony, one of the owners, played guitar incredibly. He would show my brother tips, as he was a flamboyant guitar teacher as well. When CW progressed, he bought a beautiful Country Gentleman guitar that he just loved. He played it until he wore the finish off. I remember him taking it apart for hours, figuring how to make it work differently, and he did! Nice sounds.

Every time CW plugged in any guitar the first thing he would do was slide down the neck doing a riff from a tune by the Ventures ~ ‘Pipeline’. Not sometimes, but every time! I just got used to it, but he would adjust the amp after that little ditty to his liking that minute for what he was thinking. A few seconds of tuning, really, just always that fast it seemed. I think he must have had the tone in his head. A vast amount of times I saw him strike a tuning fork, then put it between his teeth. He said it drove the correct sound through your head! I had to believe him, how the fuck would I know, I was just a young kid. Time flies, I finally got to play the drums and sing behind my brother in a band he created that would thrust him into playing bass. The band was ‘PAX’. We only had three people that ever played with us in the core of the band over its illustrious career. Nino, would be with us for years on guitar. He finally gave it up because driving school buses, and five to seven gigs a week for years beat him up! The next, Lonesome Lenny, joined us on guitar for another long stint, keeping my brother on bass. The last to come was Matt. My brother had met Matt on some country gig as a fill in. CW would take my drums to go play on a night our band wasn’t playing. Like he said, playing is better than sitting home. Then, I’d bitch about him using ‘my’ shit! My first memory of meeting Matt was in my parents garage. I was working at a car lot by day and doing all the gigs the band would take. Sometimes back then your employer actually understood when you were doing the band stuff. You just had to make them come to one of the gigs, and bingo, you had them sold! Closing a closer with the great demo, yeah it always worked! Every single time you had a gig from then on they never stopped you. They became great fans!

The beginning of Matt’s chapter started with a page phone call at the dealership. It’s tagged a ‘family’ call! Oh boy, I never get these, what could this be? I think I ran 20 catastrophes though my head as I ran to my office. It was CW on the other end. Hey you plaid suited car salesman you gotta get to the house right after work tonight. I will have your drums set up, we have some pressing news. A new guy starts Wednesday so we have to work this out. Normally this was a night for me to go to see a great local big fifteen piece jazz band. The huffs and puffs of protest were coming out from me you can rest assured. After the sound in CW’s voice, being called an asshole, then having my life threatened for several minutes, yup, be there at eight fifteen.

It was a rare occurrence when we would practice. If we did, within a half an hour of start and stops on one song, I’d snap! CW and I would be in some kind of wild issue that the third guy wouldn’t understand. Unless you work with a sibling with perfection issues, you wouldn’t know the scene. As I walked into the garage of my parents house, I couldn’t believe the whole band setup was ready to go. The different thing about the sight was CW’s guitar amp ready, and his Telecaster leaning against it. The new dude is playing bass?! Holy shit, a lightning storm in my head! I hadn’t seen my brother with a guitar in hand for years, this was going to be interesting real quick! First thing I heard when he strapped that guitar on, ~Pipeline~! As usual he always did it! The new guy Matt was much younger than us and nice guy. Big question running through my mind was, the youth factor. How could he know the gig? We did music much older than I was thinking his normal gig to be. After some friendly greetings and naturally grabbing a beer to try this kid out, we got into it. Three songs stopped 20 times and my brother kept showing him where the songs were going. I was in total panic inside thinking this thing will never fly by Wednesday, no way! An hour into it was too painful for me, I had to go. I said, “good luck by Wednesday getting a whole gig into this guys head.” I must say, his fingering was perfect on the bass, and without doubt he could play. He was not a singer, that wasn’t good, we had pride in being a vocal band, and wanted to keep it that way. CW saw something I couldn’t have in Matt, I’m glad he did!

My next phone call from my brother found me in my office while writing up a car deal. We were on speakerphone listening to CW and Matt doing the gig without my drums or vocals. I think in my years of the car biz, it was one of the most fun deals I ever did. So when the call ended my customer asked what that was about. After a real quick rundown, he was asking the address of the club the next night. The fact that a speaker phone call made this guy say, “that was awesome” made me have hope for the next night! He and his wife showed for that gig, and followed us for years after it. On the stage that nite was some crazy stuff being yelled to me, and at me by my brother. I sang songs I had never had a chance to do before. The whole time listening to my brother singing other songs at me from the side to screw me up. To this day, I don’t know how he could play one song and sing a totally different one at the same time! Damn! That night also as I remembered him plugging the guitar in, and I heard it. That same riff as always. Why? Just a habit, the reverb, the sustain? I never really would know ..... For many years Matt played with us and became a great entertainer, singer, lead and backup. It was always fun when he would sing ‘Long Cool Woman’. During the beginning riff, and during solos, Matt would jump up on corner side of my drum riser to launch off for some effect before he’d jam into the lyrics of the song! Great for the show, and fun for us too. Over the years it just became so fun it was part of us, and always kidding about the band was worth more. More, yeah we came with lights and our own stage, be it only for the drums. I stole the idea from the famous Earl Fox, a lifelong friend of my brother. Actually he was my brother’s drummer until I showed up, uh oh! Earl could drum his ass off, he didn’t sing, or I would have never had a chance! Every time I screwed up, got hurt, or while in the service, Earl was always the man! Like I say, whew, thank goodness Earl didn’t sing!!!

The band played and had so much fun that sometimes at the end of the gig when CW was paying me, we used to laugh and say, get paid for this too!???! All the many years of fun and games came crashing down one morning, when CW didn’t wake up. Many years of bookings to try to fill and no band to do it with, what a mess. Worst part, screw the gigs, my bro! I never had time to do the right grieving thing, with parents snapping over loosing their first born. We were struggling to make sense of a real life kicking our ass. I never depended on any day job, playing in that band was more to us than anything. Now life was going to get interesting. A short while after that, Matt moved his young family to Michigan. That is another quick chapter, or book for a later date.

I met Eddie, a fantastic guitarist one Saturday night in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. The one thing a band guy doesn’t like to do that plays full time, is be seen out on a weekend. It means your not gigging! This night, I finally got to talk with Eddie at break. I came to see this band when ever we got canceled, they did big band stuff. That band still performs today. Eddie was a slamming guitar player! I grabbed his card and asked if he would come do some flavorful add leads on one of our big gigs. Musicians being who they are, always want to play. I did say, great cash, oh yeah, that could have something to do with it. As things would be, shortly thereafter we lost CW, and Eddie and he never met, what a bummer. I found out later they may have. All master guitarists in this whole area took lessons to learn great theory from this guy Red. Red played guitar in the big band era and taught theory. So there could have been a day my brother met Ed at Red’s. Our past player Lenny went there, and so did several other great guys I met over the years. Eddie and I still to this day are as close as brothers.

Years that went...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 4.12.2020
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• ISBN-10: 1-0983-4144-9 / 1098341449
• ISBN-13: 978-1-0983-4144-2 / 9781098341442