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LD Stand - LCC Talent show 1984



I got back into guitar playing in grade 9. I had taken lessons for a short while in grade 3 but I didn't like my teacher so I stopped. My friend Bruce introduced me to a great guitar teacher named Elliot. We both took lessons with Elliot for a few years. 

 I got together with a few other kids from my school and decided to form a band to play at the school talent show. The line up was Darren on lead vocals, Dave on guitar, Chris on drums, another Dave on guitar, Bruce on keyboards and me. We were really into 60's and 70's rock.

We practiced hard for that show. The day before, we thought we had it all down and we were really excited. The show was a disaster. One of our guitarists thought he’d do everyone a favor and tune all our guitars to the piano. The thing is, he tuned them all to the the wrong note. Our first song was brutal. We started off with "LA Woman" by The Doors. I remember shaking so badly that I could hardly play. I was completely confused because all the notes I was playing sounded wrong but I had practiced them and they were supposed to be right! We actually played through the entire song that way. Then, we spent a good five minutes trying to re-tune our instruments on stage at full volume. We played one more song, "Baba O'Reilly" by The Who, and then we got off the stage. I was crushed. Live and learn I guess. 

Unfortunately, or fortunately there is no audio from the show, just this photo (that's me in the middle). I was upset for a while but then I started thinking about next year...