Giving my nephew guitar lessons

[Squeech]

An occasional series that will probably get journaled.

I have a younger brother (who reads the Murdoch paper and identifies as a Repuke, largely because of tax cuts) and he has a son, who's now 15 years old, taller than either of us, has fuzz all over his chin, and has in the last year decided that he wants to play the guitar. (He already played trombone in marching band and piano in the parlor. We're a musical family.)

Periodically his folks bring him over to my house for guitar lessons, which basically means that we attempt to run through songs he's trying to get under his fingers, and look for other stuff that he might like and that might suit the skill level he's at now. He's really quite motivated, and in the year or so he's been working at it, he's now a guitarist (one of three) in a little garage band of his school chums. He's even teaching them stuff-- he says he showed one of his buds the arpeggios to "Don't Fear the Reaper." (He also said they all think Blue Oyster Cult is famous only because of the cowbell sketch. Philistines! I lent him the Workshop of the Telescopes compilation; now he can almost play the riff from "Cities On Flame.")

The other thing he did that was interesting is, he started playing a Rush song! I'm a lapsed Rush fan-- I have something like 15 Rush albums (all but one in the old technology, vinyl) but I hadn't listened to them in 20 years. So between that and the fact that he didn't have the changes quite right, I mis-identified the song he was playing: "Fly By Night," but I heard it as "A Farewell to Kings." But I pulled out the stack of Rush and we went through a bunch of it, all sorts of stuff from "2112" and "Free Will" on up to "Big Money" and "Territories." I pointed out Alex Lifeson's Jimmy Page imitations, but it was also evident to me how much they owed to the Who, which was the second band David and I worked on together (after Pink Floyd). I'm glad he likes it, because I think the chord inversions Lifeson uses are not only just about at his current skill level, but they're interesting and useful to know. Now I'm looking for a copy of the Retrospective Vol. I collection; that's the repertoire I think he should work on. (Too many synthesizers in Volume 2, and too many lame songs got included and important ones excluded, especially "Territories.")

The other thing that happens when we get together is, I talk about random stuff-- the same sort of faux-professorial style I use in posting here. One thing I'm explicitly trying to do is get him to read more, especially stuff that'll get him to question authority. When he was big into Pink Floyd, we talked about Animals, and I told him about this Orwell book that Roger Waters took the social structure of his characters from. David actually read it, and was sufficiently interested that he then went on and read 1984 too-- he just finished it, and hasn't fully processed it yet. The other political idea that came up was, why is Iran hostile to us? He thought it was just because we insulted them, lumping them in with the Axis of Evil. I told him how, the year I was born, our CIA engineered the coup that took down the Mossadegh government and installed the Shah. Nobody else in his world will tell him stuff like that. He asked his teacher about the US invading other countries, and apparently she claimed that we would never do that.

[matcom]

1. i can think of no better teacher

musically and otherwise. he is a very lucky young lad :hi:

[Squeech]

2. Pshaw

I bet you say that to all the Phil Ochs wannabes :P

BTW, Mrs. Squeech (a proud tile professional) agrees, your new kitchen floor is awesome!