What is your most fond musical memory.

The day I succumbed to my friend's relentless endeavor to convince me to go see the Grateful Dead. He bought me a ticket for my birthday and told me I was going if he had to knock me out and toss me in the trunk of his dad's brand new Mercedes. So, at 9AM on September 26 1981 we loaded up the car with coolers of food and booze and we were off to Buffalo NY. Fifteen hours, two tabs, and countless cocktails later we were in the parking lot of the Buffalo Aud listening to a tape of the show we just witnessed. Needless to say I was hooked. I spent the next two years following the Dead around the country. Arguably the two most exciting and formative years of my life.

Having Doc Watson perform with his nephew at my father’s farmhouse in Western North Carolina in the early 90’s at Christmas time.  Doc is a legend in our part of the world and was a pure musician.  

I think the experiences that we have when we are in our teenage years are the most intense and we spend our later years trying to recreate that feeling.

In pop music, the most memorable I ever had was hearing Bob Seeger at a high school gym around 1971, when I was 13. Seeger had a hit a few years before (Rambling Gambling Man) and the Detroit radio stations would play all his music, but he must have been at a career nadir and unsuccessful outside the Detroit area (before he hit it big a few years later). It was probably my first concert by a “known” musician and he had us screaming our lungs out.

A few years later I had gone deeply into Classical Music. I heardBartok Music For Strings, Percussion and Celesta in concert and the great first movement had me shaking because it was so intense. Shortly afterwards I heard Gary Graffman play Beethoven last Piano Sonata, Op.111. The last movement has always , starting with that concert, struck me as a person in communication with God, who is explaining all of the secrets of life. I still listen to that piece afraid to breathe, even to a recording, for 20 minutes, for fear of missing a detail.

 I was 15 (50 years ago) rural Ohio farm kid. I had my own stereo not much but a hodge podge of assembled components that allowed sound to come through the speakers.My older buddy asked me to go to town with him because the neighbor had moved to town and was having a party that day. Middle of summer beautiful day. We arrived to a group of friends with the host having set up his new Pioneer rig (receiver, turntable and those beautiful foam grilled wooden boxes.) outside just in time to hear the needle drop on REO Speedwagons' Ridin' The Storm Out .It was the first time I had ever heard the song. Dave Had the volume filly cranked and every hair on my body stood up.  I will never forget that moment I was introduced  to the world of HiFi. I have been chasing that sound ever since.

Spring 1970, 16 years old, first out of town concert. My dad drove me and actually bought a ticket too, but he sat in the back while I was second position sitting on the floor. In Montreux, Switzerland, right on the shores of Lake Geneva, in the old casino that held the first jazz festivals. The one that completely burned down during a Zappa concert about a year later and that's how the Deep Purple song Smoke on the water came to life. The concert, Led Zeppelin launching the Led Zeppelin II album. Page still had longer hair than Plant and Bonham was as strong as an ox. I remember his hand bleeding during his bare hand part of the drum solo. That' how close I was, maybe 8 ft from Page and Plant and the stage was only a foot tall. That's why it was floor sitting up front. Obviously this could never happen again and I will never forget. That was the nirvana musical moment of my life.