Anybody play any musical instruments...........

Elected to try the fiddle in 3rd grade and Mom made me practice an hour a day for 5 years till I convinced her enough was enough. The fact my music teacher rapped me on the knuckles when I made a mistake made the experience all the more special.

I restarted playing 27 years ago and love every minute. I play in an orchestra with 80 muscians and let me tell you, there is nothing as exillerating as being onstage, participating in live music. My axe is a 1927 Luigi Mozzani.

I started playing alto sax as an adult, at the age of 30. Gave it up for 5 years while my kids were young. I took it up just a few months ago, after visiting China and seeing the old folks practicing Tai Chi and playing traditional instruments in the park near the Temple of Heaven. I realized that the reason to play an instrument is not to become another Charlie Parker, but rather to experience the simple joy of producing music. My wife gave me a new sax for my last birthday and I love playing it.

I've been playing bass guitar for over 35 years with a break in the early 80's when I quit a latin rock band and totally dove into the Punk/New Wave trend, and hacked away on guitar and drums for about 5 years. The refreshing do-it-yourself attitude in the late 70's was a great liberator and the high-energy 3-chord-buzz mania of the Ramones, Dead Kennedys, Buzzcocks,Wire, Devo, Plugz, Chrome, Minuteman et al. inspired me to form a power trio with my wife on bass and a drummer. Together with like-minded bands we put on our own gigs in whatever FOE or Firefighter's halls we could rent. Nobody made any money, but nobody lost any, either. With about 5 bands and their fans each gig was a big party. This was before hardcore reared its ugly head so generally there were no problems, although to the mullet-headed baseball-shirted population in Albuquerque we must've seemed like freaks. It was cool, though, because back then there was much more of a laid-back live-and-let-live attitude. Hippies and punks could co-exist peacefully side-by-side.
After our band "Straight Razor" fizzled out, I was recruited to play drums for a neo-garage outfit "Crawling Walls". My wife again played bass, we recorded an LP on Greg Shaw's Midnight Record label,(which still pops up on E-bay now and then)and we got to open a show for the Ramones 1984 "Too Tough to Die" show at UNM. Disagreements within the band caused its demise shortly afterward and my wife and I moved to San Diego; aside from occasional jamming here and there, nothing happened until 1995 when I started playing bass again with a re-formed band doing 50's and 60's surf and R&R covers. This quickly developed into a steady gig, because the music we play is seldom heard on radio anymore, but a lot of people still like it. We get hired mostly for car-shows, country club & yacht club parties, private parties and so on. The secret of our success is playing the best tunes from that era as faithfully as possible, vocal harmonies, leads and all, and not try to "re-interpret tunes in our own style", as heard in countless lounges around the world.
The fact that I don't play "original" music anymore doesn't bother me one bit. Ego trips are a thing of the past and this gig earns me enough to buy some nice equipment.
I've got 4 Fenders (Precision and Jazz), a Hoefner Beatle bass and a Gibson EB3 played through Eden amps. The members all get along, show up on time, sober, know the 150 or so songs inside and out, our equipment is top-notch and we have a lot of fun. We're just another hack-band in our little niche, way past visions of fame and fortune. How very boring. Unless you're one of us.

I decided just a few months ago to get an acoustic guitar to help me understand music better and appreciate the craft with a different perspective. I have been taking lessons and learning how to read music. It has been a very rewarding experience so far and it has helped me enjoy my music collection that much more.