Music is my religion, my salvation, and my joy. I am indebted to music forever, as I am married to it for better or worse. Somehow, this music thing found me at age 13 in a boarding school after leaving a somewhat tumultuous childhood situation. In a way, this was a lifesaver and a breath of fresh air.

 

I remember Rob, a blonde-headed sparkling enthusiast, who saw me sitting in the school rotunda. He approached me, shoved an electric guitar into my lap, and said, “You look like a musician… learn to play”. I immediately practiced for three hours nonstop, stumbling upon a two-chord vamp that inspired and mesmerized me. Two weeks later, Rob said, “We have a gig in one week.” I said, “But, Rob, I can’t play a thing and don’t know what I’m doing”. He responded, “Don’t worry, you’ll play the bass, and it’s a lot easier, and it only has four strings”. I don’t know why, but I went along with it. “So now here we are at the gig one week later - me on bass, and Rob on guitar and vocals. We had absolutely no rehearsals, and I had no idea of the materials or songs. He either thought I could do it or that it didn’t matter because I looked good.

 

After twenty minutes into the show, I started to realize just how bad and wrong my chosen notes were. I turned down the volume control on the bass. Ten minutes later, a girl came up to us and exclaimed, “We can’t hear Mark!” So Rob gave me quite a look and turned my bass back up. I thought to myself, “Doesn’t he realize just how sour this sounds?”. But then again, perhaps he didn’t care. Back then, we didn’t have any monitor speakers to help hear ourselves, but perhaps that was irrelevant because Rob thought I looked good. After five minutes, I heard someone else say, “Something sounds wrong.” This time, I was sneaky, and I turned down the volume on my amplifier.

 

Once again, someone told Rob, “We can’t hear Mark. It was my nightmare that he turn me up once more. Rob gave me a look and said, “Play.” The music was so bad that no one in their right mind could or would dance this karaoke gone wrong. Not having any ideas to escape this embarrassment, I decided to pray. I said, “God! No, no, no, no, I can’t do this. “ I can’t, I can’t,” and then, a miracle actually did happen! A girl yelled, “Fire!” fire! fire!. Much to my relief, the tube bass amplifier I was using caught on fire! We HAD to stop! Phew! So ever since then, I became a true believer and indeed a very hot musician.