The Wandering Mind of a Rolling Stone

For all my bravado, in actuality, I'm really not that great a guitarist. Sure, I'm competently reliable and if you need a guy on rhythm or just to handle some relatively simple riffs, I have that covered but I play my power chords weird and I have trouble remembering my blues scales. I play fast, dirty, and loud but I'm kind of sloppy. I started playing guitar when I was fifteen, my first six-string being a present from my mother on my first Christmas in high school. It was honestly a present I never thought that I'd get. I feel like every kid that learns how to play an instrument either starts out on the piano or with the violin; I was in the former camp. As they were getting up in their years, my grandparents were looking to relocate to a smaller flat from the large family home in Falls Church and wanted to get rid of their old 1916 upright piano while keeping it in the family. Neither of my parents were particularly musical people (though my mother loved to sing) w

What I always loved about Thanksgiving is that it was the family-oriented holiday that didn't come with any pre-conceived material expectation; you were just hanging out with family for the sake of family. The festive epicenter for Thanksgiving (and Christmas) was always at my grandparents house in Falls Church so we would drive out to their home early as hell that Thursday morning to watch the Macy's Day parade on TV with my grandfather while my parents and grandmother whipped the big meal together; we always did the holiday meals as a lunch. This was also one those meals that was straight up Anglo-cuisine; not a chopstick or grain of rice in sight. And what a spread it was, every year was like the greatest hits. The usual suspects were there to great effect, of course: The turkey usually roasted (Let's not talk about that time I tried to fry one...), mashed potatoes usually with a sweet potato thrown in to give an appropriately sweeter taste and light orange hue, cran

By the end of elementary school, I had already developed this reputation of being a "classic rock" kid listening to The Beatles, Tom Petty, and U2 on regular rotation. I was aware of things happening in contemporary music like I knew of Nirvana, Green Day, and Oasis but I was more preoccupied building a foundation in the music that had come before. But, as I was preparing to move on to middle school, I wanted to talk to the other kids about more than just video games and movies; I wanted to talk to them about the stuff they were listening to and, try as I might, classic rock just wasn't cool enough for them to give a try. So I began to branch into more modern tunes. You have to remember what was really popular right around the time that I started middle school. Rap-rock like Limp Bizkit and nu-metal like Korn and Godsmack were ruling the airwaves when the local rock radio stations took a break from playing Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and the Smashing Pumpkins like it was stil

Do you remember the moments where you first heard a song and it immediately brought you to a higher level like falling in love for the first time? I've already written about discovering rock and roll with my dad listening to old Tom Petty and Traveling Wilburys songs on the car radio or catching the tail end of MTV actually dominating their programming with music videos but there's so much more to tell. So let's see where this goes. The moment I was introduced to The Beatles was one Sunday in kindergarten. The local oldies station would play a programming block they referred to as Beatles Brunch every Sunday morning that played everything from early demos (that would later be immortalized by The Beatles Anthology ) to the final mixes on Let It Be . One Sunday, my father switched on the radio in his old 1980 Corolla in time to catch the runaway opening to She Loves You , the 1963 single that would go on to become the most popular song the Fab Four ever released in the UK