When I was a young kid growing up in West Long Branch, my parents recognized an affinity for music that was inside of me, so they offered me a chance to take music lessons at a relatively young age.
So at the age of five, I started taking piano lessons with Mr. Walters, a friend of my parents who lived around the block. Every Saturday morning, my parents would drop me off at his house, and for a whole hour, I’d tinkle the keyboard – a combination of exercises and tunes.
When I was ten, I wanted to play the guitar, but my music teacher didn’t teach guitar lessons, so I had to go to another teacher. There was an old Italian gentlemen who lived around the corner from Big Grandma and Big Grandpa who they pointed me to. Mr. Mascola lived on Melrose Terrace and was old school. I did an hour-and-a half a week with him – forty five minutes each on the piano and guitar.
By the time I was around 14 or 15, I had to choose between after-school activities or music lessons. I had taken piano for nearly 10 years and guitar for almost five, and I knew I wasn’t going to be a professional musician, so I stopped the lessons and put my heart and soul into conquering high school.
But a few years before I stopped taking lessons, I started getting into a few garage bands and played with them until I started college. Making music with friends was probably the greatest time I ever had as a kid. . .well, that and hanging at the Long Branch boardwalk. That’s a story for another day.
My neighbor from across the street, Mike Chartier, was a drummer, and I’d find myself over his house more times than not, trying to imitate the sounds of the times’ most popular tunes on my guitar. I played mostly by ear, not wanting to be bothered with reading music. Soon, my brother Joe joined us on the tambourine.
I can remember sitting in Mike’s basement after we’d finish practicing, going over songs to see if we could add them to our repertoire.
When I was 12 and my brother Joe was 10, we got together with Mike and Chuck Hamilton, a friend of his from Frank Antonides School, and performed at the school’s Folk Rock Festival. I can still remember the songs we played – “Hey Jude” by the Beatles and “Light My Fire” by the Doors. Chuck did vocals on both songs, and we played each song twice that day – once for grades K through 4 in the morning, and again for grades 5 through 8 in the afternoon.
It was a great gig. Not only did we get to play, but because it was during the week, our parents pulled Joe and me out of school for the day, too.
A few years later, the Guidetti twins, a couple of kids in the neighborhood, wanted to join in on our garage band, but neither one of them played any instruments. So we loaded them up with a couple of stringless guitars, and they just made believe that they played with us, while the real musicians (Mike, Joe, and I) went and did our own thing. We didn’t mind that they were faking it. It was one big neighborhood garage band.
I can remember when I was around 15 or 16, the five of us went and played a gig together – a pancake breakfast for the Cub Scouts at the St. Jerome School auditorium. We did about 10 songs. With Mike on drums and my brother Joe on the tambourine, we rocked the place. I played guitar and did vocals, while the Guidetti twins just took their guitars and made strumming motions against the guitar frets like they were playing.
The last garage band I was in was when I was around 17. I played with a few guys from Shore Regional High School who were a year or two older than me. Herbie Van Note and Danny Craig were great musicians in their own right. Herbie played the drums, and Danny played lead guitar. I can’t recall whether we did any gigs together or not, but we sounded sweet whenever we practiced. We did mostly Allman Brothers Band tunes. They were the hot group back then.
While most people who I played with in garage bands didn’t go into music as a career, Herbie is living the dream as the drummer for “After The Reign”, the hot country band with a huge New Jersey following. Just recently, the band won an edition of The Battle of The Bands at the Hard Rock Café in New York City, and will continue on further in the competition next month.
Garage bands. . .another great memory for me while growing up here at the Jersey Shore.
(You can also follow Kevin Cieri's blog on his Facebook page, "Jersey Shore Retro" as well as on Twitter @jsretro).
