Music | Mammoth's Cave

Yep, you guessed it! Music is a HUGE part of my life. Whether it's just listening to music, or going deaf at the whim of my guitar, music is an integral part of my life, and my sanity. This is a page that is all about how music affects me. Enjoy!

Guitar is now the main focus of my musical creativity. I'll spare some details, but I love just talking about it. Ever since I really took to guitar (spring 1992) I have poured countless amounts of time and money into my guitar equipment. My first large purchase being my lovely Marshall Valvestate. I love that thing! What a sweet sound! I had to get it repaired last Christmas because I blew out the speaker and something on the circuit board. =( After that, various effects pedals followed, and then as time went on, I acquired the Green Ibanez. That's it's name: The Green Ibanez. Nothing special. It's an RG-270. Great metal guitar. And it was my first real experience with a tremolo system. NEVER AGAIN!

The newest guitar gets it's own paragraph: my Gibson Les Paul Studio. It was a graduation present from my parents in the spring of 1997. Now with me having the stereotypical Marshall/Gibson combo, I figured I was done.

And I really haven't added to my collection since then. I know that Carl, Aven and Billy will remember this picture. I bitched about this for about a month during senior year. This was the load I had to haul to Carl's house and back a couple times every week. This was before the time of the Gibson. Other junk in there includes: my two little Peavey amps, my Ibanez bass (Guitar=Green, Bass=Black), the video camera, tripod, my still-photo camera, and probably the bag of cables and other shit.

I guess this is an opportune time to start writing about Fundamentally Sound. Yeah, that's the name of my band. Well, it's not MY band, I mean I don't own it or anything, but you get the point. Aven is the Vocal/Guitar man, Billy being the specialist on almost anything (including the "triangle"), Carl is the drummer, and I pretty much do whatever I want. I usually try to play guitar, but I normally end up picking up a bass and kickin' some shit with it!

So here we are, trying to pose like Metallica did on their Garage Days Re-Revisited EP. Going from left to right is Billy, Carl, Aven, and myself. This picture was taken in August 1998, so I guess it's relatively recent. In any case, my main web designing focus went towards a band website. I started losing interest in maintaining the band website when I became a VT student.

Our only show ever was the McLean High School Talent Show in February 1997. It was the reason we became a band. Our line up included three songs Aven wrote (Lydia, Frail, Crusin') and a shameful attempt at covering Live's "Lakini's Juice". We brought in a friend of ours to sing the chorus, and we later heard that his singing had been described as:

"A nightinggale being raped by a gay pig!"

That was the kind of night it was for us. But we were on first, so I guess everyone forgot about our mishaps by the end.

I remember my biggest fear about that show wasn't messing up or anything. Well, maybe that was it, but mainly it was stage fright. I had never enjoyed playing my guitar for a crowd. It also didn't help that we arranged our first song Lydia to begin with a bass intro, and I was playing bass. I decided to be creative and hook up my wireless system and walk from the audience on to the stage while I played the intro. That was fun!

Other little tid bits of the night: I wore my slippers all day (during school, after school, at McDonalds, and during the show).

Aside from guitars, and creating music, or noise even, I am definitely into listening to various types of music. Ranging form bands like Metallica, Pantera, and Sepultura, to bands like Matchbox 20, Seven Mary Three, and Pat McGee Band, I don't really have a defined listening pattern. My biggest musical influences are Metallica and Oasis. I enjoy cranking out the heavy crunching guitars of Metallica, while slipping back to the old shcool sounding british rock that Oasis makes.

That's all for this. Kind of an abrupt end, but oh well. Enjoy!