WOW you guys have some incredible stories from one extreme to the other!
Thinking back about this subject, I start getting depressed/sad a little but I was a scared teenager.
I guess you can say I was of prodigious talent when it came to my concept of music. I had already studied music theory and had already taken music college courses by the time I was 15. I was bored in regular class and had no other interest except music. But I worked hard at that.
My Dub mother was a schoolteacher so, alot of my skills were built in from being around it [to a certain degree...yeah, I know I'm lacking] She even offered to send me to a couple of different schools including Julliard but I thought it was her way of testing me in Dubdom. I think I was pretty much convinced that it would all soon be over. In 1977, things pretty much stayed the same, didn't it?
I left home for good at 17, quit High school for the second time and hung out at the classrooms with my buddies who were all a year or two older than me, playing music. I got discovered by a soon to be doctoral candidate [in education AND a very fine pianist] who was on the administration of U Mass at Amherst and offered me a teaching job with a full scholarship!
Well, my wife was pregnant and I was going back to the hall and I was concerned about the Rh factor with the new arrival so, I opted to stay in the city next to an adequate hospitol and thought I should be scrubbing floors...oh well. If I could kick myself, I would...and I have.
I won another scholarship about 15 years ago in a performance competition but it didn't matter to me any more for a lot of different reasons...I realize now that I still would have benefited from it. Old habits die hard.
I did however achieve [as fleeting as it was] what I set out to do which was to have a major record deal and to play Carnegie Hall before I was 30...on MY terms. And I did it the hard way...It didn't have to be that way...
gespro - this week, slightly traumatized
