Wow!! There's not many people left who can make such a claim and I only know two others, who happen to be older cousins who took me with them to see Cream and Gary Puckett & the Union Gap (not simultaneously, of course) at a local high school auditorium in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn where I was born. One of them actually gave me my first album when I was a first-grader, a brand new copy of Iron Butterfly's In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida!!
I really believe we (as part of the baby-boomer generation) were born at one of the best times in mankind's history, as long as we are fortunate enough not to have been killed in Vietnam or as a result of the color of our skin or something stupid like that.
We're too young to have had to deal with what our parents' generation did and in retrospect, EVERYONE is a wuss compared to one of those oldtimers who had to deal with WWII and its effects on humanity and nature (60 million plus killed as a result!). And we're old enough to have seen Zep & many others (my one regret is that I was only 9 when Hendrix downed a barbiturate cocktail and croaked!!) yet we're young enough to have enjoyed the greatest advances in technology EVER, as I transmit these philosophical musings via a Surface Pro 2 that is half-tablet, half-laptop, and has capabilities to be a telephone, an interpreter, a baby-sitter, and too many other things to list!!
Well, thank you for letting me reminisce.
In any event, aging is something everyone has to go through. And there IS a greater realization: I think it's WAY better than the alternative of dying young, though I would have disagreed when I was young enough to be drinking gasoline and pissing vinegar!!
Later On!!!
I have a Korg Kronos 2-88 keyboard, and you have NO idea how I wish I had had something like this when I used to play in a band in my younger days. Keyboards these days are basically full blown keyboards with a keybed for input and audio outputs for translating your finger motions into music. Well, or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof.
Wish I had REALLY learned to play when I was younger. I only played enough to be able to mimic the keyboard parts of the top 40 music the bands I was in played. Now I am trying to learn to be able to turn the music I can think into the sound that my hands can produce on the keyboard. It's pretty much the same as learning to speak as a baby. Same principles apply, except that you are using your fingers to "say" what you want to say, instead of using your mouth as a voice. So it's pretty much all improvisation. But I certainly do fully understand now what the old saying of "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" really means. I have to write down every new chord progression that I stumble on, otherwise the next day I sit down at the keyboard, not a chance I will remember what I was doing yesterday. Heck, I have even found that I can doodle pretty well with my eyes closed now, and in some respects, it's even easier to do than when I am watching what the heck my fingers are up to.
I think one of the most impressive groups I ever personally witnessed was Emerson Lake & Palmer. Of course, as a keyboard player, Keith Emerson was astonishing to watch when he played. He was the incentive for my interest in keyboard synthesizers. I had a mini-Moog many years ago, and coincidentally enough, that was what got me interested in computers too. My mini-Moog went on the fritz and there was no one locally I could take it to to get it repaired. So I talked to the manufacturer and they offered to send me the circuit boards if I was willing to swap them out. So I did, and was surprised that it all worked and fixed the problems. And I though, "Hmm, that was actually easy to do." So that started my interest in audio electronics, and then on to digital electronics and computers.
That was back in 1968 or so. My first computer was an Exidy Sorcerer. I can remember the salesman telling me that I would NEVER, EVER need more than the 32k main RAM that came in that computer. And there was absolutely no need to get the 4mHz Z80 chip instead of the standard 2mHz that came in that unit. When I asked him to demonstrate the computer for me, he turned it on, got the input prompt on the screen, and said "Have fun!" and walked away. Of course, I had no idea what to do, but I bought it anyway. Found out that at that time, really the only thing you could do was to learn to program using BASIC, so that's what I did.
