Music Mondays: I'm Not A very Good Person...

Last friday, I took the Special Lady to one of my favourite places:  Long and MacQuaide.  L&M, for those that don't know, is a music chain that sells pretty much everything:  electric guitars, drums, acoustic guitars, banjos, pianos, mandolins, harmonicas..... it's incredibly fun.  The type of place music nerds go to instead of "normal" entertainment places like bars, strip clubs, and the horse tracks. 

L&M is very close to my house, and the lady I went mostly for something to do before heading downtown.  I, of course, showed her one of my dream instruments (a Les Paul Double Cutaway), before I found myself in the acoustic room, playing my OTHER dream instrument - a Martin Dreadnaught Acoustic guitar. 

I had an audience, so I was trumping things up a little bit.  I felt like a little boy standing on his head, shouting "look at me!  Look at me!" every time I did something new.  And she, like the Special Lady that she is, nodded approvingly and asked all the right questions.  I'm a lucky guy, sometimes. 

I went through a few chords and mini solos, and I was instantly taken back down memory lane.  I  instantly remembered what it's like playing a well-made instrument... everything just seems to be easier.  And then,  carrying on with trips down memory lane, there was this kid in the room, nervously fingering a classical guitar. 

I remember being this kid.  Being sixteen or seventeen, playing instruments and trying to get a few tunes under your fingers when some guy in his twenties walks in with his girlfriend (do musicians ever get girlfriends?  Why can't I get a girlfriend? you find yourself thinking) and starts slamming out riffs on an instrument that he'll "probably buy in a year or two" (I wish I had money).  You've only just started learning on the acoustic, so you play quietly in corner, not wanting to display the fact that you're just very good. 

Like I said, I've been there.  And it sucks.  Quite a bit, in fact.  I wanted to encourage this kid, tell him that it's all a learning process.  That he's going to get better in time.  That no one here will judge him if he plays a simple song on the acoustic, and not some super complex song.  And that he was doing a great job playing those few Beatles' songs he knows. 

A good person would do that.  Yeah, I totally wanted to do that.

Instead, I played loudly, and played the hardest material I know.  I ripped through crazy bass lines.  I played crazy guitar chords.  I went through all the good parts from Dark Side of the Moon that I could remember.  I improvised rock and roll lines.  I went crazy with string-bends, palm-muting, slides, and super crazy hammer-on/pull-off tricks.  I did everything in my repertoire to show off, and put that young punk in his place. 

It was around that point that I remembered.

...I'm not a very good person.