Freaky Boy Pete

I went to the music store to buy new strings for my guitar. I’m going into the studio on Thursday and I wanted to record with new strings. Music stores make for interesting adventures. There’s the fantasy of buying whatever you want. Everybody has the same fantasy, but only a select few can do it.

I always walk straight for the Martin and Gibson acoustic guitars. There’s a special room for those. I walked in yesterday and there was an Asian kid that looked like Yoko Ono playing a scale real fast. It sounded like the Corinthian scale, or Dorian mode. He kept playing it over and over at lightening speed.

I picked a Martin D15 and the kid started to laugh. I couldn’t tell if he was laughing at me for picking up a guitar, or because I picked up a Martin. He got up and went into the next room. I started to play a Big Bill Broonzy tune. I could hear the kid playing the same scale over and over in the next room. Then he stopped playing and came back into the room I was in. He laughed as he entered. The kid was touched in some way. He swapped guitars and went back into the next room, and started playing the same scale. The kid thought he was a wizard, a metal genius, but he was limited to just one scale. 

            I stopped playing and started to wander around. I found an acoustic bass, and sat down and played it. The Wizard showed up and sat down next to me. He started in on his scale. I was fiddling on the bass and figured out the scale he was playing. I played along with him, but The Wizard was offended by my entry into his domain. He played the scale faster and faster. I kept up with him until The Wizard couldn’t go any faster. He had hit the speed wall. He seemed confounded by this, and at last out of frustration, he stopped playing altogether. The Wizards powers had been naturalized. The Wizard had been defeated.