The Music Lesson
September 8th, 2008 by The GiftI’ve always had a thing about punk garage bands.
My best friend at age six was Benji Matteucci, he had older brothers and sisters. They have American and Chilean heritage. The older siblings of Benji use to give us pocket money to run to the dairy. Most of the time it was for their tobacco or cigarettes. It was back in the day when a 6 year old could still buy cigarettes. The older siblings were like a type of Spanish mafia, they had outrageous haircuts, wore trench coats, smoked and drank
One of the older brothers got expelled from his school for taking a 38 calibre hand gun to class.
Back then I thought they were pretty cool I still think so now. It was the 1970’s and Punk Rock was exploding over the planet. A band called the Sex Pistols had started a new fashion. Benjis older brothers started a band, they practiced in the family garage.
One day Benji and I were chasing each other through the garage, Benjis dad Juan grabbed me aside and said I want to give you a “music lesson”. He took me to the drum set and showed me a series of ones and twos using one hand. He then gave me the drum sticks and told me to have ago, I took the drum sticks from him and tried the same with a drum stick in each hand. He angrily took my left drum stick and put them both in my right hand
This happened about three times he made me remember it using my right hand. I knew Juan had a career in music but I didn’t know what he did exactly. The first day I meet Juan he told me he was a conductor and he showed me how I should hold the baton and mentioned about how it was also the way to hold a glass of wine. When I got older and started to appreciate music more I was always fonder of the Punk genre when I turned 20 I started going to bars and gigs and by age 25 I was involved with the POD niteclub a music venue playing predominately alternative music, hence I was associating with many muso’s. I never played or created any music but I was defiantly in the scene. The lifestyle I was living then caused me to get sick I had had a dysfunctional sleeping disorder since I was a baby and by this stage it was becoming a problem in my adult life.
After a stay in hospital I found myself at Simon’s place, Simon was a skinhead he was in a band and had a drum set in his lounge. He had many visitors mostly muso’s everybody who was there were talking not direct to me but about me the theme of their conversation was about me doing something musical this was not my intention but it was what they were talking about. Simon’s band had a practice one night and their conversation was the same. When they left I was thinking about what they were talking about I had forgotten about Juan but I sat on the couch and traced back through my life thinking of all the times I had done something musical which didn’t amount to much. I sat there and traced back through my life until I remembered the only music lesson I had ever had the one from Juan. I sat at Simon’s drums and tried to play the series of ones and twos but I had forgotten about my right hand and was trying to play the routine with two. I could not get the routine I sat there for about 40 minutes trying I stopped and thought deep until I remembered what Juan did I put both sticks in my right hand and got the routine instant this is when I dropped the punch line “in my sleep” I had the routine simple but only using my right hand not both. Flashes of nostalgia filled my head it was then I realized just how important Juan was and what he had done and what it meant to me, for the first time in my life I had an inclination of who I was it was at that point I broke down and cried.
