A Bassic Christmas Story
In 1991 I was just shy of 14 when I first started playing bass at Birchwood Junior High. I loved it so much that I sold my Nintendo and begged my parents to return the video game they had gotten me for Christmas so I could subsidize my first electric bass purchase. It was a cheap used bass, but I loved it. We didn't have a lot of money, and I couldn't afford an amplifier so my dad rewired one of those old grey "boomboxes" so I could plug my bass in and hear myself. The next fall I was at Colonel Gray in the concert band and intermediate jazz band and my life was full of music--amazing! Music was pretty much all I did. For Christmas that year, I knew my friend was getting a brand new electric bass, and though I was happy for him, I was pretty jealous. I didn't have the money for a new bass and my parents did their best but didn't have a lot of extra money lying around. Christmas morning I woke up really early, I couldn't sleep so I went downstairs an...