Everybody's Guitar Method, Book 1 (with CD)
Rosalee Ocegueda
AD:My dad was a sociology person. He got his Master's Degree, San FranciscoState, first person to do that, brand-new department. Then he decided to go toone of the great departments, Indiana University. So, I was two years old whenhe arrived there, my first memories in Bloomington. I would eventually go backand get my PhD in Sociology Indiana, even had some of the same professors my dadhad then, which is a Freudian nightmare, I can assure you, that I've never been1:00able to live down completely. But in any case, so then everything in my lifecentered from Bloomington around that to Louisville after that. After hefinished his coursework, we went to Indianapolis for a year then Jeffersonvillefour years back to Indianapolis four years at Butler. Then by the time I was 10,1970, came to U of L. And so ever after I considered Louisville my hometown, andbeing in Jeffersonville, you know, I was already here, and this is verydefinitely my home, my hometown since 1970 officially since I was 10.
And then just immediately we moved to Waggener District. My mom wanted to sendme -- wanted to find out where was the best place to send the kids to school.She found out Waggener was the best High School and so that was great storybecause I always enjoyed growing up in St. Matthews, going to Waggener, veryproud of that. And that's pretty much how I ended up where I was in Louisville.
AD:Big exposure, I took music lessons when I was a kid. I took piano lessons. Iguess a lot of parents have their kids do that. And then I played in school Iwas in -- by the time I was in high school I was on drums in the marching band,clarinet in the concert band, sax in the jazz band, so I loved that.
AD:I wasn't terribly good at any of this to tell you the truth. I really wasn't.I wasn't -- I was good enough to be known as somebody that didn't suck, let'sput it that way. I was not really great at any of them. Just good enough to have3:00fun, which is all I really wanted. When I started playing guitar that wassomething different, which was a lot more fun, and I think that's why I got alot better at it.
AD:I actually bought the guitar the day I graduated high school. So, that was myfriend, Steve Rieder, played guitar. I was a writer. I started giving himlyrics. And then he gave me, probably got a guitar one day I mean, gave me aguitar lesson. And it took off just from there, which was easy because I'dalready been playing music.
AD:I love this story because it's true. Steve's a great guy, he's anaccomplished guitarist in high school, and everybody looked to him and knew4:00that. So, it was a great kind of thing that we had that I admired him for hisguitar playing. He said he didn't have any lyrics, so I told him, "Well, I'm awriter," because I was a writer before I was a guitarist. Now, I make my livingas a freelance writer. I was always a writer, but he said he had trouble withthat. So, I invited him to my house to look at poetry I had been writing foryears in high school, a drawer full of crap.
And he found something he liked. And he and I put that together with a song thatgot on the Homegrown album from Lexington, from UK, which was great. It wascalled "Friend of Mind," and then on the album he actually said -- he had theclass to say -- this song is dedicated to Alex Durig. So, I always thought thatwas great. But then roughly the same time I told him, you know I really want toplay guitar. And he says, I got a friend who's got a guitar for sale, it's hot.Which the issue was it's not going to be good karma.
AD:Stolen guitar, but for 100 bucks. And he goes, "you know you got to look atit." And I didn't have any money, and so I went to look at it and his friendAlex Sagan started playing the B-side of Pink Floyd's Animals. And he says it'sgood enough to do that. So, I took the damn guitar and a tiny little amplifier,but if you could play Pink Floyd through it is definitely good enough to start.So, then Steve said, "Look, you know music, you're in a band, I'm going to giveyou one lesson and that's all you're going to need."
And he goes, "Here's your lesson," he showed me what bar chords were, he showedme the regular chords, and then he goes, "Here's the blues scale, and you cansee how this is related to 'Stairway to Heaven,' so you can see how that's allyou need to know." And so, it's kind of the contrarian in me. I'm very much acontrarian, everything that I do I have to do it the wrong way and I have tobreak all the rules, and I have to not be standard, and not be formal. It getsme into constant trouble and also gets me my best memories.
AD:I was far from clueless. And I had a really good ear, so I could pick stuffoff just by listening to it, which was a great skill of mine. I was lucky tohave that talent. I could pick anything out by ear. So, I had all lots ofprivate lessons as a kid, too boring, everybody hates anyway. So yeah, that'show I started playing. And so then contrarian finally gets to play some musicand express himself the way he really wants to - not just playing clarinet inthe concert band, which I never really wanted to do. It just ended up happening and--
AD:Well, that was, I guess, also the same strand of contrarian in me that when Ispent the summer in Columbia with my cousin, 1972, I'm 12 he was 16. He hadevery record, great record collection. He had older brothers, sisters, cousins.So, he had the complete everything, and these are all still my favorite records:Grand Funk, E Pluribus Funk; Black Sabbath, Paranoid. I was listening to theseand all these other great albums, Ten Years After and Santana, and I just got, I8:00learned to like it.
And they were acquired tastes, because I remember the first time I heard hardrock it scared me. I walked in a record store in St. Matthews and they wereplaying some hard rock, and I thought, "this is pretty scary music." I was 11and -- but I guess in the comfort of my cousin's house I learned to like it. Butespecially Jethro Tull and Black Sabbath, then to me, being a contrarian, theydidn't represent mainstream music. They had the obligatory top 40 hit, butthat's not what they're really about. If you were a fan, you were a fan becausethey were weird and different.
And so especially Black Sabbath really converged with the punk thing for me,just for me to grow up loving and listening to Black Sabbath, to start playingguitar, and to -- and learn how to play the songs. And then to have this9:00opening, it was punk rock where I could actually do something myself. There wasno gap in any of that, it was all -- there was a red thread that ran through it.It was a contrarian, iconoclastic need to express yourself in a way that's notstandard, kind of thing.
AD:It really was. I can't tell you just how many times it would happen thatpeople would want to talk to me about my guitar or my influences and veryquickly, there was a "wink, wink" on Black Sabbath. You know, "I could tell youwere into Sabbath," that was a great compliment for me. Or you know, "Thatreminded me of Black Sabbath," well that's my favorite group. And there wasalways that convergence going on. So plenty of people in punk rock, no matterhow much they wanted to reject the mainstream, were secretly huge fans of BlackSabbath. That I can guarantee you.
AD:Well, the real specific introduction for me was that, I guess it was summerof '78, a year after I graduated, with Joe Frey at Karma Records. I knew him fromWaggener, and he said, "Do you want to start a band?" I said, "Sure." And thenhe goes, "The only thing is you'll have to teach me how to play bass." I said,11:00"Okay." But he had a great punk rock collection. He had been away to school atOberlin, and he was really into the scene.
And so, kind of like the way my brother had that -- my cousin had collection in'72 of what's now called classic rock, he had the Dead Boys, and the Pistols,and X-ray Spex, and just all of it. And so he said, "This is what I'm reallyinto." So I just loved it, and so somehow he had already met Steve Rigot. And sothen, I guess it was that summer, we had the first incarnation of Endtables,which was just a bunch of people playing in Joe's Garage every night. None of ushad ever played before any music. So, we don't even qualify as bad. It was worse12:00than bad.
AD:Oh, no. And then that kept going, and then he went away to school andeverything quit. But then when he came back he said, "You should keep this thinggoing. You should get together with Rigot and keep it going." So that just cameout of my friendship with Joe.
CN:Oh, it was Mark Dixon. I always think of him as the keyboard player. But itmight have been. But anyway, so you had this whole big group of people. And sojust tell me about what the feeling was. I mean, you denigrated it. But therewas something about it that Joe -- the joke you say, you need to keep thisgoing. What I mean -- did you feel a spark of something at that point? Do you remember?
AD:Well, I guess I'm having trouble answering the question because I'm not sureI can give you an answer that would make sense and be expected. I mean, I -- the14:00spark it kind of focuses on that word -- that there is one thing that I thinkabout always, whenever I think back, especially that night at Marc Zakem'shouse, because that was the first night I saw Babylon Dance Band. Was that JoeWillenbrink was this really weird friend of Joe Frey. And he was a really greatguy, he was just completely weird.
And just off the edge in just a really fun way. And he said we're going to play,and the Babs are already a group, they have a name, and nobody knows us. But we gotto come out with a splash, we've been practicing all summer. And you know, wesucked, there's is no question, it was barely worth listening to, but15:00personally, I had a blast doing it. The whole thing was a spark for me, just to-- I love to play music, and we were just friends having a whole lot of fun.
But that night Joe Willenbrink did something that I always remember. It's just alittle point of genius that sometimes little things keep things going in a waythat's not obvious. So, when you say, "What was the spark?" I'll tell you what,for me, was the fucking spark. This is crazy, but right before we played, see ifwe had just played in the garage for all summer and then just showed up and justplayed, it would have just been just what would have been expected.
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