So, with bigger hands and greater patience, I learned to help shape that sound from these newer instruments that didn’t bite my hands with electrical charges. All of the accounting in the world couldn’t kill the musician that had been born so long ago inside him. He’d become involved in a church, and had joined the church band. Many years later, my dad bought a few more guitars. It was still beautiful, even if in its old age it had become cantankerous. Intermittently, it bit you with little charges of electricity.īut even though it defeated me, I still loved it. Part of it was that the electrical system on this wild and dangerous object was beginning to age. Learning guitar for the first time involves a lot of pain (on fingers, and on patience).
HARMONY ROCKET HOW TO
And something happened inside me.īy age 13 or so, I wanted to learn how to play it. It beamed straight down, and reverberated outward, dancing all around. And when he hit the strings of the Harmony Rocket, it was like receiving some heavenly message. When he plugged in and turned it on, a single red light came on with a crackle and a buzz. But when dad pulled out this wonderful machine right in front of me, this brash weapon of sound in his hands closed that distance in an instant.ĭad had bought a little Garnet amp. Music was like some wonderful import from another distant dimension. The guitar was a Harmony Rocket cherry-burst red, decorative F-holes, with a neck like a cricket bat, and what seemed like hundreds of dials on it right near the pick guard. When Dad found gainful employment, met my Mum, and was confronted by the rise of psychedelic music that he hated, he quit the band to focus on the exciting career of an auditor, and controller. The group fashioned itself after the pre-Beatles British instrumental rock band, The Shadows.ĭad immigrated to Canada in 1965, and he joined another band, The Bayards, who played gigs on the Toronto club circuit. But he made extra money as a musician in his band, The Pete Jones Combo. He studied accounting and worked as an auditor when just out of school as a teen. My dad was born and raised on the island of Barbados, a member of a relatively small community of white people on that island. But remembering the first time I saw one up close, hearing someone play it right in front of me? Well, that’s easy. Music had always been a part of my upbringing, with the sounds of AM radio sailing from room to room ever since I could remember. This was back on 'The Rock' in Newfoundland.It’s hard to know when I first heard the sound of an electric guitar. My parents couldn't afford one for me so I received a $99 Harmony hollow-body single-pickup Les Paul copy which I used as a bass guitar and a rhythm guitar
My friend got one for Christmas that year. In the 1964 Simpsons-Sears Christmas Catalogue, the Harmony double-cutaway Rocket III (three pickups) sold for $135 CAD (which was about the same in USD at the time I think). It wasn't a Gibson or a Gretch but it worked for him. My friend was a fine guitar player even at 15 and he made it sound good even with our Simpsons-Sears catalogue mail-order amps. I played his Rocket III many times and it was a decent guitar. This was back on 'The Rock' (Newfoundland). Truth be told, our rather short set list forced us to play the same songs two or three times a night.
In 1965, at 15, we started a 3-piece band playing instrumentals (Tequila, Wipeout, Pipeline, Raunchy, Walk Don't Run et cetera) at Friday-night teenage dances in the Masonic Lodge basement, Anglican parish hall and the Fisherman's Lodge. My parents couldn't afford one for me so I received a $99 Harmony hollow-body single-pickup Les Paul copy which I used as a bass guitar and a rhythm guitar. Click to expand.In the 1964 Simpsons-Sears Christmas Catalogue, the Harmony double-cutaway Rocket III (three pickups) sold for $135 CAD (which was about the same in USD at the time I think).
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