When I was a young boy in my adolescent prime I discovered something that would change my life irrevocably. For some kids it's sports. Hockey, maybe, this is Canada after all. But I never played hockey. Couldn't skate. Other kids find books. At the time I was only interested in comics. Batman and the X-Men. A few years earlier my older brother had found drawing and painting. He was good at it too. What I found was something so big and obvious that I now think that it must have been there all along. Waiting for me to realize that it was holding its breath. Like a telephone pole that you pass everyday on the way home from school, but then one day you look away from the sidewalk for a split second and you smack right into it. Square in the forehead.

Maybe I found it.

Maybe it found me.

Long and McQuade was on Bay Street in Downtown Toronto. It took me an hour to get there on the subway. Seemed like longer sitting there with five one hundred dollar bills in my back pocket. I had to keep convincing myself that nobody else could possibly know that it was there. For a year I had listened to Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Eric Clapton, and The Beatles. There were other bands too. Those are just the ones that I remember because of flashy album art or cool lyrics. I was a scavenger when it came to music. Sam The Record Man in Bayview Village, Driftwood Used Music on Queen Street East, even my parent's and my friend's parent's record collection (My best friend's mom had Led Zeppelin II. I was speechless!] Long hours in my bedroom listening to those precious records made me want to play music and eventually led me to the Long and McQuade Music store on Bay Street.

Guitars lined the walls, three tiers high. Gibson. Ibanez. Washburn. Guild. Each one, special in its own right, would find its proper set of fingers. Up to this point I had never played an electric. My father was a player and had an old Harmony acoustic. On this guitar I learned the basic chords - G, D, A , C and E. D and C took forever to learn. I had never played an electric guitar, yet as soon as I entered the store I knew exactly which guitar I would take home with me. Clapton played it when he was with the YardBirds. His successor, Jimmy Page, played one too. Keith Richards as well. But I didn't really like the Stones. A month earlier I began listening to the Canada's newest band, The Tragically Hip. Both guitarists strapped them on. I pulled it down off of the wall. Shiny black with a white pick guard and chrome hardware. I plugged into an amp and hit a chord. Something monstrous emerged from the speaker. The guitar sounded nothing like what I had expected. I left the store with twenty eight dollars and change. And a Fender Telecaster .

Maybe I found it.

Maybe it found me.

Eight years later I'm still playing the same one.

Me Playing My Fender Telecaster [1]