Seems an awful accident in a tunnel in Afghanistan. 2700 dead. I would like to buy that Heintzman and let Dave refinish it. That would be nice, would it not?
[Author’s note 2009: there was a bank in the company headquarters, and it was always a spectacle watching the crowds who would not eat if they didn’t get their checks cashed before catching the bus home. Norm was one of the weirdest supervisors in the company, nicknamed “Normal” because he was anything but. “You don’t see me staring at the pretty girls. Well, do you?”
As you can see, my concerns in music were much the same as today. The drinking age had dropped and I was just learning to play in lounges instead of dance halls. I recall that incident in Afghanistan. An oil tanker or something blew up. That must have been some tunnel. The Heintzman is a famous Canadian piano, picture it painted lime green.]
[Author’s note 2021: in the end I did not buy that piano, which is good. Because I moved six times in the following fourteen years. I finally got myself a Yamaha electronic with a grand piano setting, which I still use to this day.
This was also around the time I began to notice the negative effect of Guitar Center on forming. They had only opened their first big store a few years earlier. Already the musician market was feeling the effect of these mass-produced lead players. Many had never formed a band or played in one, but they had fixed notions of what it was all about.]
