360...Round and Round

There's a degree to the feel of Fifty Five today, 360 degrees to be precise.
I can remember being a kid, about ten or so, and talking about being a musician, performing and recording music. As kids, my brothers, sister and I were full of the creative juices! We'd perform at family gatherings, camping trips and just for the heck of it on the front porch, in the back alley behind our house...wherever!
In the years before MTV, the internet and Guitar Hero, we saw ourselves as future rock stars!

My brother Bob, the youngest of our brood, was very inventive. He took one of the old portable record players (played 45 rpms) and fiddled around with it, turning it into a recorder. Honest to God! He rigged a microphone from my small reel-to-reel tape recorder (a la Mission Impossible), used an old 45rpm record and recorded over the record's original grooves. The sound was a bit scratchy, but it WAS there, and it WAS his voice and my voice!

My reel-to-reel was fun in its own right. I remember recording a few of my first songs on it...then upgrading in the early '70s to a cassette recorder. Ah, those were the days! And even though none of those attempts were professional on any level, I'd give my eye teeth to hear Bob's recording and those old tapes again!

A few years ago, we (Jack and I - Boo Boo's Bargain Basement Band) actually did "put down a few tracks." Not too bad as first attempts go, but there wasn't enough time and not enough of the right equipment to do it right.
Now we have the chance, the equipment and the time...all converging at the same opportune moment! Ooooo-weeee! Talk about full circle!

As we're setting up microphones and other things, my mind goes back to those days when brother Jim and I "practiced" in the basement of our family home...he on a "guitar" made of a cigar box and broom handle, me on a bar stool "drum." A year or two later, Jim had an electric guitar and the first in a series of bands.
Yours truly embarked on several creative ventures and a few personal ones too...putting dreams of gold records on the back burner to be returned to high heat at a later date.

And that time is NOW.
So for today, for full circles and ending up back where we started....for new beginnings and all the possibilities they bring, Fifty Five will be the New 360....not necessarily an age, more like an experience!