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joMusic: In the beginning …

  • Thursday / May 19, 2011
joMusic: In the beginning ... 1

joMusic: In the beginning …

When I originally posted this, I was going to dedicate a single page to my original music. I’ve now decided to break up the page into separate posts. This encourages me to post more of my original music … and maybe tell a few more stories about it.

The “Music” menu will change, for now, to joMusic until I can incorporate multi-level menus for all my original music on { go2jo } . Then it will revert back … eventually.

And now we return you to your regularly scheduled program …

Throughout my life I’ve always been a musician at heart. From piano lessons as a kid to the first Yamaha acoustic guitar I bought in high school … music has always been around me. As a kid I had 4 years of classical piano lessons. But as a youngster, I didn’t want to play Brahms or Mozart … I wanted to learn songs by the Turtles, the Monkeys or the Beatles. But when confronted, my aging piano teacher said NO! No rock and roll Joe! That’s when I said good-bye to her and to lessons.

I’ve always been trying to teach myself to play guitar.I tried guitar lessons here and there … but I never really wanted to learn other peoples music. If I did learn a few chords from a song, I’d take them and try making something of my own. By learning this way I came up with my own unique style. My playing is always rhythmic and percussive. Sometimes it’s difficult for me to “get quiet” … but these days I try. So finger picking ala Joe has slowly percolated into my music.

Over the years I played and wrote my own music in some form or another. I’ve played piano, trumpet, sax, and guitar. I always felt more comfortable with a guitar. When I bought my first good electric guitar, I bought this beat up old Telecaster. I remember one of the first things I taught myself was Elvis Costello’s “(I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea”. It was that singular twisted tense lick that drew me in. Plus it was easy! I just ate up that whole D.I.Y thing of the punk ideology. Get a guitar find three or four bar chords and just bash it around … no matter what came out. What fun!

I can thank my friend Gary Crosslin A.K.A. Junior Smoots for teaching me minor bar chords some time in the early 80’s … on my trusty old beat up yellow Telecaster. Oh yes … the building blocks of reggae music! From there I was off to the races. A few years later … was the beginning of a serious creative streak and my band, The Human Element. And from there my recording studio in a Bond Street store front in Asbury Park, NJ. Many pots of coffee, packs of Newports, bags of ‘ganja’, late night sessions … oh … and let’s not forget my guitars, keyboards and other recording equipment …. and I was musically erect. Oh yeah baby! Those were exciting times.

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Joe Streno

artist . musician . photographer . retired apple computer consultant . residing on planet earth with his two cats rudie, & rocco & living to tell tales about it

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