The "Hondo II"

So, the piano..  I began jamming (well dicking around really) with my friends in bands playing keyboard + piano..  Coupled with our band's need for "someone to fuken play bass man" and my lack of piano "rocking out-ness" I put my hand up and said .. "yeah man I'll fuken play bass!"   So it was off to the local cash converters (of course) we went, looking to buy the band's bass guitar. Someone told me... maybe it was my mother I don't remember ..  but they warned me of the perils of buying things jointly.. especially in bands. So I almost sadly parted with the $125 it cost to buy my first Bass Guitar in probably 1994! 


It was a Hondo II Fender P Bass clone (very similar to that pic). Which was probably either made in the 70's or 80's in Japan! It was a maple neck all light woodgrain body black scratch plate hunk of wanna be Fender P bass. Which I soon and now to my dismay trashed!  I don't even wanna know if this guitar could be vintage or actually worth something.  All that is left of it is the neck  - which now lives under my bed as my late night intruder whacking stick weapon! (Have'nt had to use it yet!).  At the time (so little did I also know about Bass) the last thing I wanted was a boring Fender P Bass!  I wanted something that looked hip and whacked out... something PRINCE would play!!   


It wasn't long before I began to love the bass guitar.  So armed with my trusty "Hondo II" I found myself playing along to whatever music i was listening to at the time on the radio, record or CD.  I think I heard "always on the run" by Lenny Kravitz and I was smitten with the groovin bass line. From then I knew the bass guitar was for me. I listened and learned and copied. I got together with my brother Daniel Romeo and his high school friends Ben Vanderwall, Matt Eastwell.. (and that crazy mofo Van.. although he didn't play anything other than the madcap fool) and we started a band.  We played a lot of Eric Clapton and Cream covers and recorded two original songs -  "Kerri" and "Trapped" .  These songs have a cameo chick vocal in them from a mysterious girl named Nicole who I've unfortunately lost track of.   My friend from way back, Dan Avila is also playing guitar on these tracks.  We went to Uni together and spent many hours mucking around on our guitars in his music room. We wrote "Rocking Tonight" (put up no fight) which got regular airplay on local radio station PMFM.  Gary Shannon from the station made it his own personal theme song. My bass playing was okay - technically defunct! but I didn't care I was just playing music, thats all that matters.  And its still probably all that matters today too.