The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

Before i went to high school, i started listening to more progressive music, rock, jazz, music with a bit more to it, than just four chords. Oh don't get me wrong, i was still listening to hard rock, and what was then known, as early Heavy Metal, which was in the early to mid seventies. I'd gotten tired of listening to A.M. top forty, it was getting too repetitive, too commercial, so i went looking for a little something more, that would inspire me, to think. Jimi Hendrix had done that for me, but he died in 1970, and his later music was very progressive to me, it wasn't like what he'd done with the Experience in 1966-67, it was far more cosmic, and very much out of this universe, which is where my head was at then. I'd discovered the band Return To Forever the year before high school, and liked their sound, because it was jazz, but i was also still one of those hippie kids in the early seventies, before high school. I hadn't even started writing serioulsy yet, but it did happen, the moment i stepped though the doors of the high school i went to, after i left the Special Ed system. I'd written this before, and i'll quote myself, the first day of high school, i was so scared out of my wits, because i was entering into a whole new world, that was totally different than what i'd already experienced, in the other school, inside the Special Ed system, that was a closed minded environment, in the last years i was in there, so i was thrust head on into this new world with a whole set of new rules and morals, that were more open minded, than what i'd seen in previous years of school. For one the music i was listening to at that time was somewhat more mature than what i'd listened to for years, before i went into the heavier sounding music. I'd been listening to Santana, for years, since their big debut at Woodstock, in August of 69, their music was more progressive, and i embraced their sound from day one, but then i was still trying to hold onto the sixties and that vibe that was heavy in the sixties that became so much a part of me when i was 11, 12, and 13, that i had to try to save it from dying in the seventies, so i started listening to Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Santana, Cream even thiough they'd been gone since 68, or 69. It was the same for the band Blue Cheer, who were gone by 1968, but their music was still there to be an inspiration to the metal bands that came in the seventies and later in the eighties. Grand Funk Railroad was another band that caem out of the sixties with a raw, untamed loud sound, that was so late sixties psychedelic, as well as Steppenwolf that lasted into the early seventies, and then disbanded around 1972 or 73, only to come back in another form with a new band and newer sound, that was only slightly different. They only did one album together, which was so highly political and controversial, for it's time. It was more like rock fusion, because they were trying their hand at jazz with a couplle songs on that album. By the time i was in high school, a friend of mine turned me on to Weather Report, they were this foreign jazz fusion band, that did an album that i first heard, called I Sing The Body Electric. My friend from high school played the track called The Unknown Soldier from the first side of the record, and i was just blown away by it, that i bought a copy of the album later on, and then got the next album Mysterious Traveller, which i also heard in high school. It was about that time that i was told by one of my classmates, about Kiss, and i'd never heard of them before he told me about them. It was at the height of the glam, and glitter rock movement, and the first glitter rock i was into was Alice Cooper, and David Bowie, long before i'd ever heard of Kiss, let alone hear their music. Even though Glitter, and Glam were big at that time i was still into the heavy metal stuff like Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and Led Zeppelin, as well as Iron Butterfly, Janis Joplin, Hendrix, and Grand Funk, and other mainstays from the sixties, that adapted to the seventies, and those that had survived Woodstock, to tell their tales of what it was like to be there in 1969. At that time, as i've said before, i was too young to go to Woodstock, because i had no clue what was going on that August, when it was happening, but i saw the first clue on my way back home, from Troy where i stayed with my Grandparents, for two weeks after i got out of Summer camp, i went to for two weeks. While in Troy, i met a girl, that lived around the corner on the next block, from my Grandparents apartment, that i became more than a friend with but we were both about 12, and we were quite innocent at the time. Music played a big part of my life that summer, of 69, i discovered the Beach Boys song Wild Honey the summer before and it was still playing in my head in the summer of 69. I also saw that Beatles movie Yellow Submarine that year, long after the summer and long after the Apollo 11 lunar module landed on the moon in july, and also long after Woodstock in August. High school, and the music of those years, that was my soundtrack then took me in a different direction, that i never thought i'd go in, but i did, and fell in love more than a few times, that shaped me into what i was then during high school. I'm still into jazz and rock fusion, i'm also into the heavier metal now and i'm more the person i want to be, the person i wasn't allowed to be in high school because i had to hide the true me behind the mask, that i'd seen everyone wearing in those days to hide who they really were that they and i didin't want to be then, in those restricted times. I wanted to be normal, and everyine around me wanted to be what they weren't, so they put on the maks and went on being who they really thoght they were in those days. This is the reason there was so much music out there then that spoke about being free, and embracing who and what you really were then. I was trying hard to be normal when i knew i wasn't, because i was closeted, i was bisexual and couldn't be out then, with the growing homophobia that was part of the times then, when i first went to high school. Being bisexual wasn't easy in the seventies, but my only choice was to hide what i was, and be the ladie's man like all the other guys were doing then. My tastes in music was weird and so was i, being the odd kid that came from that Special Ed type of environment, it stuck, but i wasn't a nerd, or one of the super smart kids i met, i was less than they were, because i had learning problems, that came from those days inside the system, but i was having problems earlier on when i was in elementary school. I couldn't do math, i was terrible at it, i still can't do some types of math, but i could read, and then eventually i started to write in high school. Most of the early stuff i wrote was inspired by music, it was poetry, but not the rhyme type of stuff, what i wrote was prose, and somewhat psychedelic, mainly because of Santana, and the music of Ravi Shankar, which was really trippy for it's time, i liked that kind of thing, and then i got turned on to electronic music, which was the birth of new age space music, that i still love to listen to even now. It relaxes me, takes my mind to new cosmic places. Miles Davis is another jazz musician that i listened to, that was a legend in his time, he created a sound that can never be duplicated, even now. These days, i listen to prog metal, bands like Trans Siberian Orchestra, Dream Theater, but the genre came in the early seventies with bands like The Moody Blues, Genesis, Nektar, Emerson Lake, and Palmer, King Crimson, Triumvirat, Tood Rundgren's Utopia, Yes, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, Renaissance. They were the bands that made waves between 1970 to about 1978. In todays wave of progressive music there are prog metal acts that have people like me listening, as in the bands i mentioned before, but there are others, such as Symphony X, that give even extreme metal with a Thrash and Speed edge, a more classical, and technical vibe to the music. I still dig blues from the masters like the late, great B.B. King, and then there's jazz masters like the late guitarist Wes Montgomery, Brian Auger's Oblivion Express did a live cover of his classic, Bumpin On Sunset, on an album called Live Oblivion, that came out in early 72 i believe, they also did Herbie Hancock's Maiden Voyage on the same album, which to me, was so incredible.

When i was 9, i had a childhood sweetheart. Her name was Nancy Montgomery. I liked her the minute i met her.
She was 7, when we became friends, but i liked her more than a friend, i had a crush on her, i think she knew it, the way i felt, even if she was a couple years younger than i.
Girls somehow know those things, even that young. I believe she knew even as innocent as she was then, in those childhood days, when love was innocent, a mystery, something to wonder about.
Before i ever knew Nancy, i had a first kiss with Sharon, a girl that lived down the street from me, she was my earliest childhood sweetheart.
It was long after Sharon moved, that Nancy and i became friends, and then a little more than friends, after we got to know each other a little bit better.
I lavished alot of attention on her, because i liked her, i wanted her to be my girlfriend.
We saw each other quite often, we became quite close. One of our visits together, i'd often try to kiss her, i liked her, i was attracted to her.
I was always a ladies man, in my younger years, and yes, i was girl crazy, i loved the girls, even when i loved boys secretly.
Nancy and i became very close, but it wasn't like we were calling each other on the phone, the way i did with girls when i was older.
I'd written about Nancy before, so this is a more intimate recollection, of memories however brief, of her.
Something about her told me she wouldn't be around very long, call it intuition, call it a hunch, call it fate but whatever it was, i felt it not so strong, but i felt it come to me out of the blue.
It was a sad feeling. I didn't let it bother me at the time, i was having too much fun with her.
She was the prettiest girl, blonde wavy hair, a cute smile we were clsoe in age. I'd said before, that i was 10, she was 9, so we were actually close in age, then again it was a very long time ago, we were kids then.
We were both innocent, precocious, but i was curious, and wanted to know what made girls tick. She never knew i shared a first kiss with a girl, long before ever meeting, or knowing her.
By the time i met Nancy, Sharon had been gone from the neighborhood a few years. I'd fallen in love with Nancy but, couldn't say it to her directly, because i was shy, to even tell her i liked her.
The last time she visited me, i made her smile, and laugh, i gave her kisses.
I even wanted to take her someplace, where she and i could share a first kiss, that wasn't to be, ever.
After our last visit, i thought of her alot, it was then that i felt a vibration, a few days, or was it weeks later, i felt something was wrong.
My Mother told me about the accident. She'd been playing at a friend's house, went into the garage pushed a button, the garage door came down on her, pinning her underneath it.
Fireman came to try to get her out, they had to cut around her to free her. She was in the hospital a few days.
I asked my Mother how she was, the news was not good, she was weak, she died in her Mother's arms, leaving this world too soon, on August 5 1966.
It hit me pretty hard, my heart sank. My parents went to the funeral, i didn't i was only 9, my parents didn't think i could handle it.
I was pretty much heartbroken, that she was gone. I would never see her again, hear her laugh, or see that smile.
The night after she passed away, i felt her presence in my room. There was a small rocking chair in a corner of the room, that her ghost sat in, she sat there, rocking in the chair i saw it move, she was with me until i went to sleep.
It was the last time i would ever see her.
She was gone, i could only wonder what could have been if she'd lived, if we'd grown up together to actually explore a relationship, with each other.
There was a time after she'd crossed over, that i could hear her voice in my head, like she was trying to tell me never to forget her.
I still miss her. I love her now, as i'd loved her then. May she rest in peace. I love you Nancy.