Favorite bands :
Of course Jimi Hendrix, Robin Trower, S.R.V. ZZ top, Johnny Winter , Roy Buchaun, Chris Dauntie, Smokin Joe Kubic Band, Walter Trout, Bobby Parker, Charley Sales,Bad Company, Led Zepplin, the Beatles, the Stones, Cream, Janis Joplin, Heart, Jone Jet, Los Lonely Boys, Jeff Heality, George Througood, John Moody, Pink Floyd, Guitar Shorty, BB, Albert and Freddy King... and just about every old blues artist...
Favorite guitarists :
Jimi Hendrix , S.R.V.and Jimmy Page and Chris Daurte...for rock...Blues is Joe Kubic and John Moody. R& B...Bobby Parker. Acoustic Country .Johnny Cash and Wille Nelson....heavy country Junior Brown....
Favorite bassists :
John Paul Jones , Paul Mcharthey, Boote's, Tommy Shanon, Poc o.....For give my spelling
Favorite movies :
The Blues Brothers...the First one....
About max v
I been playing professional Guitar for over 30 years. I never had a steady 9 to 5 job. At 16, I played with James Brown at the Apollo in Harlem N.Y.C. I was in the house band at that time ...not in James Brown's band but, the house band would have to learn songs for the guest that would appear that night. So I played for smokey Robertson, Al Green, Wilson Picket, Deon Warwick, and a lot of older 50's and 60's acts that where still around at the time...example Chubby Checkers and a lot of not popular names that were great at this type of music. I got this job by showing up to a rehearsal at a place called the Music Work Shop. It was a music school for poor Black and Hispanic kids. I am Puerto Rican so, being a kid from a poor family, I got in. It was run by a Mr Washington and D.R. Brown. It had like 20 kids in it. A horn section ,string section, piano , organ ,drums , congas ,timbalies, xslyphone ( forgive my spelling ) This was a big band. They were playing a Chicago song called 25 or after 4...but when it came my turn to play the guitar solo...I was in. The Adults running it thought I was great. I was new at the time and they liked my style which was at that time a simplified Hendrix style. They were not that aware of Hendrix as being a great guitarist...because they asked me if I had a teacher...and fooling around I said his name was Jimi...and they wanted to meet him...I was puzzled because, I thought they understood the joke. I was learning Hendrix before there was any body that could teach Hendrix. I learned every thing from 45's and 33's records and scratched the hell out of all of them. I got to meet George Ciniton and Boots'e who play with the funkadellics before Boots'e move on to James Brown. On the white side of things, I grew up on Staten Island...and knew Larry Dismarizo very well. I met him as a young teenager at a music studio that he was teacher at. I was friends with the son's of the father that ran this place.
I was playing Hey Joe in another room and Larry came in and thought I was a grown up teaching and, to his surprise was this kid playing...He dug it and asked me who showed me that? I told him I learned it by ear. So he gave me free lessons on how to understand the fret board in exchange to learn the Hendrix song's I knew. ( what Larry showed me was very valuable because, this understanding helped me become a really great old school guitarist) I think I was the only one at that time that knew the Purple Haze riff....I was 14 at this time and Larry was 19. As time went on Larry was designing a new pickup. I was one of the first kids to try it..and to his disappointment ...I didn't like it...well that kinda ended the friendship..slowly ...I was in love with the Fender single coil sound. I was 17 at that time. But Joe Walsh and lesie West were the first ones to use it. And these were the pick ups used on some of the songs on James Gang rides again and all of Mountain's Mantucket Slay ride.... And I met them too at Larry's shop. This was before these guys got big. And then Black Sabbath used it...that's what propelled Larry to stardom. As I got older I kept playing...even in the streets on Manhattan. I had a loud battery powered amp that Eddy Miller made me. And it sounded so good that I was making anywhere from 50 to a 100 bucks a day doing this for a couple of years. That paid my rent and fed me. I was 20 to 22 at this time. Then I started a band and we were so good it lasted 8 years. This band was called The Blue Lips...and we played all over the tri state area. Then at 30...I played shortly with Debbie Harry in a band at CB GB's open mike nite way before she became Blondie.
I could remember being booed for playing Hendrix...lol...at CB's. But that place got to freaky for me...so it was time to move on and out....next stop; Maryland....I will write about this at another time...but throughout my late 30's and early 40's I have played with some great act's in MD. and started some of my greatest bands there.....plus in my late 40's I also moved to Texas for a couple of years and did good there too..Boy ...I have a lot to tell...I'm as old as dirt...lol
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max v profile, last updated : April 15, 2008
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