I turned 30 in 1999 and my wife had obviously been paying attention over the years when I would talk about my desire to want to play guitar. She bought me my first acoustic guitar.
It was a Jasmine by Takamine:
There was nothing unique or special about it and in some ways, I was embarrassed to get it in front of the group of friends that were there to celebrate my 30th. Fortunately, they were all very close friends of mine and knew I couldn’t play the damn thing, but there was still a sense of “well, crap, now I have to learn this thing” or I will have egg on my face. I was now accountable to take my love and appreciation of music to the next logical conclusion…learn to play, so that you could entertain yourself even if you don’t have a cassette handy (or now CDs were all the rage. I know because I had 800+ of them in my CD rack. Alphabetized of course.). To be fair, I had already purchased an electric guitar a year or two prior, but it sat in the corner of the front room waiting for my friends to come by to play it so that I could admire their talent from afar. Did I ever pick it up? Yes. Was I any good? No. What did I play on it? Crappy power chords were about it.
One of the friends at my party was Mike. You know, the Mike of our friends Mike and Jenny. Jenny and Heather worked together at Farmers Insurance and the four of us would hang out occasionally to eat sushi (he worked at Mikuni and knew his way around a pu pu platter), play games and just generally get to know each other. In those days Mike and Jenny seemed more free spirited than Heather and I, who were already raising our two girls and M&J were not yet parents. For example, they had beads for a door going into their bedroom. How cool is that? Beads! What Mike also had was a few guitars, like I now have since my 30th. He had them setup in his room with a 4 track recorder and I was in awe of how cool the setup was. I also admired how he approached his abilities and hobby of playing guitar. He was shameless and he, like I still do today, admitted he was not great at the skill, but it didn’t matter to him. He enjoyed it and that was enough for him. He was also very generous with sharing what he had done. At that time, it was recordings of mostly him, but he also played a few things with his sister and it was infectious to hear him play the guitar and his recordings. He also wrote his own stuff. Admittedly some of the songs were not necessarily my style and his singing was not pitch perfect by any stretch, but that is what made it even more accessible for me.
It was during this period where my desire to get better with my guitar playing was born, but also dare I say, “Could I possibly ever sing or write a song of my own?” To this point, that notion was never on my mind. I simply wanted to learn a few chords so that at a minimum I could play along while someone maybe played a drum beat or with another guitar. During these visits Mike and I would often sit and screw around with the guitars (again, mostly me playing a few power chords, because I still wasn’t very good with any of the basic chords on an acoustic.
Songs to Play at my Funeral 
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