Begorrah - Music's been the

Begorrah - Music's been the one common thread through the last thirty years of my life. Learning new instruments and new types of music have been my recreation, my mission, even my drug of choice.

I'm a very good guitarist. I play cello quite well, thank you. I have a rather unique but effective style on bass. I'm good on harmonica. I'm a capable drummer in the Charlie Watts sense of the term - I keep the beat just fine, and what else really matters? I don't embarass myself on mandolin. I'm pretty stinky on pennywhistle (I can play a couple of Pogues tunes), and can crank out a couple dozen songs on keyboards (I suck the least at Organ - years of following Danny Federici and Benmont Tench licks have shown me a few flashy little tricks that cover my incompetence. And I can do a couple things on the curan, a turkish folk instrument that's halfway between a balalaika and a sitar.

By any rational measure, I should be happy with what I can do, musically.

But there's always been something missing. Ahab had Moby Dick. I had the bagpipes.

Well, Tuesday night I started bagpipe lessons - free lessons, through the Minnesota Pipes and Drums. It's basically bagpipe boot camp; lessons are in four-month trimesters, with a test after each trimester. Flunk the test, and you have to take private lessons to catch up - no mulligans (which'd be Irish, anyway, and therefore trayf). Attrition is rumored to be high - worse than Green Beret training, by some estimates. And it's a 1-2 year program before I get to touch actual bagpipes (which are $800 on up, when I get to that point). I feel like I'm training to be a heart surgeon - and when you see the finger dexterity involved, it's probably not that bad a comparison.

But I'm on a mission. I want to sit on my porch and serenade my neighbors.

Heh heh.

No, seriously - this is going to be fun.