Anybody play any musical instruments...........

I've been playing bass guitar for over 35 years with a break in the early 80's when I quit a latin rock band and totally dove into the Punk/New Wave trend, and hacked away on guitar and drums for about 5 years. The refreshing do-it-yourself attitude in the late 70's was a great liberator and the high-energy 3-chord-buzz mania of the Ramones, Dead Kennedys, Buzzcocks,Wire, Devo, Plugz, Chrome, Minuteman et al. inspired me to form a power trio with my wife on bass and a drummer. Together with like-minded bands we put on our own gigs in whatever FOE or Firefighter's halls we could rent. Nobody made any money, but nobody lost any, either. With about 5 bands and their fans each gig was a big party. This was before hardcore reared its ugly head so generally there were no problems, although to the mullet-headed baseball-shirted population in Albuquerque we must've seemed like freaks. It was cool, though, because back then there was much more of a laid-back live-and-let-live attitude. Hippies and punks could co-exist peacefully side-by-side.
After our band "Straight Razor" fizzled out, I was recruited to play drums for a neo-garage outfit "Crawling Walls". My wife again played bass, we recorded an LP on Greg Shaw's Midnight Record label,(which still pops up on E-bay now and then)and we got to open a show for the Ramones 1984 "Too Tough to Die" show at UNM. Disagreements within the band caused its demise shortly afterward and my wife and I moved to San Diego; aside from occasional jamming here and there, nothing happened until 1995 when I started playing bass again with a re-formed band doing 50's and 60's surf and R&R covers. This quickly developed into a steady gig, because the music we play is seldom heard on radio anymore, but a lot of people still like it. We get hired mostly for car-shows, country club & yacht club parties, private parties and so on. The secret of our success is playing the best tunes from that era as faithfully as possible, vocal harmonies, leads and all, and not try to "re-interpret tunes in our own style", as heard in countless lounges around the world.
The fact that I don't play "original" music anymore doesn't bother me one bit. Ego trips are a thing of the past and this gig earns me enough to buy some nice equipment.
I've got 4 Fenders (Precision and Jazz), a Hoefner Beatle bass and a Gibson EB3 played through Eden amps. The members all get along, show up on time, sober, know the 150 or so songs inside and out, our equipment is top-notch and we have a lot of fun. We're just another hack-band in our little niche, way past visions of fame and fortune. How very boring. Unless you're one of us.

I decided just a few months ago to get an acoustic guitar to help me understand music better and appreciate the craft with a different perspective. I have been taking lessons and learning how to read music. It has been a very rewarding experience so far and it has helped me enjoy my music collection that much more.

I've played hand drums for about 30 years. Did some professional work before my kids came along but haven't done any since. I play a little with friends now and then.

Like several previous contributors I feel that my experience with drums has strongly affected my feelings regarding reproduced music. The steepness of transients and how sustained notes yield to silence are key to my perception of realism and musical flow from recorded percussion. These are very hard to get right, particularly for the big drums. When this is done right, though, a lot of other difficult stuff like, piano, brass and strings seem to be more correct as well. Therefore, percussion rich music figures prominently in the material I use to evaluate audio components.

I used to play guitar in rock and roll bands in the early 70's. Lately, I have been really enjoying jaming with a couple of radio stations that play blues on Friday evening. I have the guitars and amp set up in the stereo room.

Harmonica/blues harp -- one of the few instruments you can play along to the car stereo while you're driving.