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When I Was a Boy

When I was just a boy I saved green stamps to purchase my first bass guitar. If you don’t know what green stamps are, they were small stamps collected from various discount grocery stores back in the 70s. There was a catalog from where you could purchase items depending on the amount of stamps collected. I use to sit up until early morning trying to learn “POW” from Larry Graham (Bassist with Sly & the Family Stone). My brother’s room was next to mine and my practicing use to drive him crazy. I remember him telling stories of how I would keep him up almost every night plucking and thumping the same thing over and over for months until I perfected it. As they say “practice makes perfect” right? Unfortunately for him though, if it wasn’t my Practicing it was my snoring that kept him up. No wonder he couldn’t wait until I moved out!

Mom, I Joined the Band

Several years later I joined the Prince band without my Mothers knowledge. My Image was in need of an overhaul so I went to LA with Prince and Morris Day to do some shopping. The night before we left I was introduced to a hair dresser named Ollice. He was told to give me a new look. I had shoulder length curly hair at the time so when he straightened it the length increased by about six inches. I liked the new look, the problem was no one showed me what to do with it. The next morning when I got out of bed I looked like Buckwheat. As I walked to the bathroom my mother screamed from the top of her lungs! “What did you do to my boy!!! “ She thought something bad had happened to me and this crazy person was leaving my bedroom. I turned and said “Mom, it’s me Mark!” She ran down the hall to get a closer look then grabbed my face and said “what in the world did you do to yourself?” That morning was when she found out I had joined Prince’s band.

great story.