"Play It Again!"

Gary attended his first concert when he was approximately four years old.

His family went to see the Oak Ridge Boys at Memorial Auditorium in Wichita Falls. “Elvira” was Gary’s favorite song, and he waited excitedly for the group to play it.

They did.

Then a grown man seated a few rows ahead of the Wiseman family shouted:

“Play it again!”

And they did.

To a four-year-old Gary, this appeared to be the way concerts worked. If a song was good enough and somebody yelled loudly enough, the band would simply play it again.

The Oak Ridge Boys were Gary’s first musical obsession. Willie Nelson soon followed. Somewhere there may still be memories of a four-year-old in shorts and cowboy boots walking around singing “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys.”

The moment that changed how Gary listened to music happened later at a bowling alley.

He was there with his father when someone began playing Billy Joel songs on the jukebox. Something connected differently. Gary was no longer hearing music only as entertainment.

He began listening to how it worked.

He also began to understand that he wanted to make it.

By twelve, he was deeply into Guns N’ Roses and the glam-metal bands of the late 1980s. The music looked dangerous, exciting and, most importantly, fun.

Gary wanted in.

At the same time, he was discovering alternative music and punk rock. Jane’s Addiction, the Smashing Pumpkins’ Gish, fIREHOSE, the Descendents, Screeching Weasel and NOMEANSNO expanded his understanding of what a band could sound like.

His musical education was pulling from several directions at once.

Billy Joel showed him what songs could do.

Guns N’ Roses and Van Halen showed him what being in a rock band might feel like.

Punk rock showed him that he and his friends might actually be able to start one.