And what about the Victrola in the living room?
When my older son Jackson was little, we'd plug it in and play it back. My younger son Lucas keeps asking about it, so we're going to play him some records. I just have to find the right speakers to go with it for… proper modulation. [both laugh]
There are also a lot of vintage radios all over the house.
When I started buying radios, a couple of guys at work started making fun of me. I think Howard even said something like, "Oh God, how trite. Every guy in radio has to collect old radios." But I wasn't collecting them because I was in radio - I was collecting them because they were cool. I'm more relaxed about it now, but at first I wouldn't even buy them unless they worked.
I saw a pretty cool guitar case up in your older son's room.
Jackson has taken up playing guitar, and the amp in his room is a tube amp. I took up guitar for like a second in the mid-'80s.
Here, come check this out. [We head down to an unfinished corner of the basement where a pile of boxes currently resides. Gary proceeds to open a guitar case.] Leslie West [of Mountain] gave me this guitar, and it says, "To Gary, for being a friend." At the time, he said to me, "If you don't learn how to play it, I'm taking it back in 6 months." That was 21 years ago. But it turned out to be unbelievably difficult to play - it had a weird tuning - so I never learned how. I even went to Dan's Chelsea Guitars on 23rd Street and bought an amp for it for 50 bucks. Didn't use it, but we moved it from house to house. My son saw it, and he asked, "Can we try it?" I said, "It doesn't work." But I plugged it in, and the thing worked! I couldn't believe it. Now he plays guitar with that amp. He likes it.
