Where did it all start? I guess for me it was the Beatles. Everything in the late 60's and early 70's was directly or indirectly related to them. If they weren't dominating the airwaves with another hit, they were in the papers for their break-up, or yet another act targetted JPG & R as their inspiration.

I was pretty young in 1970 ( 6'ish ) but I was raised by a musical mother, and my older brother and sister were hitting adolescence ( one of them a little harder than the other ), and they were pretty hip with the current scene. The radio was always on, or one of them was spinning another new album.

I grew up in Southern Ontario. An Area in Canada that is about 20 minutes drive from Buffalo, NY, and about a 1.5 hour drive from Toronto. In this area there were umpteen different rock stations. Buffalo alone had 5 or 6 rock stations. It was awesome. Not to mention all the other types of music stations, AM or FM.

The early/mid 70's saw the merger of AM Pop, and FM Stereo Radio. The format shifted from singles to album rock. So the Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, BTO, and Alice Cooper albums that my brother was spinning downstairs were now regular songs on the radio as well. The now-termed "classic" rockers were dominating the FM airwaves. I pretty much lived on this for the entire decade.

As the mid-70’s dawned and I entered adolescence, I spent what few bucks I earned from my paper route on Peter Frampton, KISS, BTO, and Ted Nugent albums ( among others ), and really freaked out on the guitar rock scene. Of course my older brother had the coolest album collection ever, and I took every opportunity I could to sneak into his room and listen to them. My first album that I bought was Peter Frampton’s "Frampton’s Camel". I still own it and listen to it occasionally. The rhythm and lead guitar attack backed with a drummer and bassist was what I was in to.

It is important to keep in mind that this was the Audio Age, NOT the Video Age. You rarely saw these guys on TV at all ( OK forget that KISS meets the Phantom flick, and the Sgt. Pepper debacle Peter ). You had to go see them live to get a real taste ( Oh ya, occasionally Crazy Ted would appear at some god-awful hour on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert wearing nothing but a loin cloth and swinging from a vine looking like Tarzan on a Sunday Afternoon, but I had to sneak up that late to see it, if I was awake at all ). It was that or you had to slap on a set of headphones and drift away. It was pretty cool stuff because you rarely saw it and you had no choice but to let the music grab you, or you didn’t listen to it. You were forced to listen to the music and then make a decision. There was not the distraction of a video stream clouding your senses simultaneously.

That's my "musical roots" if you will. What followed in the next 2 decades was merely filler for what had already been engrained in my mind.

Musically the 80’s brought on the advent of the Hair Bands that mostly seemed to be some type of spinoff of early VH, but they relied heavily on video to portrait their image. The Def's, Motley's, Jovi's, etc, seemed to just be re-doing the pop rock scene from the 70's with the help of video. Sure there were the Maiden's out there spawning a "harder" scene with 2 guitar attacks, but they certainly didn't invent it. Try listening to Priest's "Stained Class" or "Sad Wings Of Destiny".

The 90’s brought to light the phrases “Grunge” and “Alternative”. Two phrases I never really got but they both seemed to have their day.

Dyslexic Love is about all of this. It's unadultered, unedited, straight ahead Rock'n Roll. If you’re looking for the video collection ( well maybe one day ) then you’re in the wrong place. The recording process was a lot truer to the roots of yesteryear than some of the electronica and sound sampling that is prevalent today.

Dyslexic Love was born out of my basement while I was recording my solo CD’s. I had all of this Rock music stored and fragmented from days past. It's an attempt to capture songs from my past in a format that's true to their origin. You'd better like Electric Guitar though!

Tim ( 2010 )