There are few as active on Charlotte's music scene as John Tosco.
He teaches guitar at his own music studio, hosts monthly open mic nights at the Evening Muse in Noda, and for more than 20 years has run the quarterly concert series called the Tosco Music Party.
The next Tosco Music Party is tonight at Halton Theatre on the campus of Central Piedmont Community Collge.
WFAE’s Brianna Duggan spoke to Tosco about his beginnings with music, and about his favorite song. It’s by the band that got him into music in the first place.
TOSCO: My earliest childhood memory is listening to the beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. That was my introduction to rock and roll. I had been hearing the music of my parents, Frank Sinatra and various big bands, but when I heard The Beatles there was just something just clicked.
I remember playing a guitar, a cardboard guitar, soon after that. I was six years old and my neighbor and I each had one and we would be singing along looking in the mirror pretending we were in the band with The Beatles. Then when I was 8 and I got a real guitar I was really inspired to learn and I knew within few years it was all I was going to do - and it is pretty much all I have ever done.
I’m John Tosco. I’m the founder of the Tosco Music Party and I’m a guitar teacher at Tosco Music Studio.
It’s really hard to pick a favorite song for anyone, especially any Beatles fan to pick their favorite Beatles song because they have so many and they are all so different, but I chose Here Comes the Sun.
Its such a beautiful little melody. It’s played really high on the neck of the guitar. George used a device called a capo which is a clamp that goes up on the neck of the guitar and it makes it sound much higher it's almost like a little music box sound.
You know there is hope, and even when it doesn’t look liket h sun is about to come about it is coming out, and there is something to be happy about. I am always the glass is half full kind of guy rather than half empty. Actually a lot of times I’m the glass is full kind of guy.
The next Tosco Music Party is Saturday night at 7 at CPCC’s Halton Theatre.