As a kid who grew up with a summer birthday, I always felt sorry for fellow classmates with birthdays around Christmas, kids who got screwed out of a party or who only got one present to cover both events. Unfortunately for my son I got lucky seven spring breaks ago -- his birthday falls nine months after that, exactly two weeks before Christmas. Sorry, kid.

The good news for the boy is that his mother and I tend to go way overboard when it comes to birthday presents to make sure he doesn't feel slighted when Christmas rolls around. This year when I asked him what he wanted for his birthday, he looked at me as seriously as a son can and said two words to me: "Rock Band."

For a few months now, the boy has been saying he wants to be "a rock star" when he grows up. He's only seven, so I let him dream. He struts around the house in hoodies and fingerless gloves and with his hair spiked up in a faux-hawk. He says he wants to grow up and be in a band and be like "Fall Out Boy." Please. When I was seven-years-old I wanted to be in either Queen or Led Zeppelin.

I can remember two specific presents from my seventh Christmas: a red acoustic guitar, and a Mr. Microphone. Mr. Microphone was a microphone with an FM transmitter built into it. You had to physically hold a button down on the microphone to get it to broadcast (which made playing guitar at the same time a bitch), so my dad helped me wrap duct tape around the handle a few times. That freed up a hand, allowing me to both play I Love Rock and Roll and sing at the same time. I'm sure all our radio-listening neighbors loved my performances.

To be honest I did my fair share of pretending as a kid as well. My dad bought a VCR/camera combo the first year they dropped below $1,000 and there are plenty of videos of me jumping around while playing air guitar using baseball bats and tennis rackets. That's the category I lump Guitar Hero and Rock Band into; they're just games. I don't think they're bad and I don't lament that kids play them instead of picking up real instruments. There's plenty of time for that.

I gave up my dreams of being in a band the first time a classmate came over to my house, picked up my beat up, no-name, cheap ass guitar and made that motherfucker sing. Here I had spent weeks learning and practicing the main riff from Master of Puppets and along comes this kid who learned the solo from "hearing it once" and played it note-for-note right in front of my face. That's the day I knew I would never become a rock star. I may have had the dreams, but I didn't have the patience and I certainly didn't have the talent.

I still play around with music, though. Obviously my interests moved to computers. In the early-to-mid 90s I started messing with PC-based multitrack recording. I started with a shitty ten dollar microphone from Radio Shack (Mr. Microphone had long since broke) and crappy drum beats from a crappy keyboard I picked up at a garage sale. Things picked up from there. In the late 90s I helped a few bands by setting up their websites, laying out their CDs, and even recording a few of them. Before my kids were born I temporarily converted a couple of spare bedrooms into a temporary makeshift recording studio. We used one room for the control room and the other as a recording studio, with a network of cables running down the hallway connecting the two. For a couple of years I helped out at a bigger local recording studio, and at one point I was even running my own print 'zine dedicated to my local music scene. I've done a lot of stuff for musicians, helped a lot of bands out and had a lot of fun along the way. I still can't play the solo from Master of Puppets.

While my son has enjoyed playing Rock Band for two weeks straight, there was another present awaiting him, hiding in the back of the closet -- a real electric guitar. It's a no-name brand, just like my first one, but with a Flying V body style. The boy's eyes lit up when he saw it leaning up against the fireplace, Christmas morning. Like his old man, he cranked the distortion up to 10 while hammering out a terrible (but recognizable) version of Smoke on the Water.

I hate to be the one to tell him he won't be a rock star when he grows up, so I won't do that to him. He's too young to understand it all yet; right now he just wants to turn everything up as loud as it goes and play along to the songs he knows from Rock Band and Guitar Hero (which are actually pretty eclectic). I've tried to teach him a few chords but I don't think he's ready for that just yet. Maybe someday he'll take to the six string and if he does I'll be there to back him up. Hell, if he and his friends want to record an album, my recording gear is still out in the garage.

In two years I expect him to be as good (if not better) than Old Skull, a group of nine-year-olds.

YouTube Video: Old Skull's "Homeless"

Seasons Greetings, Happy Holidays, and Merry Christmas from cDc and my little metal head.