mehistree

This page will familiarize you with this bizarre energy event whose designation is Tony Garone. It contains successes and failures, life experiences and background. I hope you find it interesting.

We are Family

Ancestors (on my Mom's side): 1.Great Grandma Biecker (Anna Matheson - Grandpa's Mom) 2. John Whalen 3.Mary Ann Whalen (McInerney) Grandma's Mom and Dad

My Mom's side: 1. Mom and Dad Pensa 2.Grandma and Grandpa Biecker 3.Grandma Biecker

My Dad's side: 1. Grandpa Garone, Dad garone and Grandma Garone. 2. Dad Garone 3.Anthony and Pauline Devita (Grandma's brother and sister in law)

1. Mary Ann and I in Sedona 2. Kenny Mom and myself in NY 3. Mary Ann, myself, Kenny and Dimi (his wife) at Montezuma's Castle AZ

1.My brother Louie & family Cynthia, Jacklyn (Louie's much better half), and Pamela 2. Vicki's husband Seth and Mary Ann 3. My brother Leo and his wife Lilly

Brothers and Sisters: 1.Kenny and I (long time ago) 2.Vicki (my lovely sister) 3.Nikki (my nephew), Kenny, Mom and my brother David 4. Dave the contortionist (Hey get me a wedding picture Dave - so I can show the world YOUR better half!!!)

1. Me (without beard - ouch!) and Uncle Mikey (one of my life - long friends) 2. Uncle Mikey again 3. Vicki, Kenny and I 4. My dog Lucky

1. One of my bestest, oldest friends, Pete on the guitar (another life-long friend) 2. Pete and Mike with Mike's twin brother Mirk.

Miscellaneous: 1. My Uncle A. Bomber (WWI Veteran) 2.Susan (another life-long friend), Myself and Mary Ann 3. My old Thunderbird (Mary Ann and I were just married)

The Hall of Legends

Mom, Vicki, Mary Ann and Dimi. Y'know, I can understand the motions of the stars, comprehend the minds of the ancients and calculate atomic structure based on Quantum Physics, but don't ask me to understand these women in my life...

Garone and Astronomy

My Meade 1080 Telescope with baby Kenny, and my first telescope, a Meade 4" reflector.

When I lived in Carmel, NY I became a member of the Westchester Amateur Astronomy club. At the time, its president was Bob Davidson and its vice president Mario Palmieri. Bob and I worked on the WAA Newsletter every month. It was lots of fun, and both Bob and Mario became my good friends. Back then the club was small - maybe sixty members or so - today they have over two hundred and thirty members! I will never forget the Ward Pound Ridge "Star Parties", and the trips to Harriman, where Columbia University housed a 24" (mirror size) Telescope in a real dome. One thing I found out about observing from a dome on top of a mountain, it gets REAL COLD when you open those shutters!!!! In fact, I used to call them "shudders".

Bob, Mario and I still keep in touch via email, and here is the WAA web site. I was always interested in Astronomy, and intensely studied it when I moved up to Carmel, because the skies were darker than the light polluted skies of Long Island, affording me a great view of the heavens. I got so involved with the club, that I went out and bought a Meade 4" reflector telescope.

I remember the first week I had that reflector, it was in the middle of January and FREEZING cold!!! I tried to use the setting circles (two indicators to set your Right Ascension and Declination - kinda' like latitude and longitude, but in the sky), but I was too excited and cold to deal with the math - so I just moved my scope around until something interesting appeared. As I swept across the celestial hemisphere, I moved into the constellation Hercules, and saw this big "blur" go by. I stopped and went backward, and centered my scope on M13...

...I was hooked. I stayed out all night observing that amazing globular cluster. Mary Ann kept telling me to come back into the house - but I couldn't. I was stunned that I was able to see this object through my little telescope. Here's what it looked like, only smaller in my telescope (remember, it's 22,000 light years away!!).

Anyway, after spending many cold months with my Meade 4" reflector, I traded it in for a larger 8" Meade Catadioptric telescope, which had a mirror twice the size (duh), and more importantly, it had a clock drive. A clock drive allows you to track celestial objects (stars, planets, galaxies etc.) as you observe. You see, there's allot of movement going on out there, and objects will "drift" out of your "field of view" after a while. So before you start to observe you need to make some initial manual alignments using the setting circles on the equatorial mount (typically with two stars, I use Vega in the constellation Lyra and Aldebaran in the constellation of Taurus), turn on the clock drive and it synchronizes with celestial motion and follows the rotation of the earth, allowing you to keep distant objects in your eyepiece. Pretty cool eh?

When you couple a computer with a clock drive (it was very expensive back then), it makes it very easy to find objects in the night sky. My Meade 1080 had a "worm gear" clock drive, which was mechanical and not computer controlled. Todays telescopes utilize computer technology.

I remember waking up the kids (who were very excited as well) to observe Saturn through our new family telescope at five o'clock in the morning. We were all amazed...it is an incredible planet! Here's what it looked like (again only much smaller even in my newer, bigger telescope)

My favorite objects to observe (and certainly the most challenging) are galaxies. They are very dim and VERY far away. The closest galaxy to our own is the Andromeda galaxy in the constellation of Pegasus. This galaxy is 2.2 million light years away and measures some 125,000 light years across! The image below is a photograph of the Andromeda galaxy. By the way, when you look through a telescope, you rarely see colors like these. In fact, galaxies are fuzzy little smudges unless you are observing from the Hubble telescope.

Different types of Telescopes

a. Refracting telescope uses only glass lenses to focus light to the eyepiece. These telescopes are good for observing planetary objects like the moon and Saturn. b. A reflecting telescope uses mirrors to "capture" light and then focus it into the eyepiece. The bigger the mirror, the more light can be captured therefore the brighter the image. These telescopes are good for observing "deep sky" objects such as galaxies and nebulae. c. A catadioptric telescope uses a combination of mirrors and lenses. The "tube" does not need to be as long as the preceding scopes, because this type of telescope can "bounce" light around inside the tube, allowing for greater portability. These telescopes are good for "all around" viewing.

I still have my Meade telescope permanently placed on my back porch for observing in the even less light polluted Arizona skies. Astronomy is a wonderful hobby and introduces you to the mysteries of the universe.

Garone and the Splendors of Ancient Egypt

From October 4, 1998 through March 28, 1999 Garone had the great privilege of being a Gallery Guide at The Splendors of Ancient Egypt exhibit at the Phoenix Art Museum. This incredible exhibit was a once in a lifetime event, and I was proud and honored to be part of it. The collection featured pieces from the Old Kingdom to the Ptolemaic period of Egyptian history. I learned so much just from being around these enigmatic pieces I think I bruised my brain bone.

I was stationed by this incredible 12 foot statue of the Egyptian Goddess Sakhmet...

Yep, that's her! She made for quite an intimidating presence. Sakhmet was the most powerful god in the Egyptian pantheon. Verrry cool. I will never forget her. Of course I also became an expert on the locations of all the bathrooms and water fountains throughout the Museum. My understanding of Hieroglyphics increased tremendously, as there were many inscriptions and reliefs to study.

Garone and Music

A lot of my life's energies have been spent in the pursuit of creating interesting music. I'd like to think that this was not a futile one, because it sure was lots of fun!!! Hey - that rhymes - I think I'll write a song...

Speaking of which, writing songs is the most important thing to me (and Kate Bush). Most of what I did was write songs, sing, play acoustic guitar and flute. And guess what - that's what I continue to do to this day. Although I work with computers as a "career", I will always play music. I also use computers to create music, which can be a journey of discovery within itself.

This is the earliest photograph of Garone (about sixteen) with my Les Paul studio model guitar (which I traded for a PA system or something stupid like that - my son has never forgiven me for that exchange...). Note the excessive amount of hair. My old four track TEAC tape recorder. Without you, nothing else could have happened. I love you, TEAC...

My first band, Yellow Snow (sorry for the name)

This is Yellow Snow playing at MacArthur High School in Levittown NY circa 1974. This is the only surviving picture I have of this version of the group. From left to right: Kathie McHugh (vocals), Dave Heller (bass guitar, flaming amplifier), Garone (guitar?, vocals?- that's me in the purple African Mumu), Mark Weiss (drums), Pete Stergakos (guitar, vocals), Bob Johnson (trumpet). Pete and I are still the best of friends and we communicate with each release of a Garone CD - he's on Gematria, my new CD and will be on The Epic of Gilgamesh, the next Garone CD.

Pete left the band to pursue a career studying the Colombian Wombat, and was replaced by Eric Weiss (Mark's brother), Bob Johnson continued to fall in love with Garone's sister, and soon after that Garone joined the group that surely changed his life...

Garone and Heresy (a very lucky Garone)

1. Garone with the band. 2.Garone acting strange again. Yes, that is a giant inflatable spider on my head.

I was fortunate enough to become a member of Heresy (they felt sorry for me), at the time we performed music by ELP, Genesis, Jethro Tull, the Who etc. and our own material. Heresy has been together for 24 years, in various configurations, however, Scott Harris, John Sergio and myself remain as nucleus. Occasionally we play at the yearly Jethro Tull Convention. We also produced an album entitled At The Door and a compact disc, "A Far Cry". These guys are not just great musicians, they have become my life-long friends.

1.Heresy in 1980. 2.Yet another incarnation of Heresy, with guitarist Jim Cutrone, circa 1985.

Here's a fairly recent composite photo of Heresy, with all current members, from left to right: Ed Clark (electric guitar), Billy Brown (you guessed it - electric guitar), John (the Monkee) Sergio (bass guitar, flute, tin whistle, odd voices), Tony Garone (vocals, acoustic guitar, flute), Chris Camilleri (drums, vocals), Anthony Garone Jr. (electric guitar), Scott Harris (keyboards, vocals), Dave Kaelin (electric guitar)

The Jethro Tull Convention

At the 1996 Tull Convention, Heresy was lucky enough to play with original Jethro Tull bassist Glenn Cornick and original keyboardist, John Evans. Here's a picture of me with Glenn Cornick! What a blast!

One of the best things to happen to me was being involved with the Jethro Tull Convention. It is a yearly event where Heresy gets to play Jethro Tull music to a group of the most enthusiastic and forgiving audiences we've ever played for. In fact, these folk are so friendly that I really don't like referring to them as an "audience"...it's more like a gathering of old friends!

This yearly experience is only enhanced by the fact that the folks who run the show, Benjamin Vaccarro and Debbie Michaels are the nicest bunch of people around. Garone looks forward to this event each year. At last years convention, we performed (well, almost) Jethro Tull's finest album (IMHO) "A Passion Play performed by Heresy at Hofstra University". We also had the privilege of performing with the group "Passion Play". They were incredible and a great time was had by all.

The Reason

A little later on, I got together with some friends and formed "The Reason". This was an interesting experimental group, performing "Proton Decay", a musical experiment that I put together with the help of these close friends.

The Reason performed only once to a very enthusiastic audience (mostly friends and some people who had nothing else to do). Luckily, it was recorded on video tape for prosperity. Garone is eternally indebted to Mike Carr (vocals and keyboards) and Casey (drums and vocals) for this experience. The performance began by each band member approaching the stage and slamming gongs. Tons of fun!!!

The Reason personnel: Mike Carr - vocals, keyboard, Casey - drums, vocals, Garone - vocals, electric guitar, John Sergio - bass guitar, Mike Jabin - keyboards, Steve Foglia - electric guitar

Thinking Hand

A much later photo when Garone was in Thinking Hand, a most experimental group. Note the excessive amount of turban to cover excessive amounts of hair loss.

Much later still, another project was formed from the ashes of "The Reason" known as "Thinking Hand". The concept for Thinking Hand was to have five musical "stations" where each member would pick up various instruments (even if one had no experience playing that instrument) and "play" them. In addition, the electronic Simmons drum kit was to be dis- assembled, with each pad at a station, so there would be no official drummer.

Conceptually, this would be as if five members would then become a "hand", working in tandem with each other, and the focus would be shifted from "musician/individual/ego" to "song/group/higher purpose". This was never fully realized, and unfortunately (?) we became a more "traditional" group.

We played quite frequently at a place called "Sparks" on Long Island, NY while working on material for an album that never quite happened (we ran out of money). Some of this material appeared on A Far Cry by Heresy, although in very different form and arrangement. I have an extensive collection of Thinking Hand live and studio tapes as they are interesting to say the least...

Thinking Hand personnel were: Garone - vocals, guitar, John Sergio - bass guitar, Mike Jabin - keyboards, drums, Chris Camilleri - drums, chapman stick, Steve Foglia - electric guitar

Loomings

The title of the first chapter of Moby Dick. My brother Kenny (he's the man - without him I am seal fodder) and I went through a period where all we did was discuss the philosophical and theological underpinnings of this incredible work by Herman Melville. At about the same time, my good friend Ernie Woodall and I had this idea of just getting together and, well - I can't call it "jamming" - I don't know what it was, but we called it Loomings. Kenny played the Chapman Stick and keyboards, Ernie played guitar and ebow, and I played computer and keyboards and drum machine. It was like something from another planet.

Here he is, my little babooshka - my brother Ken Garone, without his Chapman Stick. The elusive Ernie Woodall sans guitar. Click here to visit Ernie's website. You can purchase the Loomings CD there.

We would record these sessions, and while we were playing none of it made any sense. When we listened back, it was like creation from chaos! It made sense some how. We made several cassettes of this material, and through Ernie's Daystar music company, these tapes were extremely well received by college radio stations and countries such as Spain and Russia. Stranger things have happened I suppose - well, maybe not.