March 11, 2011

My Hero

Though he may not act too much like a hero, Michael Herrera has some pretty inspiring accomplishments in the music field. At the age of twelve he started practicing for what would be a life-long career, MXPX one of the most popular punk rock bands of the late 90s and early 2000s. In junior-high, he lived a few blocks away from the meeting place of a small garage-band. When they practiced, he would ride his bike down the street and listen to them play. Then they had some concerts which Mike attended and the band got sort of popular. Mike saw all the teens showing off their skate-boarding skills while partying to some punk-rock music, and knew what he had to do. The band had inspired Mike to try his hand in the music industry. He could already play the bass guitar a little, but a little is not enough to start a band. Michael practiced for hours and days, and recorded himself on his sister’s stereo, played it back and recorded another layer of music over the original doing this until he had a stack of cassette tapes of his songs. It is with this heroic ambition that Mike made his career.
When in the last year of junior-high, Mike convinced Tom Wisniewski and Yuri Ruley to create a band with him. MXPX started out small, but by the year 1994 they released their first real album with twenty-one songs, and “Pokinatcha” hit the shelf. One year later they produced “Teenage Politics,” year after year they released hit after hit launching themselves into world-wide tours. They are one of the most famous “Punk-Rawk” bands ever, competing with Blink-182, Green-Day and Goldfinger. They became popular because they could play songs faster than anybody else, getting into the sixteen plus beats per second. In all this, Mike stays true to his faith, family friends and genre of music, this may not seem like much, but it is hard to resist drugs, partying and secular living when you are a rock-star. Michael handles his fame better than most.
Mike makes my hero list for several reasons. For one, he has incredible drive and determination to start a band in junior high. That means countless hours spent practicing new techniques and styles instead of hanging out with friends. Also he has flat-out incredible musical and lyrical ability. He plays the bass guitar, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, and piano. Even as a rock star he still lives a normal life, married to Holli Herrera, and resides happily in his home town of Bremerton, Washington. Michael Herrera proved to the world that anyone can live out their dream and be whoever they want. No one could stop him, nothing can slow him down and everything is his to conquer.