Some music just makes sense to listen to.

Some music just makes sense to listen to. Like a logical expression or an irrefutable truth, and there are a lot of people who seek this kind of perfection in music for both listening and performance of. A perfectly balanced musical statement so sublime you can only marvel in its beauty and wonder at the great mind that created it. A musical statement can be called, in the technical discipline of music theory, a ‘sentence’ because it forms a full statement of meaning with an antecedent and a consequent and it just feels complete and right.  ‘To be, or not to be, ‘ is one of those statements that feels completely right and balanced, and is a fundamental issue of humanity stripped to an embarrassingly simple statement of intent, and is the sort of expression that makes you wonder how we ever managed without it (like the opening statement of Beethoven 5th symphony). One could say only ‘To be’ but it feels too little and leaves too many questions unanswered; add the ‘or not to be’ and the see-saw of human sanity sinks into place and order is restored (Imagine the Beatles writing a perverse song called ‘All You Need is . . . ‘). From one nugget of insight (To be, or not to be) pours forth mighty editions of human thinking and philosophy and we haven’t even entertained the business about whether it is ‘the’ question and we are certainly nowhere near considering any sense of nobility. 

The idea of a perfect musical statement has been raised because, although it is something I have studied, know of, recognise, and can appreciate and probably strive for when I am writing music, it has absolutely nothing to do with my state of ‘musical magpie-ness’ and the real reason I love music. Any sort of formal(perhaps normal) insight or thinking falls to pieces when I try to understand how I became such a fan of Boney M and the Nighflight to. Listening to the track there is nothing to it, nothing, you can’t sing along, hum or quote a lyric, and if you do its because you are confused and are thinking of the the next track from the album, ‘Rasputin’ which ‘Nightflight to Venus’ seamlessly becomes.

There is something else altogether indescribable that kicks in as soon as you hear the voice ad countdown at the beginning of the track. Imagine if you can, at 12 or 13 years old, in the old gymnasium at your school, a lunchtime disco, a few flashing lights and a loud stereo; this track starts up and you are left hanging until the damned drum lick kicks in; Drums that have been processed through a flanger! . . . Fantastic, Magic, Stirring, Evocative! Everybody at the lunchtime disco just went bonkers. And we’re talking about 1979, big hair, shoulder pads, fuzzy jumpers (OK it can be pretty cold in Edmonton during the winter), Daniel Hechter Stonewashed Jeans(snug fit), Adidas white trainers with the three blue stripes , er .. . the list goes on and, er, I am describing this from a boy perspective looking at the girls and having no idea what to do next because remember the age we are at here, 12, 13, 14 This may well be the most important, ever, age of discovery, the dawn of awareness. We had Charlie’s Angels, The Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman and Fantasy Island setting out trends and role models on television, and here at the lunchtime disco you are surrounded by this newly discovered species – girls, and some crazy assed dance music with these far out drums, a robotic voice telling us to get ready for something, and here we were, on a space ship going to Venus. I mean girls! They were there all along! I had always got along fine with them and having older sisters I was used to them, no big deal right? However, they suddenly became girls (not my sisters, all the rest of them, though dear sisters, i don’t mean you are not girls, it’s just different . . . bear with me . . .  this hole is getting deeper every minute!). Girls! Ack, Boney M! Ack Those Damned Drums!

So dancing became the new ice hockey and going to the disco or the roller disco on the weekend became the new winter time full contact team sport. I was lucky at that moment to fall in with a very great group of friends which constituted many members from each team (boys and girls) and we were able to arrange meetings at the rollerdrome on weekends and there would be house parties and we would take over a garage or rumpus room (basement decked out like a bar) and there would be a stereo and we all brought our records. There was even a lunchtime disco dance club organised because the new French teacher at the school was one of the dancers from Edmonton’s own top of the pops programme on television cleverly titled ‘Disco Daze’, and all us impressionable nearly teenagers, were duly impressed. Many girls and a couple boys signed up for the disco dance club and it wasn’t until I started getting grief from my non-enlightened friends that I had any idea the club might be something to be embarrassed about.

In the face of ridicule by my peers I persisted because I had awoke to a new contact sport and enjoyed the game, the world had changed and it was a fuller, more beautiful place. My vision developed a soft focus condition, I became aware of lip gloss, I would find ways to spend time with girls, even invited a couple out to the movies and I became a good roller skating dance partner (no, really, I’m not kidding, this all happened). Obviously I cannot comment on what might have been the case from the girl perspective, but we all got along quite well, had a lot of fun, nothing ever got too serious, we all enjoyed our school and there are even a couple of folks from that time I am still in touch with. I think it was all good.

So as one of my first album purchases, Boney M Nighflight to Venus, the album and the track, became a shiny bright bit of musical madness. I would put the stereo speakers on the floor facing each other, get the track running, turn it righteously loud, and lay on the floor with my head between the speakers and get lost. If you’ve never done that, I suggest you try and headphones don’t do the experience justice, you have to be there on the floor and it has to be loud enough make the glasses on the coffee table move about and drop off the edge, and those drums from Nightflight will impress you and move you to your core,  but it sure ain’t Shakespeare.

My first 33 1/3 album choices.

I think I was 12 when I fist started playing in the Edmonton Youth Orchestra, carefully positioned at the back of the second violins where it was unlikely I could do any damage or throw anyone off. I could play the violin but as a student of the Suzuki Method (Listen and Play approach) my ability to read music had been very well hidden. My sister had played all the Suzuki pieces before I got to the so I hear them practised every day and then I heard them all again at the Saturday morning 'parties' where all the Suzuki students came together each week and played together and through as much of the repertoire as you knew. This meant when it came time in my private lessons to play a new piece of music, and the teacher asked me to read the music, I would struggle to gain the first few notes under my finger, but as soon as I recognised the work, I could close my eyes and play through it without needing much from the written page - Success! hmmm. On the flip-side, my first couple years at the back of the second violins in the youth orchestra were a very different story, you can't feel your way through the second violin parts of the Brandenburg Concertos. I couldn't sight read at all and in was laboriously slow for me to work out what I was doing. The best part of the youth orchestra, for me, was meeting a couple guys my age who played violin, and finding out they were normal people.

Here i met Brett and we talked about everything, and often got in trouble for talking, and behaved a bit like naughty schoolboys, because we were naughty schoolboys. I think we were even smoking during the breaks at this stage (remember I was 12). I hadp to junior high school and started hanging with a new group of friends who were all into listening to music on the hit parade (630 CHEDwas the AM hit radio with Wolfman Jack) and buying albums. But I was playing Vivaldi and Bach and new almost nothing about records, singles and albums, my one 'in' being I had kind of inherited a suitcase record player from my big sister and with it, two or three singles and an album or two. There was Foreigner - Dirty White Boy, Cher - Half Breed and then a Partridge Family album (I forget which but we used to watch the TV show, but I suppose seeing kids play in a band had some impact - I never thought of that before - see how therapeutic this writing thing can be). Anyhow, those bits of music were pretty non music for me. I remember sitting with the CHER single on the record player and holding a pin in my hand and using the tip of the pin to play the disc rather than using the proper tone arm needle; and you know, you could hear the song very quietly coming from the tip of the pin, in fact, feel the vibrations coming up my fingers. It would be years before I saw a high resolution photo of record grooves and began to understand how it all worked. Even today, working on audio waveforms in a digital music editor, the shape of the waveforms tell you what the grooves on vinyl would look like.

So Brett and I would talk about music and I knew nothing of the modern stuff and what was supposed to be good, and Brett seemed like he knew quite a bit. After saving my allowance and paper route money for a few weeks I had a stash ready to go into town and buy a record or two. So I asked Brett his advice and name a selection of  albums that would be good to start with. So that next Saturday I headed into downtown Edmonton on the number 51 from Capilano and went to the relatively new Edmonton Centre and headed into the basement area where the food court and record store was. The shop was heaving with people because part of the culture at that time was going to the record store on Saturday and buying a new album you had been saving up for. And there were all types of people there from every background all flipping through the bins of records. The hit parade record list would be hung up on the wall to see who was at the top and the age of picture discs had just arrived so there would be some coloured vinyl disco hits on the wall along with the Rolling Stones Lip discs. I joined the crowd and got to work looking for the albums on my list, and along the way you get sidetracked looking at all the album covers, looking at the pictures  and reading the stories and wondering about the bands and where they came from. Edmonton Alberta is quite a long way from anywhere else on the earth and if you've never been anywhere else, you don't realise there is anywhere else that is different. Its just the way it goes until you become older and aware and get the chance to travel.

I was so distracted it was only but the skin of my teeth I got out of there with my treasured choice. And I think it was an inspired choice which ticked all the right boxes for me and somehow illustrates my eclectic tastes in music and stretched my imagination in new and fantastic directions. So here they are in no particular order. My first three long play records bought with my own money that I saved from allowance and a paper route:

1. Van Halen I
2. Boney M - Nightflight to Venus
3. Led Zeppelin - The Song Remains the same

Not much I can say about it, I still like all of them. I do remember the next monday morning getting ready for school and I was playing the Led Zeppelin while getting dressed. My sister came through to my room and told me to 'turn it down, that's not really appropriate for a Monday morning'. . . . And I felt like I was on my way, I had achieved teenage, I was now offensive and obtrusive. And there was much more to come.