Saturday, November 13, 2010
We've Moved!
I have packed up my vinyl and my CDs and moved to: https://jamesostafford.wordpress.com/
Friday, November 12, 2010
Help! I need a new blog name!
"Why Music Matters" is a much more sophisticated concern than my little blog. You can see their work here: http://www.whymusicmatters.org/
Which leaves me in need of a new blog name. Any suggestions? Comments welcome.
Which leaves me in need of a new blog name. Any suggestions? Comments welcome.
Show Me the Way
Manilow Madness aside, I did my best to be the manly son my father wanted. I joined the Cub Scouts. I played Little League and flag football. And the thing is I liked it. I wasn't a mama's boy by nature, I was a mama's boy by nurture.
My folks got off to a rough start. They dropped out of high school, married young, had three kids. By the time I was ready for preschool, they'd determined that raising a family of five on a repairman's salary wasn't going to cut it. My father went back to school - a four year degree in two and one-half years - and worked full-time. He even took on some side work, too.
Which is simply to say that from my earliest childhood memories, my dad was a very busy man and my mother and my sisters were my full-time family. It was a girls' house. They were very involved in Girl Scouts, so I tagged along to meetings, day camps, and whatever else the Girl Scouts were doing. I made God's eyes with yarn and popsicle sticks, and weaved placemats from cattail leaves. I learned campfire songs.
But my father, he was the measure of a man. He was what I wanted to be. I just didn't know how, and he didn't have the time to show me.
I'd never been in a fight before we moved to Chicago. Within a month of moving, I'd been in at least six. Every boy in our new neighborhood had to fight before they could be friends. I learned this when Bobby Cruz jumped me at the bus stop, sat on my chest and pounded me in the face. All the other boys circled and watched.
"Do something!" I yelled.
"What do you want us to do?"
"Say 'break it up'!"
"Break it up." Bobby kept punching me in the face. The next day we were buddies.
Six fights, or more specifically six instances of me coming home bloodied and sobbing, was my mother's limit. "I wish you'd toughen up," she said, and she wiped the blood from my nose with a warm washcloth. I didn't know how to toughen up, and I felt like I'd lost my only ally.
Baseball was another problem. It was the de facto sport of the neighborhood. I couldn't throw, couldn't catch, couldn't hit. I didn't even know the basic rules. My father worked third shift. He didn't have time to teach me to fight or play baseball. He just didn't have time.
Enter the big kids. There were three categories of kid in our suburban neighborhood: too small to play baseball; too old to play baseball; and somewhere in the neighborhood right now playing baseball. The kids who were too old to play wore their hair long and only came out at night. They'd huddle beneath a street light and smoke cigarettes. They were the older brothers and sisters of my friends, but I never saw them when I'd go to their houses to play. They were like vampires.
Except for Johnny, my next door neighbor. Tall, handsome, cocky, a 13 year old legend in the neighborhood. Johnny was an all-star pitcher, the one big kid who hadn't turned his back on baseball when he hit junior high. He called himself "The Kid," and he was nice to me. Granted, taking me under his all-star wing was a way to get close to my big sister, but nevertheless he was nice to me.
Johnny taught me to throw, catch, and hit. He explained how the game worked and encouraged me. Before long I was out in the street with the other kids, playing pick up games. Johnny would never play, but now and then he'd take a couple of swings just to impress us. He could hit the ball twice as far as any of us.
One Saturday my father took me out in the driveway for a game of catch. I couldn't believe my luck - finally a chance to show the old man my skills. The ball popped right into my glove's pocket, and I got it back to him in the air and somewhat on target.
"Not bad," he said.
"Johnny taught me. He's the best baseball player in the whole neighborhood."
"Oh yeah?"
"He's on the all-stars and yesterday he hit a home run over the Kratz's house."
Back and forth went the ball. Back and forth went my adoration for The Kid. The more I talked, the harder my father threw. I could hear the ball hiss before it hit my glove. My hand was stinging. Finally he burned one in so hard that I took off my glove and held my reddened hand. My eyes watered up.
"Can Johnny throw like that?" he said. The game was over.
Not long after that I visited my friend Eric's house. It was dirty and it smelled funny. We traded baseball cards, played vibrating football, and then sunk into general boredom. "We could listen to records," he said. I liked that idea. Eric broke out the usual suspects - John Denver, Neil Diamond, The Monkees. "Last Train to Clarksville" was pretty cool. He played The Jackson Five's "Rockin Robin" back to back with Silver Convention's "Fly Robin Fly," which started a lively (for eight year olds) discussion about why robins make for good lyrics.
"My older brother has a record with a talking guitar on it," Eric said.
"That's impossible."
"I'll go get it, but watch out for him. I'm not allowed in his room."
He came back with Frampton Comes Alive! tucked under his arm. It was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. A double album, the gatefold sleeve opened to a full length photo of Frampton. His long blond hair was glowing purple in the stage lights, his eyes were fixed on the heavens. And strapped across his scrawny chest was the alleged talking guitar. He looked like one of the big kids who hung out under the street lights, but his expression conveyed The Kid's kindness.
Woke up this morning with a wine glass in my hand
Whose wine? What wine? Where the hell did I dine?
This was big people music. This was music for hanging out under street lights. I felt ten times cooler just listening to it. It felt like I was committing a crime or something, like any minute my mother was going to walk in and demand to know why I was listening to this deranged story about champagne for breakfast and friends who had been arrested.
After the lyrics, what really jumped out at me was how different this song was. I was a 45 kid - songs were three minutes long, four tops. But this just kept going. The keyboardist got a solo. The guitarist got a solo. The audience got pulled in:
Do you feel like we do? [audience screams]
Do you feel like we do? [audience screams louder]
That was it. That was the big difference. I didn't know that music was performed live, that it was interactive. Before that it was a monologue, not a dialogue. Lee Dorsey told me about his Ya-Ya; Elton described the Yellow Brick Road, and I listened while they talked to me. But Frampton broke the wall - he asked me to participate. I wanted to be there. I wanted to be anywhere where a band was playing and I could be a part of the screaming crowd. But I was eight, it wasn't going to happen. I couldn't wait to be a big kid like Johnny, or even better like one of those mysterious long-haired kids who lurked in the shadows of our neighborhood.
Needless to say, Eric was right. The guitar talked. My little brain was completely blown. I stared at the album cover, looking for some sign of life in that black guitar. It was some kind of miracle.
I quit the Cub Scouts after that, and I refused to get my haircut. My father was around less and less, but it was okay. I had the big kids now to show me the way.
My folks got off to a rough start. They dropped out of high school, married young, had three kids. By the time I was ready for preschool, they'd determined that raising a family of five on a repairman's salary wasn't going to cut it. My father went back to school - a four year degree in two and one-half years - and worked full-time. He even took on some side work, too.
Which is simply to say that from my earliest childhood memories, my dad was a very busy man and my mother and my sisters were my full-time family. It was a girls' house. They were very involved in Girl Scouts, so I tagged along to meetings, day camps, and whatever else the Girl Scouts were doing. I made God's eyes with yarn and popsicle sticks, and weaved placemats from cattail leaves. I learned campfire songs.
But my father, he was the measure of a man. He was what I wanted to be. I just didn't know how, and he didn't have the time to show me.
I'd never been in a fight before we moved to Chicago. Within a month of moving, I'd been in at least six. Every boy in our new neighborhood had to fight before they could be friends. I learned this when Bobby Cruz jumped me at the bus stop, sat on my chest and pounded me in the face. All the other boys circled and watched.
"Do something!" I yelled.
"What do you want us to do?"
"Say 'break it up'!"
"Break it up." Bobby kept punching me in the face. The next day we were buddies.
Six fights, or more specifically six instances of me coming home bloodied and sobbing, was my mother's limit. "I wish you'd toughen up," she said, and she wiped the blood from my nose with a warm washcloth. I didn't know how to toughen up, and I felt like I'd lost my only ally.
Baseball was another problem. It was the de facto sport of the neighborhood. I couldn't throw, couldn't catch, couldn't hit. I didn't even know the basic rules. My father worked third shift. He didn't have time to teach me to fight or play baseball. He just didn't have time.
Enter the big kids. There were three categories of kid in our suburban neighborhood: too small to play baseball; too old to play baseball; and somewhere in the neighborhood right now playing baseball. The kids who were too old to play wore their hair long and only came out at night. They'd huddle beneath a street light and smoke cigarettes. They were the older brothers and sisters of my friends, but I never saw them when I'd go to their houses to play. They were like vampires.
Except for Johnny, my next door neighbor. Tall, handsome, cocky, a 13 year old legend in the neighborhood. Johnny was an all-star pitcher, the one big kid who hadn't turned his back on baseball when he hit junior high. He called himself "The Kid," and he was nice to me. Granted, taking me under his all-star wing was a way to get close to my big sister, but nevertheless he was nice to me.
Johnny taught me to throw, catch, and hit. He explained how the game worked and encouraged me. Before long I was out in the street with the other kids, playing pick up games. Johnny would never play, but now and then he'd take a couple of swings just to impress us. He could hit the ball twice as far as any of us.
One Saturday my father took me out in the driveway for a game of catch. I couldn't believe my luck - finally a chance to show the old man my skills. The ball popped right into my glove's pocket, and I got it back to him in the air and somewhat on target.
"Not bad," he said.
"Johnny taught me. He's the best baseball player in the whole neighborhood."
"Oh yeah?"
"He's on the all-stars and yesterday he hit a home run over the Kratz's house."
Back and forth went the ball. Back and forth went my adoration for The Kid. The more I talked, the harder my father threw. I could hear the ball hiss before it hit my glove. My hand was stinging. Finally he burned one in so hard that I took off my glove and held my reddened hand. My eyes watered up.
"Can Johnny throw like that?" he said. The game was over.
Not long after that I visited my friend Eric's house. It was dirty and it smelled funny. We traded baseball cards, played vibrating football, and then sunk into general boredom. "We could listen to records," he said. I liked that idea. Eric broke out the usual suspects - John Denver, Neil Diamond, The Monkees. "Last Train to Clarksville" was pretty cool. He played The Jackson Five's "Rockin Robin" back to back with Silver Convention's "Fly Robin Fly," which started a lively (for eight year olds) discussion about why robins make for good lyrics.
"My older brother has a record with a talking guitar on it," Eric said.
"That's impossible."
"I'll go get it, but watch out for him. I'm not allowed in his room."
He came back with Frampton Comes Alive! tucked under his arm. It was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. A double album, the gatefold sleeve opened to a full length photo of Frampton. His long blond hair was glowing purple in the stage lights, his eyes were fixed on the heavens. And strapped across his scrawny chest was the alleged talking guitar. He looked like one of the big kids who hung out under the street lights, but his expression conveyed The Kid's kindness.
Woke up this morning with a wine glass in my hand
Whose wine? What wine? Where the hell did I dine?
This was big people music. This was music for hanging out under street lights. I felt ten times cooler just listening to it. It felt like I was committing a crime or something, like any minute my mother was going to walk in and demand to know why I was listening to this deranged story about champagne for breakfast and friends who had been arrested.
After the lyrics, what really jumped out at me was how different this song was. I was a 45 kid - songs were three minutes long, four tops. But this just kept going. The keyboardist got a solo. The guitarist got a solo. The audience got pulled in:
Do you feel like we do? [audience screams]
Do you feel like we do? [audience screams louder]
That was it. That was the big difference. I didn't know that music was performed live, that it was interactive. Before that it was a monologue, not a dialogue. Lee Dorsey told me about his Ya-Ya; Elton described the Yellow Brick Road, and I listened while they talked to me. But Frampton broke the wall - he asked me to participate. I wanted to be there. I wanted to be anywhere where a band was playing and I could be a part of the screaming crowd. But I was eight, it wasn't going to happen. I couldn't wait to be a big kid like Johnny, or even better like one of those mysterious long-haired kids who lurked in the shadows of our neighborhood.
Needless to say, Eric was right. The guitar talked. My little brain was completely blown. I stared at the album cover, looking for some sign of life in that black guitar. It was some kind of miracle.
I quit the Cub Scouts after that, and I refused to get my haircut. My father was around less and less, but it was okay. I had the big kids now to show me the way.
Friday, November 5, 2010
My Dark Confession
I was hoping to never think about this, much less write about it. This is such a dark corner of my past that I've done my best to expurgate it from my personal narrative. But the purpose of this ongoing ramble is to try and explain, if even only to myself, why music matters. How has music provided a soundtrack to my life? How has it grafted itself onto my psyche? I'm going to have to tread through the darkest, evil valley to get there.
I'm going to have to talk about the Mellow Seventies.
Listen: Music fans are vain. We find our tribe or many tribes and we are loyal to them. We choose at some level to believe that they define us. or at the very least reflect us. When I was in high school, an Iron Maiden t-shirt was a manifesto, not an article of clothing. A Black Flag button was a statement. "Disco sucks" really translated to "I don't consider myself the kind of guy who wears flouncy shirts and worries about his hair." Whomever we were musically was who we were, damnit.
Here's the problem: I knew these guys - or guys like them - when we were younger kids. And every kid I knew at the age of eight or so liked John Denver, Neil Diamond, and/or the Monkees. Some tossed the Beach Boys in for good measure, but that was the basic list. Every house I visited had some combination of these artists. So when we got to high school they weren't fooling me with their Sabbath tees, but I wasn't going to tell. I had my skeletons, too.
It wasn't just kids' record collections that were infected by Easy Listening. Sonny and Cher, The Captain and Tennille, and Donny and Marie Osmond all hosted popular television shows. The Carpenters and John Denver pulled huge ratings for their television specials. Bread, Chicago (post-funkiness), Streisand - all huge. It was the era of Helen Reddy, Neil Sedaka, and Paul Anka's "You're Having My Baby."
And then there was Manilow.
After first grade ended, we packed up and moved to a suburb of Chicago. Our new house was a split-level ranch with aluminum siding. Fancy. It was big enough that my sisters no longer had to share a room. My oldest sister got our aunt's hi-fi in the room divorce, which made her room the place to be. I found my way there whenever I could to listen to Rubber Soul and whatever she happened to have. She received a few singles for her birthday that year: Grand Funk Railroad's cover of "The Locomotion;" Ray Stevens' novelty record "The Streak;" "Dancing Machine" from The Jackson 5; and Terry Jacks' "Seasons in the Sun," a Mellow Seventies classic. I pretty much found myself there every afternoon, spinning records.
One afternoon I opened the briefcase-like hi-fi and found a newspaper photo taped to the inside lid - Manilow in all his huge-nosed glory. Beneath the photo were the lyrics to "Mandy." I couldn't imagine this dorky looking guy singing a love song. The thought of it made me laugh. My sister didn't appreciate being laughed at, and banished me from her room.
A few days later our elementary school had an assembly. We were going to see a magic show. I was game. A boy with a ventriloquist dummy is hardly in a position to pass judgement; besides, I'd recently seen The Great Manzini perform an upside down straitjacket escape at the local shopping mall. Magic was pretty cool. We sat quietly and waited, which translates roughly to "we ran around screaming like maniacs waiting for the show to start." On the cafetorium stage sat two small tables - one draped with a cloth, and the other holding the school record player. A big kid - easily junior high age - came out on stage and fired up the record player. This was my first roadie sighting.
The music was dramatic, moody. Solo piano, big heavy chords. Then the music lightened a bit, and The Great Wank-O or whatever his name was came out. It was another big kid, but this one had a black cape. He wore thick, aviator-style glasses, a white buttoned shirt, and jeans. He conjured a white-tipped cane from nowhere then turned it into a bouquet. This guy was good.
He poured milk into a rolled up newspaper without making a mess. He pulled scarves out of his mouth and coins from his assistant's ear. The music continued in the background -
Spirit move me, every time I'm near you....
Exactly! This dude was obviously in touch with the spirit world. Where else could all of that milk possibly have gone? He turned one ball into two, then three, then four, then back into one giant ball. He knotted a rope, snipped it in half, and then produced it again completely unmolested. Genius!
The tricks were great, but what caught my attention was how the music fit his show. He paced his tricks to fit the song, slowed them and sped them, echoed the lyrics where he could -
Now we hold on fast...
...and he'd demonstrate how the three rings held fast to each other....
Could this be the magic at last?
...and the rings came apart. Brilliant.
The song built to a crescendo. The tension of the show built right along with it, finally literally exploding in a flash of bright light and smoke, and The Great Wank-O was gone. The song wound down, back to the sad lonely piano, and the room was quiet. I don't know what the other kids thought, but I was certain I'd seen my future. Ventriloquism was for dummies, magic was my new vocation. And I had to know what that song was.
We moved to Chicago because my father got a better job. He wasn't a repairman driving a van anymore, he was a supervisor, an important man like Mr. Bryson who ran the Wards Bargain Basement. But my father worked in a factory, and factories didn't have normal hours like stores. Often he wouldn't get home until well after we were asleep. My mother would let us stay up late on Fridays so that we could see him for a few minutes. This and the rare weekend were the only times I saw my dad during those years. We'd pass the time while we waited for him to arrive by watching television. We'd watch Carson, and when that ended we'd switch over to "The Midnight Special."
"The Midnight Special" was amazing. It wasn't anything like "American Bandstand" or "Soul Train." Unlike those shows, "The Midnight Special" was nothing but live performances. Honestly I don't know how many "why music matters" stories have as their locus "Midnight Special" appearances. A lot. But on this particular evening, half asleep in my Underdog pajamas, the big-nosed guy suddenly appeared on the tube. He was seated at a big, white piano. Yep, you guessed it: He was playing The Great Wank-O's show music.
This is where things get a bit tricky. I'd already decided that I didn't like Manilow. I didn't like his goofy looks, and I didn't like the stupid lyrics to "Mandy." But I'd also already decided that I liked "Could This Be Magic." Essentially I had failed the Pepsi Challenge. When the blindfold was removed I had to cop to preferring the sugary sweet taste of Manilow.
That's one explanation. Another possibility is this: People love to make associations. They gravitate toward what is familar. When I was very young I liked my aunt's Elvis records because I recognized Elvis from repeated Saturday showings of his crappy movies. That evening I put the puzzle together. The big nose guy taped to the inside of the hi-fi was the guy who made The Great Wank-O's theme music, and who is so famous that Wolfman Jack invited him to "The Midnight Special."
Regardless, I was a fan now. For my eighth birthday I received Barry Manilow I and Barry Manilow II. I would own three more Manilow albums before I sold him out for thirty pieces of silver and a Molly Hatchet t-shirt.
Even during the Mellow Seventies it was pretty dorky for a boy to embrace The Manilow. John Denver and Neil Diamond? No problem. But Manilow? That was pushing things. Still, I waved my freak flag high. Maybe it was "Copacabana" that finally broke my back, I don't know.
Thanks to the now ubiquitous Youtube, I've been able to listen to that performance of "Could It Be Magic" again. Laugh if you will, but it's a well-crafted song. I'm a sucker for climbing songs: "Stairway to Heaven," "Who's Behind the Door," "The End," "Gonna Fly Now," Tangerine Dream's "Cloudburst Flight." They are immersive. They demand that you come along for the ride. You can't just sit there passively while they insist, "I'm going to drag your ass along until we hit a moment of tension so great that you just can't take it anymore. And then I'll wind you back down so that you can get on with your life." They are little audio rollercoasters.
The sentiments espoused in the Mellow Seventies were admittedly cringeworthy, but the craftsmanship was top notch. And the Great Wank-O was pretty badass, too.
I'm going to have to talk about the Mellow Seventies.
Listen: Music fans are vain. We find our tribe or many tribes and we are loyal to them. We choose at some level to believe that they define us. or at the very least reflect us. When I was in high school, an Iron Maiden t-shirt was a manifesto, not an article of clothing. A Black Flag button was a statement. "Disco sucks" really translated to "I don't consider myself the kind of guy who wears flouncy shirts and worries about his hair." Whomever we were musically was who we were, damnit.
Here's the problem: I knew these guys - or guys like them - when we were younger kids. And every kid I knew at the age of eight or so liked John Denver, Neil Diamond, and/or the Monkees. Some tossed the Beach Boys in for good measure, but that was the basic list. Every house I visited had some combination of these artists. So when we got to high school they weren't fooling me with their Sabbath tees, but I wasn't going to tell. I had my skeletons, too.
It wasn't just kids' record collections that were infected by Easy Listening. Sonny and Cher, The Captain and Tennille, and Donny and Marie Osmond all hosted popular television shows. The Carpenters and John Denver pulled huge ratings for their television specials. Bread, Chicago (post-funkiness), Streisand - all huge. It was the era of Helen Reddy, Neil Sedaka, and Paul Anka's "You're Having My Baby."
And then there was Manilow.
After first grade ended, we packed up and moved to a suburb of Chicago. Our new house was a split-level ranch with aluminum siding. Fancy. It was big enough that my sisters no longer had to share a room. My oldest sister got our aunt's hi-fi in the room divorce, which made her room the place to be. I found my way there whenever I could to listen to Rubber Soul and whatever she happened to have. She received a few singles for her birthday that year: Grand Funk Railroad's cover of "The Locomotion;" Ray Stevens' novelty record "The Streak;" "Dancing Machine" from The Jackson 5; and Terry Jacks' "Seasons in the Sun," a Mellow Seventies classic. I pretty much found myself there every afternoon, spinning records.
One afternoon I opened the briefcase-like hi-fi and found a newspaper photo taped to the inside lid - Manilow in all his huge-nosed glory. Beneath the photo were the lyrics to "Mandy." I couldn't imagine this dorky looking guy singing a love song. The thought of it made me laugh. My sister didn't appreciate being laughed at, and banished me from her room.
A few days later our elementary school had an assembly. We were going to see a magic show. I was game. A boy with a ventriloquist dummy is hardly in a position to pass judgement; besides, I'd recently seen The Great Manzini perform an upside down straitjacket escape at the local shopping mall. Magic was pretty cool. We sat quietly and waited, which translates roughly to "we ran around screaming like maniacs waiting for the show to start." On the cafetorium stage sat two small tables - one draped with a cloth, and the other holding the school record player. A big kid - easily junior high age - came out on stage and fired up the record player. This was my first roadie sighting.
The music was dramatic, moody. Solo piano, big heavy chords. Then the music lightened a bit, and The Great Wank-O or whatever his name was came out. It was another big kid, but this one had a black cape. He wore thick, aviator-style glasses, a white buttoned shirt, and jeans. He conjured a white-tipped cane from nowhere then turned it into a bouquet. This guy was good.
He poured milk into a rolled up newspaper without making a mess. He pulled scarves out of his mouth and coins from his assistant's ear. The music continued in the background -
Spirit move me, every time I'm near you....
Exactly! This dude was obviously in touch with the spirit world. Where else could all of that milk possibly have gone? He turned one ball into two, then three, then four, then back into one giant ball. He knotted a rope, snipped it in half, and then produced it again completely unmolested. Genius!
The tricks were great, but what caught my attention was how the music fit his show. He paced his tricks to fit the song, slowed them and sped them, echoed the lyrics where he could -
Now we hold on fast...
...and he'd demonstrate how the three rings held fast to each other....
Could this be the magic at last?
...and the rings came apart. Brilliant.
The song built to a crescendo. The tension of the show built right along with it, finally literally exploding in a flash of bright light and smoke, and The Great Wank-O was gone. The song wound down, back to the sad lonely piano, and the room was quiet. I don't know what the other kids thought, but I was certain I'd seen my future. Ventriloquism was for dummies, magic was my new vocation. And I had to know what that song was.
We moved to Chicago because my father got a better job. He wasn't a repairman driving a van anymore, he was a supervisor, an important man like Mr. Bryson who ran the Wards Bargain Basement. But my father worked in a factory, and factories didn't have normal hours like stores. Often he wouldn't get home until well after we were asleep. My mother would let us stay up late on Fridays so that we could see him for a few minutes. This and the rare weekend were the only times I saw my dad during those years. We'd pass the time while we waited for him to arrive by watching television. We'd watch Carson, and when that ended we'd switch over to "The Midnight Special."
"The Midnight Special" was amazing. It wasn't anything like "American Bandstand" or "Soul Train." Unlike those shows, "The Midnight Special" was nothing but live performances. Honestly I don't know how many "why music matters" stories have as their locus "Midnight Special" appearances. A lot. But on this particular evening, half asleep in my Underdog pajamas, the big-nosed guy suddenly appeared on the tube. He was seated at a big, white piano. Yep, you guessed it: He was playing The Great Wank-O's show music.
This is where things get a bit tricky. I'd already decided that I didn't like Manilow. I didn't like his goofy looks, and I didn't like the stupid lyrics to "Mandy." But I'd also already decided that I liked "Could This Be Magic." Essentially I had failed the Pepsi Challenge. When the blindfold was removed I had to cop to preferring the sugary sweet taste of Manilow.
That's one explanation. Another possibility is this: People love to make associations. They gravitate toward what is familar. When I was very young I liked my aunt's Elvis records because I recognized Elvis from repeated Saturday showings of his crappy movies. That evening I put the puzzle together. The big nose guy taped to the inside of the hi-fi was the guy who made The Great Wank-O's theme music, and who is so famous that Wolfman Jack invited him to "The Midnight Special."
Regardless, I was a fan now. For my eighth birthday I received Barry Manilow I and Barry Manilow II. I would own three more Manilow albums before I sold him out for thirty pieces of silver and a Molly Hatchet t-shirt.
Even during the Mellow Seventies it was pretty dorky for a boy to embrace The Manilow. John Denver and Neil Diamond? No problem. But Manilow? That was pushing things. Still, I waved my freak flag high. Maybe it was "Copacabana" that finally broke my back, I don't know.
Thanks to the now ubiquitous Youtube, I've been able to listen to that performance of "Could It Be Magic" again. Laugh if you will, but it's a well-crafted song. I'm a sucker for climbing songs: "Stairway to Heaven," "Who's Behind the Door," "The End," "Gonna Fly Now," Tangerine Dream's "Cloudburst Flight." They are immersive. They demand that you come along for the ride. You can't just sit there passively while they insist, "I'm going to drag your ass along until we hit a moment of tension so great that you just can't take it anymore. And then I'll wind you back down so that you can get on with your life." They are little audio rollercoasters.
The sentiments espoused in the Mellow Seventies were admittedly cringeworthy, but the craftsmanship was top notch. And the Great Wank-O was pretty badass, too.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
When Am I Gonna Come Down?
The Montgomery Ward Bargain Basement was a frequent destination in my early childhood. My father was a repairman for Wards at the time - one of those guys who drove a van, wore a smart uniform, and pleasantly fixed your television while your chihuahua chewed on his trouser leg. It seemed like an awfully glamorous existence to me, getting to see the insides of all of those houses owned by rich people who could afford repairmen and frozen orange juice.
His social life overlapped with his job. I don't remember any friends of my father's during that time who weren't Wards employees. Most were repairmen. They'd meet for lunch and tell funny stories about their customers. My mother took me to meet them for lunch now and then. With the repair vans lined up neatly in the parking lot and the uniformed men crowded around a table, it all seemed so manly and cool. I couldn't have been prouder if my father was a cop, or a soldier.
Manliness was important to my father. I could never quite reach the bar. Once he caught a frog for me while we were fishing. I named it Kermit and made him tie a piece of fishing line to its leg so that I wouldn't have to touch it. He called me a pansy. For my sixth birthday he took me to the Bargain Basement to buy a wristwatch. "You can have the one with the clear face so that you can see how all of the gears work, or you can have the Mickey Mouse watch."
"I want the Mickey Mouse watch."
"That figures," he said.
Nowhere was my pansiness more apparent than during the annual showing of "The Wizard of Oz." Annual televised events were a big deal in my childhood. Christmas specials, "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown," anything Rankin-Bass, even the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon was appointment television. We knew they were special because the networks were kind enough to put a "Special!" graphic before the show. Oz ruled them all. Judy Garland? MGM Musical? Maybe my pops had a point on the whole pansy thing.
That's an anachronism, though. At least among kids, there was no hint of homosexuality in Oz. It was just a great movie, and it had the scariest witch ever. This was the crux of my pansacity in my father's eyes. As much as I loved the movie, I was terrified of the Wicked Witch of the West. The sight of her guaranteed nightmares for weeks. What to do? I didn't want to miss this once a year event due to my witch phobia. The solution was fairly simple: I holed up in a swivel chair and spun myself 180 degrees at the first hint of a cackle.
I don't know how many times I managed to execute the no-witch chair spin, but it must have been a lot. Eventually my old man just couldn't take it anymore. "Goddamnit if you're not going to watch the movie then get out of here," he said. I didn't leave, I just manned up and stopped spinning. A few nightmares weren't going to get in the way of lively Oz debates during tetherball tomorrow.
My favorite friend of my father's was Mr. Bryson. He was one of those rare adults who noticed children, not only noticed them but talked to them like human beings. He looked like Johnny Carson, which added definite cool points. Because Mr. Bryson ran the Montgomery Wards Bargain Basement, I was sure he was a very important man. Visiting him was always fun, but shopping there was a little bleak.
Wards' main floor was bright, new, colorful. The barbecues had plastic T-bones on them, just in case shoppers weren't sure what to do with a barbecue. The canister vacuums ran continuously, their hoses hooked to the exhaust ends of the canisters and pointed toward the ceiling. Beach balls hovered over their hoses, twirling slowly in the vacuums' exhaust. This is where the rich people bought all of the cool stuff that they dispatched my father to fix. Our stuff was in the basement with Mr. Bryson.
The Bargain Basement was the Island Of Misfit Toys. This is where three-legged pants went to die. Appliances, clothes, electronics, furniture - anything that Wards sold that was flawed, returned, or dropped off the back of a truck ended up in the Bargain Basement and could be had for a steep discount. You could always tuck that extra pant leg into your britches, nobody's going to know. And Mr. Bryson always threw us an extra discount because he was friends with my dad.
All that shiny stuff upstairs. I wanted shiny stuff, too. I wanted something brand new that was entirely mine. Not pre-owned, not glued together, not dented or stuffed into the shopping bag by Mr. Bryson when he was sure that his boss wasn't looking.
And so I took my birthday money with me on one of our Bargain Basement trips and I begged my mother to let me spend it upstairs. I think she got it. She was pretty good about picking up on these things. My sisters went downstairs with my dad, no doubt to find a good deal on tube socks that were stitched closed at both ends, and my mother and I stayed upstairs with the plastic T-bones and the floating beach balls. We walked the aisles, looking for anything that met my two criteria: A birthday money price, and kid appropriate. This left out snow tires, leisure suits, and furniture made from wine barrels. Eventually we found our way to the record department.
This was perfect. Not only could I afford a 45, but I would be starting my very own record collection, just like my dad's. The only problem was that I didn't know any music made after 1965 or so - my father's and aunt's record collections were my only musical frame of reference. So I flipped through the singles with absolutely no idea what I was looking for other than a place to burn my money. There it was, finally: A black label with a rainbow streaking diagonally across it's middle, and over the rainbow the song title: "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road." Are you kidding me? Oz on record? I could listen without having to deal with that freaky witch? Game, set, match.
On first listen I was disappointed by my purchase. This had nothing to do with "The Wizard of Oz." The singer didn't sound anything like the actors in the movie, and whatever he was talking about it didn't have anything to do with the story. Regardless, it was my first record, and I was committed to making this relationship work. It was like nothing I'd never heard before - the voice, the tempo, the instruments. Everything was unique. For some reason it made me think of space, or the future, or some world other than mine. "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" couldn't have been more different from "The Chattanooga Shoeshine Boy" or any of the other records in my father's collection.
I wasn't in Kansas anymore.
His social life overlapped with his job. I don't remember any friends of my father's during that time who weren't Wards employees. Most were repairmen. They'd meet for lunch and tell funny stories about their customers. My mother took me to meet them for lunch now and then. With the repair vans lined up neatly in the parking lot and the uniformed men crowded around a table, it all seemed so manly and cool. I couldn't have been prouder if my father was a cop, or a soldier.
Manliness was important to my father. I could never quite reach the bar. Once he caught a frog for me while we were fishing. I named it Kermit and made him tie a piece of fishing line to its leg so that I wouldn't have to touch it. He called me a pansy. For my sixth birthday he took me to the Bargain Basement to buy a wristwatch. "You can have the one with the clear face so that you can see how all of the gears work, or you can have the Mickey Mouse watch."
"I want the Mickey Mouse watch."
"That figures," he said.
Nowhere was my pansiness more apparent than during the annual showing of "The Wizard of Oz." Annual televised events were a big deal in my childhood. Christmas specials, "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown," anything Rankin-Bass, even the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon was appointment television. We knew they were special because the networks were kind enough to put a "Special!" graphic before the show. Oz ruled them all. Judy Garland? MGM Musical? Maybe my pops had a point on the whole pansy thing.
That's an anachronism, though. At least among kids, there was no hint of homosexuality in Oz. It was just a great movie, and it had the scariest witch ever. This was the crux of my pansacity in my father's eyes. As much as I loved the movie, I was terrified of the Wicked Witch of the West. The sight of her guaranteed nightmares for weeks. What to do? I didn't want to miss this once a year event due to my witch phobia. The solution was fairly simple: I holed up in a swivel chair and spun myself 180 degrees at the first hint of a cackle.
I don't know how many times I managed to execute the no-witch chair spin, but it must have been a lot. Eventually my old man just couldn't take it anymore. "Goddamnit if you're not going to watch the movie then get out of here," he said. I didn't leave, I just manned up and stopped spinning. A few nightmares weren't going to get in the way of lively Oz debates during tetherball tomorrow.
My favorite friend of my father's was Mr. Bryson. He was one of those rare adults who noticed children, not only noticed them but talked to them like human beings. He looked like Johnny Carson, which added definite cool points. Because Mr. Bryson ran the Montgomery Wards Bargain Basement, I was sure he was a very important man. Visiting him was always fun, but shopping there was a little bleak.
Wards' main floor was bright, new, colorful. The barbecues had plastic T-bones on them, just in case shoppers weren't sure what to do with a barbecue. The canister vacuums ran continuously, their hoses hooked to the exhaust ends of the canisters and pointed toward the ceiling. Beach balls hovered over their hoses, twirling slowly in the vacuums' exhaust. This is where the rich people bought all of the cool stuff that they dispatched my father to fix. Our stuff was in the basement with Mr. Bryson.
The Bargain Basement was the Island Of Misfit Toys. This is where three-legged pants went to die. Appliances, clothes, electronics, furniture - anything that Wards sold that was flawed, returned, or dropped off the back of a truck ended up in the Bargain Basement and could be had for a steep discount. You could always tuck that extra pant leg into your britches, nobody's going to know. And Mr. Bryson always threw us an extra discount because he was friends with my dad.
All that shiny stuff upstairs. I wanted shiny stuff, too. I wanted something brand new that was entirely mine. Not pre-owned, not glued together, not dented or stuffed into the shopping bag by Mr. Bryson when he was sure that his boss wasn't looking.
And so I took my birthday money with me on one of our Bargain Basement trips and I begged my mother to let me spend it upstairs. I think she got it. She was pretty good about picking up on these things. My sisters went downstairs with my dad, no doubt to find a good deal on tube socks that were stitched closed at both ends, and my mother and I stayed upstairs with the plastic T-bones and the floating beach balls. We walked the aisles, looking for anything that met my two criteria: A birthday money price, and kid appropriate. This left out snow tires, leisure suits, and furniture made from wine barrels. Eventually we found our way to the record department.
This was perfect. Not only could I afford a 45, but I would be starting my very own record collection, just like my dad's. The only problem was that I didn't know any music made after 1965 or so - my father's and aunt's record collections were my only musical frame of reference. So I flipped through the singles with absolutely no idea what I was looking for other than a place to burn my money. There it was, finally: A black label with a rainbow streaking diagonally across it's middle, and over the rainbow the song title: "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road." Are you kidding me? Oz on record? I could listen without having to deal with that freaky witch? Game, set, match.
On first listen I was disappointed by my purchase. This had nothing to do with "The Wizard of Oz." The singer didn't sound anything like the actors in the movie, and whatever he was talking about it didn't have anything to do with the story. Regardless, it was my first record, and I was committed to making this relationship work. It was like nothing I'd never heard before - the voice, the tempo, the instruments. Everything was unique. For some reason it made me think of space, or the future, or some world other than mine. "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" couldn't have been more different from "The Chattanooga Shoeshine Boy" or any of the other records in my father's collection.
I wasn't in Kansas anymore.
Friday, October 29, 2010
School's Out Forever
Not all of the flotsam from my father's childhood drifted into my grandfather's fireplace. When he was a boy growing up in his small mountain town, he struck a deal with the owner of the local bar's jukebox. Each time the owner changed the music, he sold my father the old records for a dime a piece. He had quite a collection of unsleeved 45's, and they managed to escape the ovens.
I don't remember much of the music, but I remember the labels: The bright yellow Atco label with the elegant little trumpet; Mercury, Capitol, and Dot. The Roulette label was the best: A yellow and orange piece of pop art that was hypnotizing at 45 rpm. I'd sit on the rug in my bedroom and sort my father's records by label, try to memorize the artists' names and what was on the b-sides. Those 45's were to me what baseball cards were to other kids my age.
Some of those records made it into my early childhood heavy rotation: Freddy Cannon's "Chattanooga Shoeshine Boy" on the Swan label; Johnny Horton's "Battle of New Orleans" and its much hipper parody, Homer and Jethro's "Battle of Camp Kookamonga." These three along with The Royal Guardsmen's "Snoopy Vs. the Red Baron" were the bulk of my first grade playlist.
But without any doubt my favorite single from my father's stack was Lee Dorsey's "Ya Ya." There was not another record like it. There wasn't another R&B record in the house, and probably not in the neighborhood. "Chattanooga Shoeshine Boy" may have had that swing, daddy, but "Ya Ya" made me shake my little Toughskins butt.
Maybe my first grade teacher was the coolest teacher ever, maybe the Denver public school system saw value in promoting the arts, or maybe Mrs. Hendrickson was looking for filler. Regardless, after we got settled into a groove of Dick and Jane, handprint turkeys, and pledges of allegiance, we started having Music Wednesdays. This was nothing more than musical show and tell, with my little classmates bringing in their favorite records for us to hear.
What kid doesn't love show and tell? You have to put yourself out there, right? Make a name for yourself. Establish yourself as the alpha dog with a giant pine cone, real porcupine needles, or one of the many race car shaped Avon bottles your Mom put on your shelves but wouldn't let you play with. I don't remember ever having anything particularly good for show and tell - I think I may have committed social suicide by bringing a ventriloquist dummy once, but for my own well being I've blocked that incident. But Music Wednesday. I could own Music Wednesday with "Ya Ya."
And so one Wednesday afternoon after Mrs. Hendrickson had us move the desks out of the way and sit Indian-style in a circle, I sat and waited. Carl brought "Tie A Yellow Ribbon." The class seemed to really enjoy that. Really? Tony Orlando is on TV - how good can he be? Joe brought "Rocky Mountain High." This got a huge response, not only because we were listening to a song about the mountains we could see from our playground, but because John Denver was unbelievably huge with the elementary school set. I don't want to go down that particular rabbit hole right now, but I'll get to it eventually. For now just trust me that John Denver enjoyed Hannah Montana-like poll numbers with the monkey bars crowd.
There were a few others as the circle worked its way to me: the ubiquitous "Monster Mash;" Loggins and Messina's "Your Momma Don't Dance;" "It Never Rains In Southern California." Finally I was up. Mrs. Hendrickson motioned for me to hand her my record. She read the label, smiled, and dropped the needle.
Ohhhh welll I'm.....
I couldn't help but look around the circle.
Sittin' here la la waitin' for my ya ya uh huh
I may have blacked out, I don't know. The rest is a blur. It was like the dream where I was at the chalkboard showing the class how to make a proper "J" only to realize too late that I was in my underwear.
Sittin here la la waitin' for my ya ya uh huh
My classmates were laughing and pointing at me. Somebody yelled "That's old stuff!" My shot at cool had backfired worse than the ventriloquist dummy incident. Mrs. Hendrickson played the whole song, which took 12 hours and 38 minutes. When it was finished she unleashed on the class.
"How incredibly rude you boys and girls are. Jimmy sat nicely through your songs. Maybe he didn't like them, but he was polite enough to clap for you." And then she addressed me personally. "Thank you for sharing with us. I've loved this song since I was a girl. They just don't appreciate it because it's an oldie." This was the first I'd heard that music had an expiration date.
Three years later I was in my fourth elementary school in as many years. We'd moved to Texas a couple of months earlier, and I was having trouble fitting in. I was skinny and my hair was long enough that adults weren't sure if I was a boy or a girl. One teacher called me "Jen" for three weeks before someone finally told her that my name was Jim. I'd dropped "Jimmy" in one of the moves. Instability is great for reinventing oneself.
Aside from being the new kid, I was also a Yankee. This did not go over well in a town with a Wednesday night rodeo. I did my best to blend. I started wearing western shirts with lots of ugly embroidery and snaps instead of buttons. My visiting grandfather bought me a tooled leather belt with "Jim" notched into the back in raised black letters. But let's face it: I was just putting lipstick on a Yankee pig.
My lack of pop culture savvy didn't help much, either. One afternoon we were invited to join the other fourth grade class in a game of hangman. The subject was movies. Thanks to me we lost two games straight. I'd never heard of Smokey and the Bandit or Star Wars, neither of which had been released but somehow every kid but me in small town Texas was in on the Hollywood hype.
Our class had music once per week. Normally it consisted of playing triangles, maracas, etc., or singing Woody Guthrie songs like "Roll On Columbia" and "Grand Coulee Dam." One Wednesday while we were putting the triangles and the maracas away, Mrs. Hatton made an announcement. "Next week, I want you to bring in your favorite song," she said. Sink or swim, baby. I was going to break the Yankee Outsider curse. I was going to heal my first grade wounds.
My plan was simple: If oldies were scorn worthy, I'd bring the newest record I could get my hands on. That afternoon I asked my oldest sister to lend me her most popular 45. I took it to my room and listened to it repeatedly, scrutinizing it for any flaws worthy of my classmates' scorn. That Saturday I grabbed the entertainment section of the newspaper as soon as my father was done with it and flipped to the record charts. My sister was dead on with her recommendation: the record was number one. I couldn't miss. Wednesday could not come soon enough.
Monday and Tuesday crawled by, but music day finally arrived. It was a fine crop, I must say. Rhythym Heritage's "Theme From S.W.A.T." set the bar awfully high for the afternoon. "Love Rollercoaster" by the Ohio Players? Forget about it. These kids were playing for keeps. Paul, the tallest kid in class, broke out "Convoy," always guaranteed to bring the house down in 1976 suburban Texas. But Michael sealed the deal.
Michael was an only child and spoiled beyond belief. He was one of those kids who somehow managed to get the whole world to agree to spoil him. Rules didn't apply to Michael. If Mrs. Hatton said use a pencil, Michael used a pen. If she said sit down, he'd stand up just to be contrary. The kid was bulletproof.
So while the rest of us brought our favorite song, Michael brought his favorite album. When "Convoy" faded out, Michael and his "Fonzie for President" t-shirt slowly ambled to the front of the classroom.
"What I brung in can't be put on a 45 because it's banned in most places. You hear a guy die on it. A lot of people say that these guys are evil, but they aren't. They put it in the record because they don't want this to happen to anymore of their fans."
"I don't know if we should be listening to something like that, Michael, but I guess it will be fine," Mrs. Hatton said. Michael dropped the needle and passed the album cover to the kid in the first row to circulate. KISS. Destroyer. Bastard.
I don't know whether it's possible to understand what a disturbing presence KISS was for suburban parents in 1976. They weren't hawking Dr. Pepper, condoms, can cozies, and caskets back then. They were simply demonic. Consider this: Destroyer was released in March 1976. Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons held onto #1 almost that entire month with "December, 1963 (Oh What A Night)." The Bay City Rollers, Barry Manilow, Chicago, Rick Dees' "Disco Duck" - they all hit #1 in 1976. KISS breathed fire and spit blood. There isn't much else to say.
So we sat and listened to "Detroit Rock City," listened to the story of that unfortunate KISS fan unfold. All the guy wanted was to go a concert. He was obviously excited - it was getting late and he just couldn't wait. But some dumb trucker - probably listening to "Convoy" - crossed the double yellow. Julie Potter started crying when the truck inevitably crushed the poor bastard. None of us doubted for a moment that what we were hearing was the actual fatal car crash. Michael gingerly slipped the album back in its sleeve and sat down.
I was up next. I cued up Wings' "Silly Love Songs" and stood there while my classmates laughed and called me sissy, pansy, whimp, queerbait, etc. Mrs. Hatton told them to hush up, but she was laughing, too.
Not too long after that we picked up and moved again, this time to a small town in South Carolina. When the plane touched down in Greenville I was the biggest fucking KISS fan the world has ever known and I knew the difference between a land speeder and an x-wing fighter. Paul McCartney could kiss my Toughskins butt.
I don't remember much of the music, but I remember the labels: The bright yellow Atco label with the elegant little trumpet; Mercury, Capitol, and Dot. The Roulette label was the best: A yellow and orange piece of pop art that was hypnotizing at 45 rpm. I'd sit on the rug in my bedroom and sort my father's records by label, try to memorize the artists' names and what was on the b-sides. Those 45's were to me what baseball cards were to other kids my age.
Some of those records made it into my early childhood heavy rotation: Freddy Cannon's "Chattanooga Shoeshine Boy" on the Swan label; Johnny Horton's "Battle of New Orleans" and its much hipper parody, Homer and Jethro's "Battle of Camp Kookamonga." These three along with The Royal Guardsmen's "Snoopy Vs. the Red Baron" were the bulk of my first grade playlist.
But without any doubt my favorite single from my father's stack was Lee Dorsey's "Ya Ya." There was not another record like it. There wasn't another R&B record in the house, and probably not in the neighborhood. "Chattanooga Shoeshine Boy" may have had that swing, daddy, but "Ya Ya" made me shake my little Toughskins butt.
Maybe my first grade teacher was the coolest teacher ever, maybe the Denver public school system saw value in promoting the arts, or maybe Mrs. Hendrickson was looking for filler. Regardless, after we got settled into a groove of Dick and Jane, handprint turkeys, and pledges of allegiance, we started having Music Wednesdays. This was nothing more than musical show and tell, with my little classmates bringing in their favorite records for us to hear.
What kid doesn't love show and tell? You have to put yourself out there, right? Make a name for yourself. Establish yourself as the alpha dog with a giant pine cone, real porcupine needles, or one of the many race car shaped Avon bottles your Mom put on your shelves but wouldn't let you play with. I don't remember ever having anything particularly good for show and tell - I think I may have committed social suicide by bringing a ventriloquist dummy once, but for my own well being I've blocked that incident. But Music Wednesday. I could own Music Wednesday with "Ya Ya."
And so one Wednesday afternoon after Mrs. Hendrickson had us move the desks out of the way and sit Indian-style in a circle, I sat and waited. Carl brought "Tie A Yellow Ribbon." The class seemed to really enjoy that. Really? Tony Orlando is on TV - how good can he be? Joe brought "Rocky Mountain High." This got a huge response, not only because we were listening to a song about the mountains we could see from our playground, but because John Denver was unbelievably huge with the elementary school set. I don't want to go down that particular rabbit hole right now, but I'll get to it eventually. For now just trust me that John Denver enjoyed Hannah Montana-like poll numbers with the monkey bars crowd.
There were a few others as the circle worked its way to me: the ubiquitous "Monster Mash;" Loggins and Messina's "Your Momma Don't Dance;" "It Never Rains In Southern California." Finally I was up. Mrs. Hendrickson motioned for me to hand her my record. She read the label, smiled, and dropped the needle.
Ohhhh welll I'm.....
I couldn't help but look around the circle.
Sittin' here la la waitin' for my ya ya uh huh
I may have blacked out, I don't know. The rest is a blur. It was like the dream where I was at the chalkboard showing the class how to make a proper "J" only to realize too late that I was in my underwear.
Sittin here la la waitin' for my ya ya uh huh
My classmates were laughing and pointing at me. Somebody yelled "That's old stuff!" My shot at cool had backfired worse than the ventriloquist dummy incident. Mrs. Hendrickson played the whole song, which took 12 hours and 38 minutes. When it was finished she unleashed on the class.
"How incredibly rude you boys and girls are. Jimmy sat nicely through your songs. Maybe he didn't like them, but he was polite enough to clap for you." And then she addressed me personally. "Thank you for sharing with us. I've loved this song since I was a girl. They just don't appreciate it because it's an oldie." This was the first I'd heard that music had an expiration date.
Three years later I was in my fourth elementary school in as many years. We'd moved to Texas a couple of months earlier, and I was having trouble fitting in. I was skinny and my hair was long enough that adults weren't sure if I was a boy or a girl. One teacher called me "Jen" for three weeks before someone finally told her that my name was Jim. I'd dropped "Jimmy" in one of the moves. Instability is great for reinventing oneself.
Aside from being the new kid, I was also a Yankee. This did not go over well in a town with a Wednesday night rodeo. I did my best to blend. I started wearing western shirts with lots of ugly embroidery and snaps instead of buttons. My visiting grandfather bought me a tooled leather belt with "Jim" notched into the back in raised black letters. But let's face it: I was just putting lipstick on a Yankee pig.
My lack of pop culture savvy didn't help much, either. One afternoon we were invited to join the other fourth grade class in a game of hangman. The subject was movies. Thanks to me we lost two games straight. I'd never heard of Smokey and the Bandit or Star Wars, neither of which had been released but somehow every kid but me in small town Texas was in on the Hollywood hype.
Our class had music once per week. Normally it consisted of playing triangles, maracas, etc., or singing Woody Guthrie songs like "Roll On Columbia" and "Grand Coulee Dam." One Wednesday while we were putting the triangles and the maracas away, Mrs. Hatton made an announcement. "Next week, I want you to bring in your favorite song," she said. Sink or swim, baby. I was going to break the Yankee Outsider curse. I was going to heal my first grade wounds.
My plan was simple: If oldies were scorn worthy, I'd bring the newest record I could get my hands on. That afternoon I asked my oldest sister to lend me her most popular 45. I took it to my room and listened to it repeatedly, scrutinizing it for any flaws worthy of my classmates' scorn. That Saturday I grabbed the entertainment section of the newspaper as soon as my father was done with it and flipped to the record charts. My sister was dead on with her recommendation: the record was number one. I couldn't miss. Wednesday could not come soon enough.
Monday and Tuesday crawled by, but music day finally arrived. It was a fine crop, I must say. Rhythym Heritage's "Theme From S.W.A.T." set the bar awfully high for the afternoon. "Love Rollercoaster" by the Ohio Players? Forget about it. These kids were playing for keeps. Paul, the tallest kid in class, broke out "Convoy," always guaranteed to bring the house down in 1976 suburban Texas. But Michael sealed the deal.
Michael was an only child and spoiled beyond belief. He was one of those kids who somehow managed to get the whole world to agree to spoil him. Rules didn't apply to Michael. If Mrs. Hatton said use a pencil, Michael used a pen. If she said sit down, he'd stand up just to be contrary. The kid was bulletproof.
So while the rest of us brought our favorite song, Michael brought his favorite album. When "Convoy" faded out, Michael and his "Fonzie for President" t-shirt slowly ambled to the front of the classroom.
"What I brung in can't be put on a 45 because it's banned in most places. You hear a guy die on it. A lot of people say that these guys are evil, but they aren't. They put it in the record because they don't want this to happen to anymore of their fans."
"I don't know if we should be listening to something like that, Michael, but I guess it will be fine," Mrs. Hatton said. Michael dropped the needle and passed the album cover to the kid in the first row to circulate. KISS. Destroyer. Bastard.
I don't know whether it's possible to understand what a disturbing presence KISS was for suburban parents in 1976. They weren't hawking Dr. Pepper, condoms, can cozies, and caskets back then. They were simply demonic. Consider this: Destroyer was released in March 1976. Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons held onto #1 almost that entire month with "December, 1963 (Oh What A Night)." The Bay City Rollers, Barry Manilow, Chicago, Rick Dees' "Disco Duck" - they all hit #1 in 1976. KISS breathed fire and spit blood. There isn't much else to say.
So we sat and listened to "Detroit Rock City," listened to the story of that unfortunate KISS fan unfold. All the guy wanted was to go a concert. He was obviously excited - it was getting late and he just couldn't wait. But some dumb trucker - probably listening to "Convoy" - crossed the double yellow. Julie Potter started crying when the truck inevitably crushed the poor bastard. None of us doubted for a moment that what we were hearing was the actual fatal car crash. Michael gingerly slipped the album back in its sleeve and sat down.
I was up next. I cued up Wings' "Silly Love Songs" and stood there while my classmates laughed and called me sissy, pansy, whimp, queerbait, etc. Mrs. Hatton told them to hush up, but she was laughing, too.
Not too long after that we picked up and moved again, this time to a small town in South Carolina. When the plane touched down in Greenville I was the biggest fucking KISS fan the world has ever known and I knew the difference between a land speeder and an x-wing fighter. Paul McCartney could kiss my Toughskins butt.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
The Mamas, The Papas, and The Grandpas
My grandfather participated in the liberation of Matthausen concentration camp. I don't know much more about this than what I've gleaned from a briefcase full of faded photographs that surfaced after he died, and the lone comment he made one evening. "The smoke from the chimneys was so sweet it made you sick," he said.
He came home from the war and restarted his life. A year later, his brother and his brother's family were killed in a fire. I don't know much more about this, either, except for the newspaper clippings found in the same briefcase. But I do know that it was my grandfather who was sent to the morgue to identify the charred bodies.
How people overcome these sorts of things is beyond me, and in retrospect maybe it was beyond him, too. He drank a lot, and he threw into the fireplace anything that wasn't nailed down. The man could not stand clutter. My father's comic books and baseball cards went up the chimney as soon as the old man moved out, for example. Visits to my grandfather's house consisted of watching him drink Coors while he stared at this and that curling up in the flames. Whatever he saw there occupied him.
But not everything fits into a fireplace, and that's where grandchildren come in. Many visits to my grandparents' little house in the mountains resulted in piles of castoff junk in the back of our Bel-Air wagon. If it was taking up space, not combustible, and not garbage it came home with us. My aunt made the mistake of leaving her childhood belongings behind when she ran off with her Air Force husband, and thus her portable hi-fi and her record collection were handed down to my sisters and me.
"Portable hi-fi" deserves a bit of explanation in an iPod world. This beast was the size of a hard shell suitcase and must have weighed 485 pounds. Okay, it probably weighed 30 pounds, but what's the difference? Hardly portable for a preschooler. One would set the suitcase on its side and then open it like some sort of elaborate steamer trunk. The hinged top swung open to reveal the turntable, and the sides of the case swung outward to expose the two stereo speakers. Considering my only experience with stereo equipment was the kiddie record player in my bedroom, this was quite a step up.
Because my sisters shared a room it was decided that the stereo would live there; after all, they represented 66% of the ownership. We set it up in a corner, across from the bunk beds and just right of the E-Z Bake Oven, and there it stayed until we moved a few years later.
Now, since the stereo was in their room, it only made sense that my aunt's records would live there, too, so when my sisters left for school I would sneak into their room and spend my pre-nap hours rifling through the albums. Sonny and Cher were there. I recognized them from television, but Sonny was dressed up like a hippy. Very strange. And Elvis - I knew who Elvis was. He was the guy on TV on Saturdays, so this must be the music from those movies. He's an Army guy in this picture, so this must be G.I. Blues; there's a carnival tent on this album, so this must be Roustabout. He was old and he looked funny. I didn't like Elvis, but I liked that I knew who he was.
She had other records, too. These people weren't on television, so I had no idea who they were. They were all hippies, and my father and grandfather spoke often about what worthless, filthy, deadbeats hippies were. One album cover showed four fully-clothed hippies in a bathtub - two men and two women. They seemed to be having a good time. The blond woman was beautiful. She looked like she belonged on TV. Why were they all in a bathtub? It didn't make sense. Bathtubs were a place to be alone and naked. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to stare at the blond lady in the picture.
Some of the other hippy records were simply too terrifying. Angular men in pegged pants and wraparound sunglasses, smoking. They had long hair and moustaches. Grandpa had a flat top. He was one of the good guys in the War. I didn't like looking at the scary hippy records.
And right in the middle between the TV people and the dirty hippies were the crown jewels of my aunt's record collection: Meet The Beatles; Beatles '65; Songs, Pictures and Stories of the Fabulous Beatles (on the Vee Jay label); and Rubber Soul. I knew who The Beatles were. I don't know how I knew, I just did. I think everybody did. It wasn't because my parents were caught up in the throes of Beatlemania. I'd never seen my father intentionally listen to music, and my mother listened to showtunes. The Beatles may have been as close to a universal pop culture reference that spanned generations and geography as was possible when I was a kid.
I couldn't read the titles of the albums, but I knew the faces. On most of the records they looked like they were having fun. They wore suits and smiled and goofed around for the camera. Their hair was funny but not scary. They looked like the kind of grown-ups who wouldn't ignore me.
At least that's how they looked on all but one of the albums. Rubber Soul was different. On the front cover they loomed over the camera like menacing giants. That's not quite right. The experience was more like I woke up to find four strangers watching me sleep. It was a bit dizzying and unsettling. The back cover was a collection of black and white photos that I'm sure were quite tame, but to my little brain they were pure dissonance. No more suits, and that one is wearing sunglasses like the scary hippies wear on their album covers. The worst offense? They were smoking cigarettes. The nice guys in suits had turned into cigarette smoking hippies.
This was obviously dangerous cargo, this album. If the nice guys in suits could turn to the dark side then anybody could. Could I? Maybe I was already there. Maybe I was a bad kid. Maybe that's why I liked looking at the blond lady in the bathtub so much.
My son and I describe certain songs as "goosebump music." These are the songs that are so deeply tucked beneath your skin that they literally make you tingle. Just thinking about putting Rubber Soul on that hand me down hi-fi gets me there. Pure goosebumps.
Honestly, I'm a bit stumped right now. This is the part of the narrative where I'm supposed to describe the turn "Wonder Years" style: "At that moment I knew..." And that to some degree is true. Even now when I hear "I've Just Seen A Face" I get an inexplicable feeling of hope and change. It's not there in the lyrics, it's not really even in the music. What it comes down to, I think, is this: The sheer, absolute beauty coming from those speakers exposed the world I knew as a lie; well, if not a lie then as a much more complicated place than "heroes have flat tops and hippies are bad." I couldn't fathom that bad people could make such perfect music.
"Michelle" was equally mind altering. If hippies were losers and deadbeats they must be stupid, right? And yet that guy is singing in something other than English. My little brain couldn't imagine the complexity of speaking two languages. For that matter, I'm not entirely sure I knew there were languages other than English.
On and on. I treated that record like a manifesto. "Think For Yourself." "Run For Your Life." "I'm Looking Through You." "In My Life." There was a world out there. That's why those four guys were looming over me on the album cover. I was asleep, and they wanted to wake me up.
So I guess that "Wonder Years" moment, hackneyed as it is, is true. That album changed me. Even as young as I was, it opened my eyes to worlds that I had no idea even existed. It was the moment that I began to see the world for myself versus through the lens of the adults in my life.
And from there we were off to the races.
He came home from the war and restarted his life. A year later, his brother and his brother's family were killed in a fire. I don't know much more about this, either, except for the newspaper clippings found in the same briefcase. But I do know that it was my grandfather who was sent to the morgue to identify the charred bodies.
How people overcome these sorts of things is beyond me, and in retrospect maybe it was beyond him, too. He drank a lot, and he threw into the fireplace anything that wasn't nailed down. The man could not stand clutter. My father's comic books and baseball cards went up the chimney as soon as the old man moved out, for example. Visits to my grandfather's house consisted of watching him drink Coors while he stared at this and that curling up in the flames. Whatever he saw there occupied him.
But not everything fits into a fireplace, and that's where grandchildren come in. Many visits to my grandparents' little house in the mountains resulted in piles of castoff junk in the back of our Bel-Air wagon. If it was taking up space, not combustible, and not garbage it came home with us. My aunt made the mistake of leaving her childhood belongings behind when she ran off with her Air Force husband, and thus her portable hi-fi and her record collection were handed down to my sisters and me.
"Portable hi-fi" deserves a bit of explanation in an iPod world. This beast was the size of a hard shell suitcase and must have weighed 485 pounds. Okay, it probably weighed 30 pounds, but what's the difference? Hardly portable for a preschooler. One would set the suitcase on its side and then open it like some sort of elaborate steamer trunk. The hinged top swung open to reveal the turntable, and the sides of the case swung outward to expose the two stereo speakers. Considering my only experience with stereo equipment was the kiddie record player in my bedroom, this was quite a step up.
Because my sisters shared a room it was decided that the stereo would live there; after all, they represented 66% of the ownership. We set it up in a corner, across from the bunk beds and just right of the E-Z Bake Oven, and there it stayed until we moved a few years later.
Now, since the stereo was in their room, it only made sense that my aunt's records would live there, too, so when my sisters left for school I would sneak into their room and spend my pre-nap hours rifling through the albums. Sonny and Cher were there. I recognized them from television, but Sonny was dressed up like a hippy. Very strange. And Elvis - I knew who Elvis was. He was the guy on TV on Saturdays, so this must be the music from those movies. He's an Army guy in this picture, so this must be G.I. Blues; there's a carnival tent on this album, so this must be Roustabout. He was old and he looked funny. I didn't like Elvis, but I liked that I knew who he was.
She had other records, too. These people weren't on television, so I had no idea who they were. They were all hippies, and my father and grandfather spoke often about what worthless, filthy, deadbeats hippies were. One album cover showed four fully-clothed hippies in a bathtub - two men and two women. They seemed to be having a good time. The blond woman was beautiful. She looked like she belonged on TV. Why were they all in a bathtub? It didn't make sense. Bathtubs were a place to be alone and naked. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to stare at the blond lady in the picture.
Some of the other hippy records were simply too terrifying. Angular men in pegged pants and wraparound sunglasses, smoking. They had long hair and moustaches. Grandpa had a flat top. He was one of the good guys in the War. I didn't like looking at the scary hippy records.
And right in the middle between the TV people and the dirty hippies were the crown jewels of my aunt's record collection: Meet The Beatles; Beatles '65; Songs, Pictures and Stories of the Fabulous Beatles (on the Vee Jay label); and Rubber Soul. I knew who The Beatles were. I don't know how I knew, I just did. I think everybody did. It wasn't because my parents were caught up in the throes of Beatlemania. I'd never seen my father intentionally listen to music, and my mother listened to showtunes. The Beatles may have been as close to a universal pop culture reference that spanned generations and geography as was possible when I was a kid.
I couldn't read the titles of the albums, but I knew the faces. On most of the records they looked like they were having fun. They wore suits and smiled and goofed around for the camera. Their hair was funny but not scary. They looked like the kind of grown-ups who wouldn't ignore me.
At least that's how they looked on all but one of the albums. Rubber Soul was different. On the front cover they loomed over the camera like menacing giants. That's not quite right. The experience was more like I woke up to find four strangers watching me sleep. It was a bit dizzying and unsettling. The back cover was a collection of black and white photos that I'm sure were quite tame, but to my little brain they were pure dissonance. No more suits, and that one is wearing sunglasses like the scary hippies wear on their album covers. The worst offense? They were smoking cigarettes. The nice guys in suits had turned into cigarette smoking hippies.
This was obviously dangerous cargo, this album. If the nice guys in suits could turn to the dark side then anybody could. Could I? Maybe I was already there. Maybe I was a bad kid. Maybe that's why I liked looking at the blond lady in the bathtub so much.
My son and I describe certain songs as "goosebump music." These are the songs that are so deeply tucked beneath your skin that they literally make you tingle. Just thinking about putting Rubber Soul on that hand me down hi-fi gets me there. Pure goosebumps.
Honestly, I'm a bit stumped right now. This is the part of the narrative where I'm supposed to describe the turn "Wonder Years" style: "At that moment I knew..." And that to some degree is true. Even now when I hear "I've Just Seen A Face" I get an inexplicable feeling of hope and change. It's not there in the lyrics, it's not really even in the music. What it comes down to, I think, is this: The sheer, absolute beauty coming from those speakers exposed the world I knew as a lie; well, if not a lie then as a much more complicated place than "heroes have flat tops and hippies are bad." I couldn't fathom that bad people could make such perfect music.
"Michelle" was equally mind altering. If hippies were losers and deadbeats they must be stupid, right? And yet that guy is singing in something other than English. My little brain couldn't imagine the complexity of speaking two languages. For that matter, I'm not entirely sure I knew there were languages other than English.
On and on. I treated that record like a manifesto. "Think For Yourself." "Run For Your Life." "I'm Looking Through You." "In My Life." There was a world out there. That's why those four guys were looming over me on the album cover. I was asleep, and they wanted to wake me up.
So I guess that "Wonder Years" moment, hackneyed as it is, is true. That album changed me. Even as young as I was, it opened my eyes to worlds that I had no idea even existed. It was the moment that I began to see the world for myself versus through the lens of the adults in my life.
And from there we were off to the races.
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