Rock Our Worlds
I started with the idea that popular music isn’t static.
As a genre it’s continually in flux, influenced by changes in culture, politics, technology, fashion, war, climate etc. Sometimes certain events or songs are “watershed” moments and it would be cool to get some input as to what those moments are or were. Barry Keane suggested we personalize it. Ask people about the musical events that were game changers in their own lives.
A few examples:
- Music is an incredible time machine. Let’s hear about a song that to this day, reminds you of how it felt to hold that cute girl’s hand in ninth grade (and vice versa my female reporters), of that sublime white Christmas of ’65 or the hard won trophy that damned if you can find or just walking down the street 25 years ago……….
- The tune or album that was an addictive drug, that you couldn’t get enough of, that you wished everybody would S the FU when it came on the radio or played on the SeaBreeze at those “parents are out” parties.
- The music that you pretended, in your mind, to be singing or playing on stage in front of all your friends.
- For the musicians: Music that indelibly stamped “that be me” on your future.
So let’s try this. The issue now is one of meaning rather than half-assed opinion.
I have some good input already from Rick, Barry and Carter which I’ll be posting. Please contribute through the “comments” below or through email mikeheff45@gmail.com This could be a lot of fun.
Carter Lancaster tells me there was a hit parade tune in the late sixties that was a slap upside the head for him. If there was one song that really inspired him to be a player it was “Hot Smoke and Sassafras” by Bubble Puppy. It received a lot of airplay in southern Ontario as I recall during the spring of 1968. An anomaly in pop music at the time, it was guitar driven almost entirely with an aggressive riff and a vocal that supported or framed it. I remember the record well and recall wearing out my brother’s copy of it.
Barry Keane relates an experience at 5 years old when he heard Sh Boom Sh Boom by The Crewcuts on a jukebox and got a quarter from his father so he could play it 5 more times. Later “Wake Up L’il Suzie” by the Everly Brothers had a big influence on him, in this case not just the song but the sounds of those famous vocal harmonies and the acoustic guitar. Then…………. the big one:
A lot of musicians of my generation claim a “life changer” from this next event……………..The Beatles on Ed Sullivan in 1964. In my case, it kick-started me to play the guitar. For Barry, It was the sound of “Glad All Over” by the Dave Clark Five with its droning sax and driving drums a little later in ’64 that made up his mind to be a player.
If you’re at least 55 you should be able to recall how FM radio changed the scene. Album cuts with no real time or structure restrictions became an alternative to the 3 minute pop format. This opened the door for a creative stampede of new experimental music. A lot of it was shit thrown at a wall, some of it was tolerable and some great. To a lot of us, Jimi Hendrix was a step even above that. Barry recalls that the first time he heard “Purple Haze” was on his car radio and that he had to pull over so he could absorb this new sound. I had a similar reaction when I first heard it. WTF………? Another of these happened for Barry when Led Zepplin came screaming and dive-bombing onto the scene in ’69.
In fact, the memories of our precious musical WTF moments are the big ah-hahs! that I’m talking about here. But not all. There’s also the non-Eureka! memories……..the ahs in contrast to the ah-hahs. Again, the song that is forever connected to your high school sweetheart or to Christmas of ’72 etc………..Keep in mind though, if you get too sensitive it just sounds like you’ve got a snoot-full, you’re half in the bag or any other euphemism you want for stupid drunk.
Time for me to weigh in
The spooky summer of 1963. Mockingbird, It’s My Party, Ring of Fire, Surf City, Da Doo Ron Ron, Just One Look, My Boyfriend’s Back, Judy’s Turn To Cry……… My brother Pat, who is 16 months older than me started listening to pop music that summer. He’d ask Dad to tune the car radio to CKEY, one of Toronto’s two rock and roll stations. In the house, whenever he could, Pat would change the station from our Mother’s favourite (which was a CBC affiliate, I don’t remember the call letters) to rock and roll.
I say it was spooky because when I hear anything now from that summer it seems almost other-worldly. Its what music sounded like before I understood it intellectually. It used to just wash over me while I revelled in its texture and contour. Palpable, in a sense almost of being able to sink my teeth into it. Nowadays, this kind of awareness isn’t completely lost to me, it just costs more money…………..
By the time school resumed in September I was smitten. At age nine I was completely seduced by the daughters of Achelous, shipwrecked for six months with only a SeaBreeze phonograph and a stack of 45s to comfort me.
Then the bomb dropped
One Sunday evening in February 1964 Ed Sullivan had The Beatles on his show. I wanted a guitar. ‘Nuff said.
A Miller’s Tale, The Monster In The Basement and The Reinvention Of Mikey
“What is that weird tune that sounds like Percy Sledge and a church organ”? I asked my brother one day in late spring 1967. ” A Whiter Shade Of Pale” he replied. That swirling, howling Hammond organ with what really sounded to me like soulful black vocals was flooring me every time I heard it. Four years later, I was in a band playing lead guitar. We rehearsed in my basement for a while. The keyboard player had a Hammond A-100, a great steaming trembling behemoth of an organ that he left there because it was too heavy to move. I never practiced the guitar again. I learned how to play AWSOP and half a dozen other great organ tunes. They fired me soon after.
