November 12

…We hung out together a lot.  He emulated me in several ways, playing the piano, and the drums, picking up what he could, where he could, but I’m pretty sure he played something else in band (clarinet?  I can’t recall for sure).  We dated girls we met at summer camp, I think I even ‘stole’ one of his girlfriends at one time.  Many times in the days before we had our driver’s licenses we got Rene to drive us around in their AMC Pacer.  It was fairly roomy inside, but it was embarrassing even as a kid to be seen in one.

Gary and I were both music aficionados.  He preferred Styx and in fact turned out to be a big Styx fan over the years.  My tastes were much more diverse.  I think it was the summer between my junior and senior years that I mailed in a form to order ten albums for a total of ninety-nine cents.  I agreed to buy a few more over the next year or two.  It was a no-brainer for me.  My record collection at the time was pathetic, almost non-existent.  When my albums arrived I spent a couple of days just listening to them all.  I think I played them all once through before repeating.  It was a ‘best-of’ list from the hey-day of classic rock.  Chicago IX, their first Greatest Hits album.  25 or 6 to 4, Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?, Colour My World, Just You ‘N’ Me, SAturday in the Park, Feelin’ Stronger Every Day, Make Me Smile….every song was a big hit.  Aerosmith’s Toys in the Attic, with the hits Toys in the Attic, Walk This Way, Sweet Emotion.  I also liked Uncle Salty and Big Ten Inch…Record.  Billy Joel’s 52nd Street, with My Life, Big Shot and Honesty and the title track which I enjoyed.  I liked the jazz angle in general.  I had one of Eddie Money’s early albums, but I can’t remember which one.  I’m guessing it was his debut.  I also had a couple of one-hit wonders, Billy Thorpe’s Children of the Sun and Sweet’s Love is like Oxygen.  I may have purchased those as singles though.  But all of those received scant play, or at least selective play, compared to what turned out to be the ‘big five’ of the albums I got that summer.

I was turned on to Rick Wakeman by Dale.  Dale was a senior when I was a freshman and he took me under his wing in a few areas.  For one, he was ‘first chair’ in the percussion section and played our new and funky quad-toms during parades and football games.  It was a bit odd to see him do this because he had some sort of problem with his ankles and they had required surgery at some point, involving pins and screws.  They had healed fine, but they were thin and as he began working out it made him a bit top-heavy.  But he took to working out like he did to drums and within a few years was competing in bodybuilding competitions.  He often took me to Carswell Air Force Base to work out in their gym.  This was my first opportunity to actually do weight lifting and I actually ended up developing my quads, lats, biceps and triceps to the point where I could actually tell looking in the mirror.  Dale drove this crazy Plymouth Arrow and was always playing Emerson Lake and Palmer’s Brain Salad Surgery or Six Wives of Henry the Eighth by Rick Wakeman.  Rick also had done a themed album on Journey to the Center of the Earth that we listened to on Dale’s super-cool Quadrophonic stereo at his house.  So when I picked my albums I ended up choosing Rick’s No Earthly Connection.  The album cover had a strangely distorted artwork rendition of Rick in his typical concert garb and some very 70’s electronic looking stuff.  I opened it up and it contained a thing sheet of silver plastic.  I was instructed to roll this into a tube and tape it into place, and then stand the tube on its end right in the center of the cover.  Voila, a somewhat realistic properly-proportioned reflection of the cover art appeared!  It was just cool.  But so was the music.  Rick’s skill and creativity inspired me like no other in my piano playing.  I played that one over and over.  Just remember, every time you hear the wild, intense and fast Hammond B3  on Yes’ Roundabout……that’s Rick Wakeman.

Another big influence was Supertramp’s Even In the Quietest Moments.  The big hits were Give a Little Bit and From Now On but no song was under four minutes so it didn’t lend itself well to singles airplay.  But it was their first Gold album in the U.S.  But this was the era of the album-rock FM station and Fool’s Overture (at almost eleven minutes) and Even In the Quietest Moments at six and a half both got a fair amount of play.  To this day I can put on this CD (the album was discarded in a fundy frenzy moment, details to come) and listen at least once all the way through without feeling compelled to skip to the next song.  It was full of lyrics that seemed to mean something (something spiritual?  Political?  I knew not.) and anthemic big music to back up the words.

At some point I ended up with a Boston album.  I think it was the second one, but I couldn’t swear to it.  The sound, the energy, the drumming all pumped me up.  It is a rare Boston song that I didn’t thoroughly enjoy, and I admired Sib Hashian’s big fro look.

Dan Fogelberg’s album Nether Lands was another one that got a lot of play time.  It is packed with emotion, very evocative.  His vocals are like a strong whisper.  The lyrics, like Supertramp’s, seem to have deep and hidden meanings.  Thirty years after my first exposure I still get goose bumps from both the music and the words.  The title track instantly evokes the feeling of hiking along the top of a snow-covered ridge, even for someone like me who had never been there.

Off in the Nether Lands I heard the sound
Like the beating of heavenly wings
And deep in my brain I can hear a refrain
Of my soul as she rises and sings
Anthems to glory and anthems to love
And hymns filled with earthly delight
Like the songs that the darkness composes to worship the light

It’s one of the songs that can bring tears to your eyes, even though you may not know why.  It’s done that many times for me.

And finally, the one I’ve saved for last.  It isn’t quite as deep and introspective as Nether Lands, most of the songs are shorter and more readily playable commercially on the radio unlike Supertramp, but I did more air drumming and guitar and keyboard to this album than all the others.  When I first began building a CD collection this was one of my first purchases.  I consider it the best album of all time.  Steely Dan’s Aja.

It is mostly jazz fusion.  Black Cow sets the funky jazz tone, then Aja just runs with it.  It starts smooth and silky and ends with some of the hottest jazz/rock to ever be laid down on a piece of vinyl.  Deacon Blues reminds me of a smoky bar and is utterly listenable and singable.  The big commercial hit of the album is Peg.  Home at Last is solid all the way through and has some of the coolest piano chops you’ll ever hear.  I Got The News is just fun!  The piano is very syncopated and difficult to reproduce.  I love the beat.  And Josie – well, she’s the raw flame, the live wire, she prays like a Roman with her eyes on fire.  Another awesome groove on this tune.
In summary, there is not a song on this album that I have ever grown tired of.  Not a bad result for an album thirty years old.

The music that I enjoyed and listened to varied a bit over the years, but I think I can lay down some general rules.  First, it had to be creative and unique.  I rarely enjoyed formulaic pop crap.  I got over anything from the Osmonds and the Jackson 5 and such by the first time I was hearing Stevie Wonder and Who’s That Lady from the Isley Brothers.  This is also why I never got into country or old-time blues.  Right after we moved to Lake Worth I expanded my musical horizons as far as I could.  I remember hearing late-night jazz on some FM station which was my first encounter with Michael Frank’s Eggplant and Cat Stevens’ Was Dog A Doughnut.  Any time that Dog song played I would make my friends stop and listen.  Something about the sampled dog bark just got my attention.

I also listened to the burgeoning Jesus Music and Contemporary Christian stations when I could find one.  I used to have quite a collection of this music, from the late 70’s through the late 80’s.  I missed out on a lot of the 80’s scene because of my religious upbringing.  I mean, it was going to stain my soul as it was, after all, the devil’s music, right?  All that satanic backwards-masking and everything.  So I tried to keep my soul pure by restricting myself to Christian tunes, but it was always a battle.  The definitive moment of this battle was an over-zealous moment my first semester in college when I took my Boston and Chicago and Steely Dan and Dan Fogelberg and all my rock albums and put them in the trash, and just to prevent some other poor soul from being entrapped I poured some sort of sticky liquid all over them.  I don’t remember what it was.  I felt clean!

My association with Christian Music (the contemporary kind, not the hymns) began in Big Lake with the folk singers doing the “Hand in the Hand” thing, but our church countered by having a full-blown Southern Gospel singing family into town.  They pulled into town and set up and wow, it was big time.  Even their nine-year-old daughter Cindy was writing and singing music.  She was, and I think still is possibly, the youngest member of ASCAP.  And of course I developed a crush on her.  I may have even kissed her.  And if I didn’t, I’m sure it wasn’t for lack of trying.  I’m sure she left a wake of broken hearts all over Texas.