My dad is an amazing musician
February 7, 2010
This is an article that ran in the local paper, profiling the Dixieland jazz band that my dad headed up when he was in high school. That’s my dad on clarinet and my uncle on piano, both at the left in the photo. My mom gave me this photocopy a couple of years ago; it landed on my fridge and there it has stayed. I don’t remember now if it’s an old article that she just unearthed or if it’s a recent reprint. At any rate, it’s a fun and interesting thing to have.
Stepping away from the familial connection for a moment, just look at those boys. Do kids who start comparable groups these days have uniforms? Would kids even have a jazz band, or do they just go for—oh, I don’t know—some hip hoppy, dancy thing that they could present on So You Think You Can Dance or America’s Got Talent?
Yes, I am out of it.
But apparently my dad and the fellows were not. They played such prestigious events as intermission at a square dance, the straw hat promotion day, the West Side picnic, a meeting of the Young Adult Klub. I’m not poking fun here, but how much more wholesome can you get? Do we long for those innocent days when children were named Vernon and Myron? I just might. People were nicer to each other and didn’t go barreling down the freeway in their Chevy Suburban gas hogs thinking everybody better get outta their way.
My grandfather—my dad’s dad—was fairly musical in an informal way. As a kid and young adult, I remember Grandpa often strumming his ukelele and singing (with a deep voice that would hold about twenty Tiny Tims), or producing a unique double-toned whistle that I could never imitate. My uncle still plays and was a piano tuner by trade. My dad is just about the most incredible musician that I know of.
Although he played the clarinet in his youth, my dad is very much a keyboardist. My parents both always played piano, and my dad was pretty adept at the pipe organ for a while, too. His first career was as a professor of music at the small liberal arts college in the town where I grew up, and he moonlighted as the Methodist church organist for a while. Then he became a piano and organ salesman, which he still is, though the organs have evolved into digital keyboards, and the pianos as well are just as likely to run on motherboards as have hammers that strings.
As a salesman with a storefront, my dad has ample opportunity to “demonstrate.” This puts his playing skills on display whether in the presence of customers or not. The talent that my dad has that I never developed is that of improvisation. He doesn’t need to read music and it seems like he can sit down and play anything.
Every now and then, he gets a piano-playing gig. When my grandmother was still living, her fellow residents would always look forward to his visits because he would sit down at the piano and provide some dinner music, just because he enjoys playing.
I began piano lessons when I was six or seven and added the flute in fifth grade. For one of my college graduations, my parents gave me a digital piano. I’m ashamed to say that it’s been unused for too many years. Maybe I will dust it off one of these days in conjunction with this mini-creative renaissance I’m having.
The roaring silence
January 21, 2010
I don’t remember ever not liking music. One of my earliest music memories is from when I was probably about four and my mom parked me in front of the console stereo (you know, the big hulking piece of furniture with AM/FM tuner and room to store some records all under a lid or sliding doors) to listen to Peter and the Wolf.
My parents held on to first that, and then a newer, console stereo. It was at least the mid-1980s, perhaps later, before they bit the bullet and got components instead.
As a kid, I was glued to the transistor radio. Initially, I listened to a small turquoise model that lived on the kitchen table. That was eventually supplanted by a larger (though still single speaker) model. This was during the time that “shoebox” portable cassette recorders were popular. I would cozy up the cassette recorder to the front of the radio and record my favorite songs. When I was a kid, I listened to CKLW on AM from Windsor, Ontario, during its Top 40 days. They tuned The Big 8 in at the swimming pool, too.
The radio/cassette pairing gave way to record albums of my own. I don’t remember doing too much recording off the radio once I got into records. That took me through high school.
Then I got my first stereo components. I still have the gigantic floor speakers. Generally gigantic, not guy audiophile gigantic. I was never much of an audiophile. I just enjoy listening. That’s sort of why I was never a good English major either. I like reading, but I don’t have to analyze every nuance to derive pleasure from it.
I returned to recording off the radio, this time FM and in stereo. I still have a lot of those tapes. I continued to buy records, but I never embraced the prerecorded cassette tape.Then compact discs came along. I rebought many of my favorite record albums on CD, though many more simply were never manufactured. It is for that reason that I must acquire one of those turntable-to-digital deals one of these days.
And, of course, I made the inevitable migration to mp3s on first my iPod and now my computer and a little bit on my iPhone. Most of my music listening is done on either my work or home computer, and these days, it’s just as likely to be a music streaming service such as Pandora or the streaming audio of a radio station, as something my lowly mp3 collection (the majority of which is, by the way, all of my CDs ripped).
The devices I have listened with the most all of these years are my good old ears.
What???s your musical guilty pleasure?
November 27, 2009
What artist are you ashamed to admit that you like? What gets your toes tapping that shouldn’t? What sends you into an irrational revery? For me, it’s the Russian group ???????? (t.A.T.u. for their English-language releases).
I like what I like and I’m not embarrassed to admit it. There is so much out there and you never know what’s going to catch your fancy. ???????? is a band that most people would probably think unlikely that I’d enjoy. But I do! I like them better when they sing in Russian, but I always find their English lyric versions to be interesting and wonder how the literal meanings compare between the English and the Russian.
I learned of ???????? one day at work while I was researching school uniforms for the children’s book series I was working on. I came across their video for ?? ?????????? ?? ?????? / All The Things She Said (Russian version / English version). The music instantly hooked me. I watched a few more videos and found those to be oddly interesting, too, with the sexual and violent themes that seem to be ????????’s trademark.
I bought both the Russian and English versions of their debut album (200 ???? ?????????????????? / 200 km/h in the Wrong Lane). There’s a killer cover of the Smith’s “How Soon Is Now” on the English version.
Music memories
November 8, 2009
What songs do you like? What songs, when you hear them, magically transport you to another place and time? There are a lot more, but here’s what I remember without effort.
Out and about: Paul McCartney and Wings “Uncle Albert”: My dad and me waiting in the car in the parking lot outside the Sears store in the Lima (Ohio) Mall, waiting for my mom to pick up our catalog order. Commodores “I’m Easy”: My parents and I driving in Lima and I wouldn’t let them change the radio until that song was over. Almann Brothers “Ramblin’ Man”: My parents and I were out for pizza, again in Lima. We always just drank water because paying for soda pop was too extravagant, but on this one occasion they gave me the nickel or dime to play this song on the jukebox because it was my favorite at the time. Cher “Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves,” Carpenters “Top of the World”: The Ada (Ohio) swimming pool, where I spent most of every summer as a kid. In my dad’s den listening to the radio and poised at any moment to record my favorite songs from the external speaker of the radio to the portable cassette player. Usually, I was working on the pedigrees and crayon pictures of the horses in my imaginary stable: “Bennie and the Jets” and really, many of the Elton John songs of that time. I liked Elton John a lot. Ringo Starr “Photograph”: It was summer and the window was open. I was recording this song when my dad walked past with the lawn mower. If I put my hand flat on the top of the radio, the volume would amplify. This happened during the chime solo in the middle of the song. Segue on the cassette tape: Davie Bowie “Fame” into Bee Gees “Jive Talkin’” Queen “Bohemian Rhapsody”: I didn’t really pay attention to this song, but I began to notice that every time after it was on, there was a commercial for Galileo wine. To this day, I go back to the den during the opera section. High school: The Cars’ debut album: Having the epiphany while driving with Bob S that the vocal production reminded me very much of what Roy Thomas Baker was doing with Queen (who by then was my undisputed favorite). I was right. Journey “Daydream”: My high school had a little close-circuit in-house radio station that I worked at. Whenever I played this song, one of the other kids always gave me a hard time because the one riff made it sound like the turntable was going wonky. As a club-going young adult: Billy Squier “Everybody Wants You,” Romantics “What I Like about You”: Dancing in the Point Club (Stevens Point, Wisconsin) with Steve R who drove down from Wausau with his two friends to go out. We both loved jumping straight up at the appropriate moments in those songs. Phil Collins and Philip Bailey “Easy Lover”: Singing harmony with John M. Wham! “Careless Whisper”: Dancing with Paul G. Thomas Dolby “She Blinded Me (with Science)”: SCIENCE!-ing at the right times with John G the DJ. Really, very many early- to mid-80s hits take me right back to the Point Club. College: Def Leppard “Photograph”: In the dorm, the girl across the hall and I would open our doors and synchronize our turntables to the Pyromania album. INXS “The One Thing”: Same dorm without the synchronization. Faith No More “Epic”: The campus bowling alley at the University of Wisconsin and the crew I bowled with.
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