The Musician

I’d picked at playing music a few times over the course of my life. I suppose if I had an extraordinary talent at it, it would have stuck. But, if anything, I am persistent. And I’d always wanted to play music, even if I’d never had the “opportunity.” I’d only had a couple weeks of Recorder while in Junior High and a couple weeks of choir, nothing else. I’d taken some extracurricular classes, but age and focus and bullying caused me to set it aside, then I got busy with college, then work, then laziness, I suppose. Time passed. A lot of time passed. I appreciated music, but I never pursued it.

Then the time came that I decided I was going to learn to play an instrument, come hell or high water, but which one? I’d always liked guitar. I’d picked it up off and on over the years. But I discovered that teaching oneself to read music while learning to play was a daunting task, at best. So, lessons. But where would I take lessons? I saw an advertisement on Facebook about the Timmins Symphony’s music school. Music is good for the mind and the memory, it said. My memory was troublesome at times, now. I’d always found myself in a room wondering why I was there, but more recently, I found myself groping for words, forgetting names of celebrities and musicians and bands with regularity. It was troublesome. It was troubling. I put one and two together and decided that maybe learning to play music was at least part of a solution.

But the Symphony Music School did not teach guitar. So, I had to choose one of the instruments that they did teach. French horn? Tuba? No interest. I’d never been much of a classic music fan, so those options available to me were a little foreign to me. Violin? Not me. I began to read about classical instruments and listen to sound bites of what they sounded like, just to see if anything stirred my soul. Some fell flat, some looked heavy, unwieldy, uncomfortable. My sister had taken piano lessons, but piano was frightening, what with each hand doing independent things, the eyes having to follow two staffs of notes, each wildly different from the other. I may not have been a classical music aficionado, but I did like jazz. Surprised? Don’t be. I’d been watching classic B&W movies all my life and jazz abounded within, especially in movie soundtracks and musicals of the period. I was well versed with Crosby, Sinatra, Dino, Ella Fitzgerald and Rosemary Clooney, and the like. And I’d watched countless episodes of Lawrence Welk on Sundays. Don’t judge; we only had two channels and we watched what my parents wanted to watch. So, I knew what Big Band and jazz sounded like. I liked Louis Armstrong and he played trumpet. I liked Arty Shaw and Benny Goodman and Pete Fountain and the opening sequence of “Rhapsody in Blue” never failed to thrill me. And my sister had taken clarinet while in Junior High. I couldn’t choose, so I bought a student model of each along with very basic self-instruction books and set about teaching myself what I could in preparation of the beginning of the music school year.

Making a proper and appealing sound with the clarinet was difficult. It squeaked. It squawked. It sometimes made no sound at all, my breath stopped cold and backed up and almost blowing the top of my head off. The trumpet was even harder. The best I could produce was a warble, as far from what I thought a trumpet should sound like as can be. Then again, I was trying to be relatively quiet, too; no need to annoy the entire neighbourhood. I developed an even greater respect for Louis Armstrong than I had before. Indeed, all musicians.

Humans are like water. They find the easiest path. I was no different. I focused on clarinet. I began to develop a little finger memory. My tone improved a little, too. I suppose I still sounded like shit and probably no better than a toddler taking his first lessons, but I gave myself license to suck for a while. That may sound obvious, but that doesn’t come naturally to me; I demand perfection from myself, regardless how impossible that may be until perfection is a target that’s actually attainable, and am always impatient and frustrated when said perfection doesn’t surface quickly.

Registration day arrived. I drove up to the old Hollinger administration building where the TSO was renting rooms, climbed the flight of stairs to the entrance and followed the signs indicating where registration was being held.

There was no one my age there, not counting the TSO volunteers manning the tables, taking names. Even the parents were younger. There were quite a few children, and everyone seemed to know one another, as though they’d been returning there for years. I felt awkward. Did middle-age people take lessons? They must; why else would the TSO advertise in the Press and online, targeting middle- and older-aged people? Or was I the first?

I approached a table. Waited my turn. That seemed to take forever as TSO members and the parents chatted and laughed and didn’t seem in any hurry to complete their business and be on their way.
“Excuse me?” I said, pressing into the table.

“Yes? Would you like to register your child for lessons?” the woman asked.
“No,” I said, “I’d like to enroll. Me. Myself. Can I do that?”
Her composure seemed to shift. She perked up. “Of course, you can,” she said. “What would you like to learn?”
“Clarinet.”

“Oh, that’s lovely,” she said, as though not many people chose clarinet as their weapon of choice. I discovered in time that woodwinds and brass had always been in high demand at the Symphony and that my choice raised their expectation that I might fill one of those not particularly sought-after slots.
She handed me a registration form and a sheet of rules I would be agreeing to. I signed on the dotted line and wrote a check for the first ten lessons. I’d be billed later for the second semester, they said. Dates were not mentioned.

“When do lessons begin?” I asked.
First week of September, she said.

“I can’t do the first two weeks of September”, I said, “I’m on vacation. Can I get a deferment, or make up the lessons?” I asked. I didn’t think they would. The agreement I’d just signed clearly noted that absentee lessons would not be made up.

“Sure,” she said.

They may have been desperate indeed to get new clarinet players to ignore their own rules even as I signed on the dotted line.

Indeed, no sooner had I begun my lessons did the Concert Master ask me, “Clarinet?” when she heard what I was studying. “Do you want a job?” Everyone assumes that someone in their forties must have been engaged in whatever they were doing for years, decades in fact.

I’d only had a couple formal lessons by then, so I said, “I think that may be premature.”

A Devolution of Concerts

There were quite a few concerts to see over a few years, some put on by Northern College, some not. Most were. Timmins had been largely bypassed for decades, hardly any “name” artists bothering to grace us with their presence anymore. Johnny Cash was an exception, but I didn’t go see him. The Barstool Prophets were another exception, but they’d fallen on hard times, thanks to file sharing, and were playing everywhere that would have them.

That left the college. Northern College had made a point of trying to lure bigger names on the University Circuit to Timmins; and they were succeeding, somewhat. But attendance was touch and go.

We filed in to see The Headstones, shocked to see the college gym only about a third full. Hugh and the boys put on a great show, despite the low turnout, focusing on we who had shown up and not those who hadn’t. Hugh spit, he growled, he screamed, and he and his band peeled off layers of midnight black as they sweat through one layer after another. I braved the stage, risking Hugh’s spit, finding the sweet spot between the speakers, where hearing loss was at its optimally least.

Then Blue Rodeo unfurled their Turkish rug on the stage, easily the most expansive and expressive I’d seen to date. There were couches. There were wingbacks. There were claw foot lamps, replete with tasselled shades. There was even a sock puppet at stage left, where Dawson and I were contemplating its presence and mystical meaning, when Jim Cuddy and Greg Keelor came up beside us, joining in our discussion.

We braved a snowstorm to watch Sarah Harmer and her first band, Weeping Tile. There were only twelve of us in attendance. It was easy to meet her and talk to her at length, considering.

There were others, the most notable being a college concert trip to Sudbury. Cambrian was hosting 54-40. Northern had tried to lure them up, but they were a little too pricey, and the SAC budget had been spent. So, Northern College, SAC specifically, had enquired if anyone wanted to go. But we’d have to shoulder the bill. We did. A lot of people did. We bought tickets, along with just enough people to pay for the bus. We boarded the coach when the time came: me, Dawson and Jim, those others.

We brought a twelve pack for the trip; it is a four-hour trip, after all. Those hours went faster than I’d anticipated. Anticipation. There were new people to meet. There was lively discussion. We were going to a concert, after all. Dawson knew most of them. He was custodian at Northern, he worked hand in hand with them on SAC. And Dawson was beginning to prefer the company of those younger souls.

We thankfully pulled into Sudbury about an hour before the doors opened; not long enough to get a good meal at a good restaurant, but time enough for a slice of pizza or a burger before queuing up at the Cambrian Hall, the same hall that I saw The Watchmen in.

Students are starting to look young to me, I thought, taking in those people around me. No doubt. I was 35, they were still 20. There was a different vibe. It didn’t feel like it had when I’d attended The Watchmen. And it wasn’t. The crowd was more aggressive, rougher, quick to anger. The mosh pit did not nudge, it thrust. The pit did not flow and leap as one. It pushed, it jostled, it elbowed.

And when we surfed the hands, they crashed us into the bouncers who pushed us back. I was up and in, the bouncers nudged me back, and the crowd rushed me back toward them. They pushed me back harder, and I felt the hands almost give. Then they pushed me back into the bouncers a third time, and the bouncers lost patience. The thrust me away, hard, up and towards the center. The crowd did not catch me. The crowd parted. I crashed through and hit the floor, neck first.

That hurt. I found Dawson and Jim and said that I’d had enough of up close and personal. So had they. So, we retreated to the back third, where the crowd had thinned out.

A young woman eyed us. She had evil in her eyes. She rushed us, leaping up and crashed into us, her elbows flying. We tried to catch her, but elbows flying are a deterrent to such magnanimous conceit. She backed off and did it again.

“What the fuck,” Jim said as she prepared for her third assault.

She rushed us, we parted, revealing the metal support post behind us. I don’t think she saw it. I wouldn’t have cared if she had. She hit the pole hard, laid out on the floor as she crumpled.

We looked at her, then at one another. And we laughed.

“Let’s get out of here,” Dawson said, “before she wakes up.”

That was foreshadowing to a day of concerts in Hollinger Park. Nine bands were booked, Big Sugar, Sam Roberts, and Swollen Members, among them. Our Lady Peace headlined.

Seven thousand attended. Lawn chairs abound. A slice and a coke ran you up about twenty bucks. I milled about, chatted here and there, and tried to inch my way closer to the stage from time to time, but as time wore on, I retreated back to the chain-link fence where Dawson and Lena, Jim and Geri, and Joel and Denise, and those others in attendance from that period had settled.

Our Lady Peace took the stage. The crowd surged forward. The mosh pit stirred, and grew violent. It turned into a riot. Young girls were beating on young men, yelling at their boyfriends to “kill him!” They clutched other girls’ hair and dragged them to the ground, kicking them when there.

A woman from Dawson’s group was beside me at the edge of the melee. She looked at me and said, “Do something.”

I did. I laughed.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said, “They’ll tear me apart if I go in there. That’s a job for Mommy.”

Just then an army of Mommies took to the field. They waded in and pulled the little boys and girls apart. Sent them packing. No one dared punch Mommy.

And I kept my skin.

I’m getting too old for this shit, I thought.

Days of Welcome

I decided to buy a computer. I’d put it off long enough, not knowing what I’d actually do with it. Everyone I knew who had one just played videogames with them, or signed up on ICQ (the messenger of the time) and talked to random people around the world about the weather. I had no clue why anyone would want to do that. Why not spend the energy getting to know the people you knew, or people who you met who you’d actually see face to face.

Granted, the internet was relatively new. I suppose it wasn’t by then, it was 1998, and the internet had only been around since about 1992, but you had to seriously know what you were doing with a computer back then. Windows 95 and Netscape changed all that. So I bought one. And pretty well just played video games on it.

But I began to see other uses, too. I discovered that there were dating sites on the net, and since the prospect of my meeting women through my friends was bleak at best, I thought I’d give modern technology a shot. There weren’t a lot of local women on them, not by comparison, but we were only just beginning to dip our toes in the modern age, or at least I was. I crossed my fingers and dove in.
Not much happened for a while. Slow start, small steps.

Neil had dropped out of university by then. He too was floundering. Like me, he was getting on, relatively speaking, and still had no clue what he wanted to do with his life. We hung out more and more, struck up a D&D game, grasping at the past as we were unsure about the future.

He was doing a little better than I was. Many of his friends were still in town. He was dating Sharon (not Martin, St. Jean). He may not have known what sort of career he was striving for, but he was firmly grounded.

He introduced me to the Welcome Tavern. I knew it existed, but I had never been in it. Not true. I’d been in it once, back when I was a student. My car pool of students had met up there once to bid farewell to the summer, years ago. It had been an old guys’ bar then. As far as I knew it, it still was. I was wrong.

Wayne Brown had bought it, and had transformed it by happenstance. Wayne put in a new Jukebox, banishing all country except the outlaw sort, Cash and Jennings and the sort. He began to bring it bands. Small bands, up-and-comers from down South, local bands with small followings. The university crowd, unhappy with the usual favoured establishments, heard about Wayne’s and what he was doing with it and opted to make his their own, much to the chagrin of the old guys who were finding themselves being pressed out.

Neil dragged me in there to see Babelfish, a little local band slapped together by his friends, John Huggins, John Tunnicliffe and Lee Hannigan. I was impressed. The Welcome was exactly as I remembered it, yet it was completely different. A few old guys still scowled at the trespassers from the dark corners, but it had a whole new vibe. And the price was right. The price of beer had rolled back by a decade.

I still began my weekend evenings at Casey’s (I’ve always been one for misguided loyalties), but I vacated it a couple hours later to walk down the hill to that shabby old Welcome, where even Dawson and crowd had begun to frequent, owing to Wayne Bozzer’s attendance. Bozzer and Brown were old friends. And Dawson had toiled alongside Bozzer at the college with SAC to book bands for the college pubs, so they were all one big happy clique. Another I’d joined the hazy peripheral vision of, one I was not afforded the privilege of being taught the secret handshake to. Not a problem. I knew where I stood with them now. I was filler at a party. I was a fallback when all plans fell through. I was their failsafe.
But not with Neil. Neil called me. Neil made plans with me. But Neil had also begun to work with the MNR, fighting fires by then too, so Neil was beginning to be away, hanging his duffel in Chapleau a lot.

I rekindled a few tentative friendships from Haileybury while at the Welcome, with Scott Smith, with Peter Kangas, with some of their hangers-on. We had a shared history, even if we’d never been friends while there. We recalled the Matabanick Hotel, the Haileybury School of Mines, survey classes and chemistry labs. And school sponsored curling bonspiels. I recall us sitting together after my match, nursing beers, watching Boston play “More Than a Feeling” on MTV when they, Scott and Pete, decided to pool their resources. They bought twenty bucks worth of Nevada tickets and won a hundred. Pay-dirt! Their weekend had been funded. They tried that same trick the next weekend. They pooled what bills and change they had, collected their tickets, and began to rip open the perforated tabs. Hope slipped away as the pile of lost chances piled up on the table before them, and then deserted them altogether when the final two came out losers, too. They lost what was left of their weekly budget on a whim, they skulked home wondering who they could hit up for some beer.

Neil called me one week to say that Ron Hawkins was coming to the Welcome.

“Who?” I asked. My synapses weren’t firing.

“Ron Hawkins,” he said. “Ron Hawkins of Lowest of the Low!”

We bought tickets early. Good thing, too. They sold out in no time. It’s not like the Welcome was a big place.

The night came. We arrived at what we thought was an early hour. And found the bar already full to the rafters. We carved out a spot along the back wall, bought our beers and awaited Ron and his new band. It was the Rusty Nails. But they’d yet to record anything. Ron was touring his solo material he’d just released: The Secret of My Excess.

He came down from his fleabag rooms upstairs and inched to the “stage.” We’ll call the space cleared of tables a stage. We were no more than twenty-five feet away, directly in line with the speakers.
Need I say that it was loud? ‘Nuff said.

Between sets Neil and I pressed forward to meet the man. He was amicable, he thanked us for coming out (the usual cliché heard from all performers when met). He was likely stoned. He admits now to the unlikelihood, and miracle, of his survival of that period of his life, and he must have had really high tolerance when we met him, because we couldn’t tell. I bought his solo CD. I got him to sign it. Neil bought his cassette. Ron signed that, too. We made small talk. He was eloquent. We shook his hand. He promptly forgot our very existence.

I think my ears rang for a week.

Drowning Out the Void

 

Not all weekends were spent on a barstool. Those years would have been sad indeed, had they been.

I’d already grown tired of the routine, but habits are hard to break.

Those years weren’t boring, far from it. If they were I’d have done things differently, or so I’d like to imagine. There was more live entertainment, but the crowds in Timmins were far less interactive than they were in points south. There were no mosh pits. There was no crowd surfing. People just pressed towards the stage and took their entertainment in passively. Those who did, anyway.

Point in case, my first concert. Between my first and second years of college, The Headpins and Toronto came to town and played at the Mac. Karen and I got tickets. We were excited. We recalled the line leading up to the doors of the Mac in earlier years when the Stampeders and April Wine used to come to town. We expected the same. But Timmins was already gaining the reputation of a town that would travel to see its music but wouldn’t attend concerts in their own town. That “big name” bands only played Timmins on a Tuesday or a Thursday may have had something to do with it, but DUI charges may have had something to do with it, as well. I don’t know. The crush of Schumacher Days ought to have dispelled that myth. No one seemed concerned about DUIs then.

We were surprised to see that the Mac was only half full for Toronto and The Headpins. They had hits! They were played on the radio! They were playing on the weekend! Yet the floor was only half full of patrons. I didn’t care. One of them was Keith! We hung back, watched, talking as The Headpins took the stage, and then as Toronto walked on and Holy Woods asked us, “Is anyone out there high?” She paused for effect and cheers before declaring, “So am I!”

I expected more after my college years, but no one came to town, not often anyway. Johnny Cash did, but I had no interest then in the Man in Black. I did for Big Sugar! We bought tickets, but were surprised to discover they were playing at a little basement bar downtown. They had CDs!

The night came, I was having a couple in the early evening, still in the light of day. It was after 8 pm, the show was not due to start until about 10 pm. I was seated at the bar when I saw Gordie Johnson walk in with Dave Mcloughlin, a local disk jockey. I was star struck. I couldn’t wait for the show.
Skip forward, Big Sugar took the stage. The ceiling was low, the speakers brushing the ceiling. The bar was narrow, a natural funnel for sound. Small, tight, contained. Gordie was dressed in Hugo Boss, natty and neat, his tie cinched, his hair greased back. He waited for the whoops to die down as he strummed his ever so silent jet-black Paul, tuning it for what felt like forever. Then he clicked the pedal and a hum thrummed the narrow space.

He looked up. He surveyed the wall to wall to wall crowd, and said, “Let’s rock this place,” quietly into the mic. His pic raced across the strings, and I wished I’d brought earplugs.

He rocked! Sweat flicked off him like rain and song by song he pealed a layer off. Jacket, vest, tie. Sleeves were rolled up. Hair whipped across his eyes! I wished for a pit to crash in front of the stage, for anyone to be raised up to surf the crowd, but the attendees stood stock still, zombies lured by the amps.

So I was always up for something new, some new type of distraction to fill the void I knew was lurking inside me, rising up with increasing rage. I realized that I needed to get out of town. I needed some quiet pursuits that challenged my mind.

One day much later, in 1996, I was in my bank when I saw a stack of booklets. I picked one up and looked at the cover. The Stratford Festival. I’d heard of it, but I really didn’t know anything about it. So, I picked one up while waiting in line and leafed through the pages. Glossy photos gazed back up, filigreed script scrawled across the pictures. Shakespeare and such. Plays. I thought I might like that, so I asked the teller if I might take one with me. She said yes, so I did. I asked around. Was anyone interested in that sort of thing? I received blank stares in response.

I read about each play being performed, and noticing which plays were being performed on my upcoming week’s holiday in September, I picked up the phone and ordered tickets for Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” and Tennessee Williams’ “Sweet Bird of Youth.” I booked a hotel on the main drag, and when the time came, I drove the 10 hours to see my first theatrical plays.

I fell in love with Stratford. Bookstores, music stores, antiques and chocolatiers. Restaurants and pubs and coffee houses spilled out onto the wide sidewalks. There were manicured parks and statuary and gardens in one and all.

But as I pulled in, I saw people in suits. Suits? I panicked! I didn’t pack a suit.

I asked the front desk whether I needed one, wondering where the hell I was going to get one on such short notice. She told me not to worry, that no dress code was in effect.

After settling in, I walked up and down Ontario Street, browsing shops, buying little, taking in the ambiance. I found myself sitting out a thunderstorm in Balzac’s, as quick and furious as any I’d seen, inhaling a dream of dark roast within as sheets of rain blurred the thunderheads without.

Balzac’s, Bentley’s and the Boar’s Head became my haunts that week. And a remainders bookstore a few blocks down. Pazzo’s, Fellini’s, and the York Street Kitchen filled my belly.

Ever been? Maybe you should go. You might like it.

I found my way to the theatre to wait for Godot. I took my seat, my first of many.

I love Stratford. I’ve been going back for over 20 years now.

Buckle Me In On A Highway of Sin

 

All my life I’d been looking for a place, a harbour, a friend, a mentor, guidance. Sometimes I found one. Most times I did not. After a time, I stopped looking. Bleak outlook. Yes. But by my early working years I’d begun stumbling through life, slipping into a shell, not really giving a shit about anything.

I’d received little guidance in high school, not sure what I wanted to do, not really planning for or on much of anything, living in the moment. By grade 12, the realization that I’d have to make a decision about my future was impressed on me by my mother. I was taken aback, looked to the horizon of possibilities, and discovered a blank. My father was a salesman, a precarious way to make a living, in my view, considering the economic winds that had blown him hither and thither. I looked to those surrounding my upbringing and saw teachers and lawyers, construction workers and plumbers, cab drivers and miners. I did not see myself as particularly bright, so the law and teaching were out of the question, to my reckoning. I hated home construction, did not want to drive a cab. George Miller was a miner, a shift boss; Marc, my future ex-brother-in-law was attending the Haileybury School of Mines. I was from a mining town, there’d always be a need for metals and mines, so I made up my mind without much forethought. I hated mining, then just grew apathetic to it.

I thought about a business degree and applied to university. I didn’t care for business much once I was exposed to it, preferring my electives in anthropology, sociology, and history. That brought me back to teacher, something I’d never considered and didn’t call to me, either.

I had a thought while in London. What about the military? Why did that cross my mind? I don’t know. There were commercials on TV. I thought I might be educated enough to be an officer. I looked into it, saw that they would train me in a technical trade. So, I actually applied, God help me. I passed the fitness test, barely. That’s what they told me. They also told me that my marks weren’t good enough to be an officer. They wanted to recruit straight ‘A’ students with an athletic bent, who were leaders in clubs, extracurricular activities, and the captain of the football team, all rolled into one. Would I be interested in the enlisted ranks?

I was not. And seeing how the next decade unfolded, I can thank my lucky stars that I did not fall into that path. Rwanda, Bosnia, ethnic cleansing. I’d have been PTSD had I accepted their offer.

I left school. I did not find a suitable engineering position. Instead I found myself within the enlisted ranks of the mining industry, on a French crew, invested with little training, seeing no possibility of advancement, altogether ignored and passed over.

But I was loaned out. I found myself trained on haulage trucks for the purpose of backfilling in 2 Mine, the same job I was doing in 1 Mine, but sans conveyors. At least there were new guys to work with: Tim Gignac, Frank Chiera, and James Patrick. New people, new sights, new job, of a sort. And driving haulage trucks was fun for a time. Until it wasn’t.

In time I’d saved enough to buy a car, a 4 cylinder Pontiac Sunbird. It was sporty looking, if a little gutless. It was a bit of a lemon, at first as well, always in the shop for one thing or another for a few months, for a faulty dash, for two faulty CD players, for a sunroof and windows that leaked, for a misaligned driver’s door. But it was MINE! And soon, the wrinkles ironed out, it was my passport to freedom. I became a chauffeur for my friend Garry Martin, and his sister Sharon.

That taste of freedom awakened an old wish in me. I wanted to go places and see things. We’d never gone anywhere while I was growing up, so there was lots to see. But where to go? I recalled watching friends head off to the Caribbean for spring breaks, and listening with envy as they told their tales of what they’d seen and what they’d done, tales of beach parties, and bonfires, and of blue seas and Sea-dos. I asked Garry and Henri if they were interested. “Let’s go to Cuba!” I said. Yeah, let’s go to Cuba, they said. I got my first passport. But when the time came, we didn’t. No money, no holidays, no passports.

Years passed. Let’s go to Cuba, I said. Then, let’s go to Jamaica, I said. We didn’t. For one reason or another, usually the same reasons, time and again.

So, I decided to take a small step on my own. I would go to Sudbury. I knew Sudbury, so I would know my way around. And I had a yearning to see some of my old haunts.

I arrived, I booked into the Ramada Hotel downtown. I went to the malls and did some shopping. I kept my eye open for a face I might recognize (secretly hoping to bump into Debbie while there), thinking that one or two of my old Res Rat friends might have landed there, but I didn’t recognize a soul. Before long, I grew bored.

I found myself in a bar in the afternoon. After two beers, I asked myself, what are you doing? I left and wandered the streets downtown, and spied a placard outside the Cambrian Community Centre, advertising a concert that evening. The Watchmen! I had their CDs! I tried the door, found it unlocked, and was pleased to see someone at the box office.

Did they have tickets? Yes, they did. Did I have to be a student to buy one? No, I didn’t. So, I did.

I was flattered when they asked for my ID, but they said they had to card everybody. I was informed that there was no booze on the concert floor, only in the licensed lobby. The band would hit the stage in about an hour, they said. I’d never been in the building before, so, I checked it out. It was a converted theatre, the floor still sloping somewhat to a raised floor before the stage. I retreated, had a beer, struck up a conversation with a couple people who were curious about the old guy in their midst. Then I made my way back to the stage. A couple of the curious stayed with me, wanting to hear more about Cambrian in the “old days.”

The band came out, they cranked their amps, the smallish, yet fullish crowd roared their appreciation, me among them. We surged forward and I found myself mid crowd, mid mosh pit. We flowed back and forth, leapt and crashed together. And before long the first bodies were hoisted up to surf. The curious asked me if we’d done that “back then?” No, I yelled back. They took hold of me and raised me up, their hands gathered in to stretch me out and lay me flat, drawing my forward and back, sweeping to and from the stage.

It was like floating on a precarious bed of flat fleshy needles. It was beautiful.

Early Music Lessons

I’ve always loved music, but didn’t engage in it much until recently, active more as an enthused appreciator than as an actual participant. I’ve always loved live music, and always preferred being up close and personal with the stage, never content with seeing acts and superstars who are no more than miniatures on a distant stage. More on that “up close and personal” in later posts, but you’ll have to be patient for those.

My sister took piano lessons from an early age, reaching 11th grade. She didn’t play in public often, just the recitals she was obligated to do. She rarely ever played when anyone else was in the room, either. She did make an exception for my father, who would sit and listen to her play for an hour at a time. She played when I was in the room, as well; probably because I never judged her performance. But she was a perfectionist, and never pleased with her playing. My mother asked me once, when I was still quite young, if I’d like to take lessons too, after noticing me fingering the keys on Karen’s piano. I declined, rather shyly, sure I could never learn. There were SO many keys, and they were SO far apart. And, having watched my sister play, it looked SO difficult. That was stupid of me. I regret it to this day. The earlier one begins to learn anything, the better, and it’s more likely to become innate if one does start at an early age.

There was "choir" practice for the plays while in Pinecrest. I know I said that I hated learning harmony, but I always loved to sing. I used to sing along to LPs and the radio, often humming along while doing homework. I don’t remember musical instruments being taught there, at all.

That was relegated to art class in St. Theresa, where we were introduced to the recorder, probably to see if they could scare us all away from pursuing music as a career. I have patchy memories of music classes, I think it was once a week, where we were all expected to screech and squeak for about 15 or 20 minutes at most. I can’t recall anyone coming away from those music lessons with a desire to continue. Unless you took guitar lessons as an extracurricular activity. I did. And I really wanted to learn. But I was learning on a J-45, enormous for me at the time. And the strings hurt my fingers. I was told it would take time to build calluses on my fingertips, but impatience took its toll. I’d pick at it a couple time a week but I just couldn’t reach the fret board and reach around the body at the same time. I also had to endure the ridicule from bullies. They threatened to steal my guitar, they threatened to break it, they pelted me and the guitar case with snowballs. I quit shortly after that, afraid I would lose my dad’s guitar. I regret that too.

I would pick the instrument up from time to time, browse the method manuals, and attempt to teach myself, but learning to read music by myself was daunting, at best. Then, a schoolmate at college said he would teach me, but he only taught me a couple cords, never following through.

I began taking actual music lessons much later on, in my 40s, through the TSO. No guitar there, but by then I was interested in more than just guitar. I began with a plastic clarinet, later added alto sax. And now that I can read music, I’ve started back on guitar again. I’ll likely never be great, maybe not even good, but it’s the journey that matters. Challenge yourself. It’s never too late to learn new things, it’s never too late to chase down a dream.

Coming of Age, Of a Sort

That would be between ‘76 and ‘78, I’d say. That's a hard thing to nail down for most people, if not all of us, as it happens in leaps and bounds over a period of time. So let’s observe some of this process. Further details of each to follow, I imagine.

In ‘76, I began helping out at the pool, not the Schumacher pool (that’s where my sister began her junior guard experience), the Archie Dillon Sportsplex, then only a year old. Judy Miller was still at the cash (God love her for her longevity of service), but other than that, the two pools could not be more different. The Sportsplex was brick, tiled, windowless, '70s modern in every way. It echoed, as all pools do. It was humid, as all pools are; but hot, as the Schumacher Pool never was.

In ‘77, I bought my first albums with what little wealth I had: Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours,” and the Eagles’ “Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975.” I loved them both, but I can’t say I chose them on my own. They were picked out on the advice of my cousin Alan, in from Cochrane. We stumbled upon each other in the new Timmins Square on a Saturday afternoon, at Circle of Sound. I was in a record store for the first time, out with friends, trying and failing to be mallrats, leafing through the maze of future personal purchases, browsing the best sellers, when Alan appeared. We talked, he asked me what I liked, and I admitted I didn’t really know, limited to the playlist on the local radio and the memory of the too many ‘60s and ‘70s rock in my older cousins’ collections to remember; I’d yet to find my groove. When he asked me what albums I had already, I begrudgingly admitted that I didn’t own any LPs, then, yet. He took those two off the best-sellers wall, and said that these were two worthy of building a record collection from. He was right.

In ‘76, the class trip to Midland, the first time I was ever away from my parents. We were placed four to a room, one of whom likely stole the $10 of mad money my mother gave me for the trip. That kid held a $10 bill up to me and all in the room and said, “Look what I have.” Me too, I said, in response, unsure why he was so boastful about showing it off, my own mother telling me to keep it secret; but upon a search of my own luggage later could not find my own money my mother had given me. Read between the lines, and I’m sure you will come to the same conclusion I did. But how to prove the theft? I let it go.

In the summer of ‘77, Star Wars was released. I very much had an Eric Foreman moment.

In ‘78, I saw my first video game, Pong, on the school trip to Toronto. We spotted it in the restaurant of the hotel/motel we were staying at, and were soon 3 to 5 deep around it, fascinated, transfixed by what we knew was the future. That same trip, someone was caught shoplifting on a stop on the way home. One of our teachers went down the aisle with a basket, telling us that if anyone else had stolen something, to place it in the basket and nothing more would be said. He left with an empty basket. The shoplifter was eventually returned to us, his head low with shame upon entering the bus.

In ‘78 and beyond new interests began to penetrate my shell: girls, New Wave, Post-punk; video games, first at the Square, then Andy's Amusement, and later still at Top Hat’s.

The list of crushes to that point: Heather, Alison, Patricia, Shelly, Kim, and Sandra. Obviously, more to come.