From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come)

True story.  This is a little bit about how I started to become a writer.  A tribute to an inspiring mentor.  And one of (ONE of!) the most embarrassing moments of my life.

The teachers who've helped me shape my skills have always been women.  My Algonquin College professor Christine Klein, who advised me to pursue copywriting.  The woman who hired me at CFRA radio and taught me to be a working professional and a functioning adult, the inimitable Jan Hansen.  But long before them came my seventh-grade homeroom and English teacher, Mrs. Doreen Leslie of St. Peter's Junior High.

I guess it must have been '75, I would have been twelve years old.  Grade 7 was the first year at junior high, a new school for me.  Lots of new kids from different neighbourhoods, not the same ones I'd grown up with.  As you know, at times like these the societal pressures multiply.  Other kids get bigger than you faster.  You get braces.  That sort of thing.  This is that kind of story.

I was a smart kid, and I could be a smart ass at times about it.  I'd sailed through primary school with some of the top marks in the class.  I was a bookworm, could read above my age, and read all kinds of things.  My biggest weapon was my library card.  I was absorbing literature from all sources, and though I had no idea I'd ever try to make a living as a writer, I knew that the English language was already well under my command.  Mrs. Leslie was a prim and gentle lady with a bookish manner and cats-eye spectacles, and she encouraged my efforts in English class, often challenging me to do my very best.

Well, at some point Mrs. Leslie gave us an assignment - a page of descriptive writing, if I recall correctly.  The subject of the piece was to be a person.  Now remember, I said I was twelve years old.  And the only person I had anywhere in my mind at that time was a curly-haired blonde girl in another classroom down the hall.  So yes, I wrote a page of description... of her.  No, it wasn't just a crush letter, it was a good piece of work.  I was a good writer.  I was inspired by my subject.  My ego knew that it was an assignment I could completely dominate.  As Bruce Springsteen later said about writing Darkness On The Edge Of Town, "More than rich, more than famous - I wanted to be great."  I wrote a stunner.

How do I know I wrote a stunner?  Because.  After reading and grading our essays, Mrs. Leslie announced to the class - and I remember she was tickled pink to do so - that one student had written something so excellent, so inspiring, that she simply had to share it with everyone.  And she would proceed to read it out loud to the class.  And she did.

I can't tell you if I cried that day or not.  I couldn't feel my face, I think, it must have been a transcendent shade of red.  I don't think I ever named my subject in the piece, but it didn't matter because it wasn't hard for my classmates to figure out exactly who it was about.  Even worse, as the class erupted in giggles and eventually outright mocking laughter, poor Mrs. Leslie was surprised, then even a little angry about the reaction to my work.  The dear lady had had no idea I'd written it about a real person, much less...

Later, in confidence, she'd explain to me that she really had been thrilled by the work I'd done.  She'd done it simply because it had been that good. 

I guess it had been.

And there have been many times over the years when I've thought of her, and hoped she'd be proud of me.

It would only get worse after that, I guess.  The next year, in response to an assignment to write an original play based on ancient Greek mythology, I wrote a manuscript which included an offstage rape committed by Zeus.  I mean, it was factually correct, right?  In ancient mythology Zeus was often depicted as a rapist.  So was King Arthur's father, Uther Pendragon.  Did I mention that it would have been Grade Eight?  In Catholic junior high? 

That one got me called into the principal's office.

I'm done now.

Caught In The Crossfire - the brief history of Snake Eyes

Snake Eyes, 1993

By early 1991, I went looking for a band to sing with.  I did it the old-fashioned way - answered a few ads in the newspaper classifieds.  (God, that sounds dated now.)  I'd sat in with a piano-bar-playing cousin of a friend, did a little karaoke, stuff like that.  I wanted more.  I'd taken vocal lessons at the Ottawa Folklore Center from local folk legend Lynn Miles.  It was time to step up to my own mic.  And I would learn a lot from being in a band; lessons I carry with me to this day.

My first audition came with a bunch of hairy freaks in a garage somewhere in Mechanicsville.  Heavy metal thunder; lots of smoke in the air.  I hit the Deep Purple notes, but I didn't get the gig.  Not what they were looking for.  That was alright with me, those dudes were a little scary.  But I'd gotten my feet wet.

It was a blazing hot April day when I went to sing with keyboardist-guitarist Pascal duPerron and a few of his buddies.  Two weeks later the buddies were gone (this is how musicians flow sometimes, I found out) but Pascal and I realized we had similar tastes, and decided to try to work together.  By sheer luck we stumbled into guitarist Kevin Ford, who was looking for a new gig after some time off to start his family.  Kevin liked playing with a good keyboard man (Pascal put down the guitar soon after that) and my vocals meshed well with his playing style.  Over the summer we added Steve, a blues bassist, and Tommy, a rock drummer who'd toured with Ottawa recording artists US. 

Now, a band's sound depends on what each player brings to it stylistically.  We were all well-versed in hard rock, but some of us weren't exactly hard rockers.  Versatility is nice but you have to define yourself somehow, and with Kevin and me as lead voices we slotted into hard electric blues and R&B, Stevie Ray Vaughan crossed with Black Crowes.  Kevin was a true talent - an electric player who'd done time in 80s rock cover bands, and a composer of originals.  He played a Fender Strat through a Twin amp in electric blues tradition, but fingerpicked it a la Mark Knopfler.  He'd had a little classical training, so he could also play nylon string, twelve-string and slide.  Kevin could play virtually anything, which gave us a huge leg up on standard bands in dynamics and taste.  Perfect, except for one thing - grunge was blowing up right then and there.  From the jump, we were swimming against the tide.

Not to mention that we had four veteran players, and one neophyte singer.  I suppose you'd call me an R&B stylist, with the post-sixties twist that I'd learned from listening to white guys who were trying to sing like black guys.  Elton; Mick; Gregg Allman; Daryl Hall; Steve Perry.  I don't have what I'd call a sweet voice - some people like it, others don't - but I can stay in key, remember lyrics, and blues it up a little.  Now I had to step up to a lot of things I may not have been ready for.  I had been hoping to sing for an ensemble band like the Allman Brothers, or Little Feat, or Santana... bands in which the lead singer wasn't always the focal point.  I quickly realized that most of the guys - and people at our shows - had expectations of seeing a Genuine Frontman.  Which was a minor problem, considering how I, personally, have difficulty merely speaking before a crowd.  I don't even like to draw attention to myself - not the best attribute for a lead singer!  So - First lesson learned: When you put yourself in a position, you'd better deliver since you asked for it.  Over time I'd grow as a musician quite a bit.  I'd learn to pick up some sloppy harmonica skills, even some rhythm guitar playing.  But at first, the only thing that kept me afloat was my maturity.  I knew how to handle myself like a professional.  I was, after all, at 28, the oldest one in the band.

Next - have you ever tried to name a band?  Sure, over beers anyone can come up with a lot of ideas, from thoughtful to ridiculous.  But when you're looking for the name of something you're going to say you're "in", you become much more critical.  After a few months, we connected some dots from the blues, to the American south, to riverboat gambling... to Snake Eyes.  The logo came right after that, a pair of dice with musical notes in the place of the dots.  Snake Eyes.  The name seemed to fit, except that everyone who heard it... remember, the 80s had just ended... expected us to be a hair metal band.  So there was that.

Rehearsing and building our setlist took us through the summer.  Crowes, Allmans, Dire Straits, even the odd Beatles covers.  We'd start off playing bars, of course, so we had to be sure to play some crowd pleasers.  We put the Georgia Satellites' "Keep Your Hands To Yourself" in the set, but Tommy made us promise we'd never, ever waste any energy on rehearsing it.  One night we played Zep's "Rock And Roll" right off the cuff.  I loved singing it, but no one else was ever interested in playing it again - what was old hat to them was still new to me. 

Our set list would change over the next few years, but there were some mainstays I never got tired of performing.  SRV's "Crossfire", which this piece is named after.  Other SRV songs would come and go, including "Voodoo Child" and "Little Wing."  Ballads like "She Talks To Angels", and Colin James' "Why'd You Lie."  "Sultans Of Swing" was usually treated to an extended ending for Kevin to solo over.  Through the fall, we were just getting this thing up to speed, and trying to get bookings and build some momentum.

About bookings... Second lesson learned: (you think you're going to be in a rock band, start hanging out, playing music, meet girls, have fun with the guys...) You've just started your own small private business.  You are now a member of a limited partnership, and no one is going to make business come to you, you have to go get it.  I learned almost as much about private business from being in that band as I did from working with local enterprises during my real career.  There's a lot of No Fun in that, and it can end up taking too much away from The Real Fun. 

The band was a secondary thing for all of us - we all had day jobs - so we were taking our time.  Fall of '91 got a few gigs under our belts, and just when we were ready to start playing more, real life changed it up.  Our bassist, Steve, had a hidden talent.  A laid-back easy-going dude, he was also surprisingly a talented chef... and he was accepted to enrol at Cordon Bleu Culinary Arts in Paris.  We needed a new bass player.  We were about to get a whole lot more.

At the beginning of 1992 John Carroll joined us on bass.  Yes, that John Carroll, road-tested busker, roots-rock junkyard dog, resident Wednesday night lord of the Chateau Lafayette stage.  Back then, before his blues odyssey, John was a barely-twenty bassist full of jazzy chops, ambition, intelligence and attitude.  John brought a hunger to play music all the time, and a drive to write original songs.  Kevin and John clicked musically, so we began to work up our own songs, which had been Kevin's original motivation.  But with one step forward came another step back... John and Tommy didn't really mesh as a rhythm section, and Tommy had other gigs lined up as well.  Now we'd need a new drummer, and we brought in an even younger kid named Dan to fill the chair.  Naturally, his first gig came one week after he joined us, on Canada Day '92.

Kevin had brought in a booking agent to help us out, someone he knew from the scene, and the guy got us into a few clubs I'd never even heard of.  He was the first outsider we'd brought in who was given any input into Snake Eyes, and right away it was eye-opening.  The places we were playing didn't care anything about what we played or how we played it, only how much beer sold when we were playing there.  And club owners actually don't like it when they think you play too loud.  And then it started getting back to me that the agent didn't like certain things about my style as a frontman.  The guy never said a word to me, but he got to other people.  This development was extremely annoying in that we'd decided on a direction, only to find an outsider giving us criticism that was not necessarily constructive, with no regard for our plans.  Third lesson learned: Unsolicited advice that begins with the words "You should" is to be ignored.  The person giving it is usually doing so not in your interest, but in his.  There's nothing wrong with someone seeing that there are things you could do better.  But you can't have someone tell you that you need to change you.

At some point we came to a mutual decision that Dan wasn't the right fit, and we needed another drummer again.  Dan, a good kid, stuck for barely two months.  The new new guy, Mike, was a straight rock drummer with the whole nine yards of big rock drum kit.  Mike was solid, but he was a big hitter, breaking more sticks than any other drummer I've ever seen.  With him in the band, we started really planning to lock down the originals, and save our money to get into a studio and record a demo.  It was cool to move up to bigger clubs, even downtown Ottawa, the same stages where bands like The Headstones, Our Lady Peace, and Junkhouse would play. 

Now, being in a band takes up your free time, which is great if you have a lot of free time.  But with the rest of us settling into our routines of work / rehearse / gig, time started to pass and John started to chafe.  There was never enough time in the day for John to be creative, and I recall him at one time even wishing we could all quit our jobs and move into a house together, to woodshed.  John was a guy who would literally do anything to make it, and wouldn't settle for anything else.  As far as I could ever tell, he never had any Plan B.  John was going to be a musician in this life - which made his personal habits a little less, um, conventional, and his youthful adventures a little more entertaining.  The time he disappeared for about a week, later explaining his absence on a large bag of weed.  The time he bought a new bass then forgot it in his friend's car on a winter night, which cracked the instrument's neck.  The time a girl showed up at our rehearsal space hoping for a backup singer gig.  She didn't get a gig.  John disappeared again for a couple of days.  That sort of thing.  John was a great guy and fun to be around when his mood was up... but he could get dark pretty quickly at times.  And as things dragged on for him through the winter of '93, and with other musical interests sparking his creative wanderlust, he soured on Snake Eyes.  By spring, despite having co-written most of our originals, he'd decided to leave.

(A quick rock 'n' roll story about how and why John become bluesman John Carroll: In 1997, I went out to Vancouver to visit my mother, who lived there at the time.  Keeping in touch with Kevin, I'd heard that John had gone on to busking his way across Canada, and had last been heard from in Alberta.  As I'd looked over places to sightsee in Vancouver, I'd heard about the notorious Downtown Eastside and Hastings Street, the west coast's haven for junkies, freaks, runaways, and street people.  Naturally, I'd have to see it for myself.  On my flight out, at some point it crossed my mind that it sounded like the kind of place John Carroll might gravitate to.  Honest to god, my second day in Vancouver I roll downtown to check Hastings out, turn a corner and walk into John Carroll, all the friggin' way across the country, playing a beat-to-shit acoustic with his guitar case open on the ground.  I knew right that if he didn't end up dead, he would truly make a name for himself.)

More auditions.  More bass players.  We picked up veteran bassist Steve Rae, who brought a more fundamental style to the bottom end.  But I never forgot the guy who came second to Steve.  He came in acting pretty cocky, just another audition to him.  We did five songs with him, and by the end of them he was begging to get into the band.  He was even pretty pissed off when he found out he didn't get the gig.  Fourth lesson learned: Musicians take on a lot of aimless auditions and gigs.  When they find a band with real potential, they hate to miss out on an opportunity.  That was the first time I clued in that we really had something solid that we were working on.

Steve was a solid guy all round, though, and the kind of guy who we knew would give full effort to the band.  We could count on Steve, and that made a big difference at that point in time.  It was now the spring of '93, we'd been at it for two years, and we were dying to get into the studio and record.  But with Steve locking down the bottom end, Mike's drumming came under scrutiny.  As I said before, he was a rock player, and by now it was becoming evident that his style didn't really suit the bluesier direction we'd been taking.  Mike was replaced on drums by Marc Marin, who played a kit about half the size, with timing, cool, and taste.  To be frank, Marc was the drummer we'd been looking for the whole time.

I apologize at this point, because I haven't really said much of anything about actually playing the music.  The story of a set of musicians reads like an ongoing soap opera, misadventures of the unwary.  I'm realizing the same thing that I came away with when I read Keith Richards' autobiography Life, in which he spent barely any time describing the actual experience of being onstage with the Rolling Stones.  Words are rather insufficient to address the transient experience of creating music.  You create sounds, and everything depends on which sounds you create, and where you place yours in context with the ones the other musicians are creating.  As a singer, you're riding on top of a wave... sometimes you go with the wave and let it carry you; other times you push back and let that torsion fire you off in a new direction.  Fifth lesson learned: Everyone plays off the drummer.  Even as the singer, you're playing off the drummer more than anyone knows.  Which is why any time I'm watching a band, I invariably start watching what the drummer's doing.  (If I don't really like the band, or if he's really good, I may end up watching no one but the drummer.)  I had a thousand instantaneous fantastic experiences playing with these talented musicians, but I can't really describe to you why it's the best thing I've ever done.  The best way I ever heard it said was by Hugh Dillon of the Headstones, who I met at the bar of Zaphod Beeblebrox (and I bought him a beer) once.  When I noted how tight the band was that night, he said "It's like being on a great hockey team, you know?  You know where he's going, and he knows where I'm going..."  And when you do it, it's awesome.

Marc and Steve locked as a rhythm section, and we cooked.  Now, that version of Snake Eyes could play anything.  With the experience those guys brought to the stage, being in front felt like driving a big, fast car.  Once, at rehearsal, Marc's wife asked if we could play any Bryan Adams songs, so we pulled one off from collective memory.  Another time, the guys felt like playing some Rush, so it turned into a half-hour Rush jam.  The best gig I remember was part of a weekend booking on the top floor of the Peel Pub, which is now the Auld Dubliner.  We did three sets, and the first one was the usual opener to a half-empty room.  But it was Half Price Pitcher Night, and right before our second set a busload of Carleton University students rolled in on a pub crawl.  Suddenly the room was packed with roaring drinkers out for a downtown Friday night, and we absolutely killed it.  Everything went right, and the crowd ate it up.  Felt like a million bucks.  Then we took our break, and the pub crawl left for its next destination.  We came back out and played the third set for one guy.

Snake Eyes went into the studio that fall to record our demo.  We cut five songs.  Our set opener, a Little-Feat style southern shuffle called "Riverside Soiree."  My only solo composition, "Face In The Dark", a midtempo slide guitar showcase for Kevin.  "My Lady", a bluesy love letter Kevin had written to his wife Marlene.  The uptempo "Get It All You Can", based on a bouncy John Carroll bass line.  And the powerful "Eye Of The Hurricane", with its thunderous instrumental coda jam that usually closed out our shows.  Finally, the plan was to shop this tape to record labels, anyone who might have any interest in taking Snake Eyes to the next level.

And of course, it never happened, because I'm just a guy writing a blog.  It's funny how you can get to exactly where you want to be, and be right on the cusp of everything exploding.

Reaching that goal had taken three years, and all of our focus.  And while we'd put down five songs that we'd written, and Kevin and I were also continuing to try to work up new ideas on our own, Kevin missed the catalyst that had sparked our most creative period.  That was John.  Because while Steve was everything the band needed as a stabilizing force, he and Kevin didn't spark any new ideas together.  We needed to get back to writing new material, so John was asked to rejoin the band, replacing Steve.

The one thing I completely regret about Snake Eyes - that I am actually ashamed of - is the way we threw Steve out.  Whether it was necessary or not - the band may have imploded had he stayed, anyway, given internal conflict - it was cold and callous, and I was part of the decision.  A decision that did not sit particularly well with Marc, especially when he tried to play with John.  To my recollection, Marc tried one rehearsal with John before he quit.  John subsequently brought in a friend of his to play drums.  Tension escalated, as trying to recapture the best elements of Snake Eyes turned into trying to redefine Snake Eyes.  The band that had cut the demo no longer existed... and by spring of 1994, with a new direction having been chosen, I was no longer the singer.

To my knowledge, after cutting that demo, Snake Eyes never played a gig again.

Perhaps, in hindsight, it might have been good to have hired a manager at some point - a fully invested outsider who could have called a few shots for us.  Perhaps we'd overextended ourselves.  Perhaps we were too ambitious for what we'd actually accomplished.  I, personally, know I didn't fully commit myself to developing my skills in a way that could have elevated the band more.  Still, there was so much good about Snake Eyes that it's amazing to acknowledge how much wasn't good.  Sixth lesson learned: The whole damn thing is about a lot more than just a good band playing good music.  Unless you have deep personal commitment to it, and the people you are doing it with, you aren't going to withstand all the crap that goes with it.

And finally, if there's one great bit of advice to be taken from this, it's in regard to that personal commitment.  If you're going to be in a band, I would recommend that you have some personal connection with someone in it, someone you can't give up on, and who can't give up on you.  Maybe a brother or sister, or someone you've grown up with, or like Mick and Keith, someone you met because you saw they liked all the same records you liked.  It really shouldn't be just people you meet answering ads in a newspaper, or on the net.  Because of the Seventh lesson learned: Being in a band is like dating four guys at the same time.  You hear about their relationships, their families, their personal problems.  You deal with their egos, addictions, and moods.  You try to help them through their crises of confidence, and their conflicts.  You have to figure out when they're going to do things, and what they're going to do, before they do them.  You have to get along with them while they try to get along with each other.  You have to deal with all their shit.

You'd have to be crazy to do it.

I'm done now.

Been a Long Lonely, Lonely, Lonely, Lonely, Lonely Time

It started the way, it seems, that just about anything good ever does:

"Ah One-Two-Three-FOW!"

That was the Big Bang of "I Saw Her Standing There", the first rock 'n' roll song I remember hearing.  No, it wasn't even the first cut on Meet The Beatles, and I was already familiar with pop radio by age - what, seven or eight? - but this was the first song I can remember feeling something different, guitars and drums, digging in, hittin' it, movin', groovin'... like a Sex Machine.  So that's rock 'n' roll, to me, and that's where it all began.

I grew up in a culture rich with music, but not in a musical family.  Trinidadian by birth, I knew the sounds of Calypso and Steel Band from early on.  But the only things my parents played were records, and my mother, though young, had a taste for crooners like Johnny Mathis and Engelbert Humperdinck (seriously!).  Her younger sister, Aunt Nancy, was more attuned to the swingin' North American ways of the early 70s once we moved to Canada, and when her albums were in our house, and I dropped the needle on Meet The Beatles, and the soundtrack to A Hard Day's Night... that was it, the start of a lifelong education. 

I ate those records up, dissecting everything.  It was the first time I'd really listened to a four-piece rock band, and without even knowing what I was doing, I know now that I was figuring out who played what.  The way the guitars weaved together; the bass locked with the drums; the voices joined in harmonies that made two sound like five.  Everything else I'd ever heard had been large-band orchestrated to that point; The Beatles showed you that four guys could do this together and sound amazing.  And more importantly, Rock.

Because that's where it went next.  Sure, Nancy had lots of other stuff.  But Santana and Chicago were still too complex for my ears; it would take me decades to begin to understand what that stuff meant.  Buried in all of it was a 45 RPM single... yes, it had a hole in the middle of it that you had to stick a little "spider" in so you could play it... by the Rolling Stones, called "Honky Tonk Women."  Something else was going on there, man.  That intro with funky cowbell, then this nasty-ass Guitar!  My first exposure to Keith Richards.  I'm fairly sure I never played that song when my parents were in the house, because the Rolling Stones, after all, were dirty people.  I knew nothing about dirty at the time, but that guitar was something I felt in a place The Beatles didn't get to.

I realized years later that most people learn their rock 'n' roll music from older siblings.  Well, I didn't have one, so you'll see my personal journey took a lot of strange twists and turns back on itself.  We used to have little dance parties in primary school classes, Grade Five and Six, I think, and there was one guy who always used to complain that we didn't play any Deep Purple because his brother had told him Deep Purple was the best.  Certainly the teachers wouldn't have played Deep Purple, but they didn't have any problem when someone brought in the soundtrack to Jesus Christ Superstar... that kinda rocked, and as I found out years later, was played on by many of the fellas in Deep Purple.  So there.

But once I started hanging around with Mike... who is still my best friend to this day... music became a bigger part of our friendship than I'd realize.  Mike's parents were musical song-and-dance veterans, and he had an older brother Brian with a gigantic record collection.  So that was a whole lot of different things to listen to... more Beatles albums!... and someone else with whom to continue the business of figuring music out.  Mike and I learned to work out those harmonies together, kick the sounds around.  A lot of British Invasion stuff, like Herman's Hermits, of all things... and Monkees re-runs on TV were an influence, too... but since we were growing up in the mid-70s now, pop radio started to infiltrate our listening patterns.  However, neither of us played instruments, so the heavier sounds didn't appeal to us quite just yet.

It was all quite innocent times till we got to junior high.  Different school.  Different, suburban kids.  All the angst, turmoil, and high school confidential taking effect.  It was 1976, the hair was long, the flares were getting wider, and everyone was trying to grow a mustache.  The guitars were being turned up in everything.

I was still into radio pop, Top 40.  And I liked to sing.  So the first step I took into the world of rock was via the reigning heavyweight champion at the time, Elton John.  Greatest Hits was the very first LP I bought, and to this day if I had to sing a song to save my life I'd probably pick an Elton number.  And then the second album I bought was Captain Fantastic and The Brown Dirt Cowboy.  First album to ever ship platinum.  Elton got my foot in the door with his harder rocking stuff, like "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting."  I was about the right age to start learning about Saturday nights.

I suppose Elton's showmanship had an effect on the style of rockers I liked, because what happened next had very little precedent, other than Elton's ridiculous costumes and hundreds of glasses - which seem hard to remember now.  A couple of brothers turned me on to KISS Alive - which, when you think about it, is pretty much a grade-school rock-by-numbers kit.  The power of a straight four-piece, guitars, bass, and drums.  Bluesy solos, big drums, grinding riffs.  The dinosaur had been awoken.  And yes, I actually liked them for the music - it wouldn't be till 1997 that I saw the true, original KISS live.  But the noise, the smoke and lights, the poses and the preening were new to my fandom.

In 1978 I entered high school... a world pulsing to the soundtracks of Boston, A Farewell To Kings, Led Zeppelin (most people call it IV), A Night at the Opera, Some Girls, Aja, Rumours, and Saturday Night Fever.  One thing blew my mind, much later, when "That 70s Show" premiered on TV in the '90s... they got everything right.  The hairstyles, the family station wagons, roller rinks, and especially the StonerCam.  With no older siblings, I would dig into the music of the day, then have to find my own way back to where it came from.  I suppose that's why I'm a bit of a musicologist; I've always had to discover where things came from for myself.

My parents were divorcing at the time, and I was now living with my mother, who'd bought a house with Aunt Nancy... which brought her record collection back under the same roof.  I'd often listen to her music more than mine, digging into things like Stevie Wonder's Songs In The Key Of Life.  And of course in the late 70s, I was into the groove of disco too.  It wasn't all guitars, after all.  Unlike others who relished the rock vs. disco wars, I found there was room for both.  Music has to have some groove.  And it has to have heart, too.  I found out about this guy, Bruce Springsteen.  His music was tough, operatic, and his lyrics were gritty yet romantic, not just about chicks and beer.  I wanted to write like him.  I still do.

I was that age when rock music takes over your mind, if you let it.  I started reading Creem, Circus, and Rolling Stone.  Video hadn't blown up yet; if you wanted to see or know about your faves, you had to do it in print.  Then, just a block away on Bank Street, my local second-hand record store opened up.  I have no idea who those freaky guys running it were, don't even remember the name of the place, damn it.  But that shop opened up the door for me - wide open.  Buy, listen, learn.  That's how it was done.  And it was good to save a few bucks doing it by buying second hand, when you were working at a library after school.

And then in 1980, the bombs went off.  A new decade.  A vaguely frightening new American President.  Punk and New Wave.  I saw my first real rock concert that year, The Ramones - with opening acts B.B. Gabor and Nash The Slash.  (I say real because I had actually been to an Olivia Newton-John show back '76 or '77... but we won't talk about that.)  Then John Bonham died.  Then John Lennon died.  All very significant things, but it was another death that resonated far longer for me.  Someone I didn't even know of, till much later.  Some Australian reprobate singer who drank himself to death.  His band kept going, found a new singer, and released an absolutely monolithic slab of crank they named Back In Black. 

I'd liked guitars before.  I loved them now.

You've played Guitar Hero?  All my heroes became guitar heroes.  Angus.  Edward Van Halen.  Jimmy Page.  Alex Lifeson.  If it had a power chord in it, I bought it.  I can now say that Back In Black was the most influential album I've ever heard, because it sealed in stone my definition of Rock based on the Holy Riff.  Then you started finding out about other guys, like Ritchie Blackmore.  Remember I talked about Deep Purple earlier?  Right, now it was time to work my way backward.  Even back to the Rolling Stones.  Yep, I didn't really start listening to the Stones until after Tattoo You came out.  It was an education in reverse, not unlike the white blues kids of the '60s who'd only wanted to be black blues kids of the '40s and '50s.

And here's another funny part.  As much as I loved guitar rock, I knew there was no way I could play a guitar.  Never really tried it in earnest - too complicated.  Too many notes!  Naturally, I bought a bass guitar, and became a bass player.  Or at least, I learned to do it a little.  And here's something I really believe, courtesy of Rush lyricist Neal Peart, who exposed the secret for all in the song "Limelight": 

Those who wish to be must put aside the alienation

Get on with the fascination

The real relation, the underlying theme

Plain and simple, Peart said that if you want to be a rock star, learn to play, start your own band.  Because you're just like us, too.

That would come later.

So it was the 80s and I was part of what had become the MTV Generation.  The bands came out from the pages of the magazines and onto our TV screens.  England had brought a whole New Wave to the pop scene too, so all the clothes became more colourful and ridiculous, and the hair equally colourful and ridiculous.  Michael Jackson and Prince took over the pop scene, along with bands like Duran Duran (who I liked before they became popular) and Simple Minds.  It was literally a circus.  Guitar rock was pushed to the margins, even though it kept thriving behind the scenes... till someone and everyone discovered what I consider The Sound of Canada.

Back in the 70s, there'd been a West Coast band called Prism.  They'd had radio success with a string of singles, most of which were mainstays at our high school dances, but due to revolving door lineups and... well, being Canadian... they never really hit the big time.  But Prism spawned a number of other bands and influential careers, including those of songwriter Jim Vallance and producer Bruce Fairbairn.  And Prism's sound was something I consider truly Canadian, from all the way back to Randy Bachman's Guess Who... big rock riffs with power pop hooks and choruses.  Long before the New Wave of British Heavy Metal; long before Bon Jovi (produced by Bruce Fairbairn - get it?); Canadian bands figured out that you could rock hard and sing great songs at the same time.  April Wine, Streetheart, Red Ryder, Stonebolt, Harlequin, Trooper, Max Webster, Coney Hatch, Loverboy... these bands created the sound that blew up in 1985 into what became known as Hair Metal.  So naturally, I was front row centre for it.

The great and really embarrassing thing about loving hair metal and guitar playing was the sheer amount of terrible albums by terrible bands I bought over the next few years.  A little bit of an education, really, seeing the trash that the record labels began to sign trying to cash in on the latest trend.  I would later see the pattern repeat itself in genres like grunge and rap-rock.  What would happen was that I'd read about some hyped-up newcomers, buy their album and realize they couldn't write a decent song of any kind.  Just more of the same whuppita whuppita widdly widdly noise.  The good thing is that exposing yourself to enough crap, if you have any kind of a brain, makes you realize just what makes the good stuff so good.  And as much as I liked the heavy metal flash, I ended up leaning more back toward the blues based things.  Round about the end of the 80s, I'd had enough of the sidelines.  I'd dabbled in singing onstage, and with a little encouragement from those who should have known about such things, and some serious vocal training under my belt, it was time to try my hand at joining a band.

Watch Him As He Goes

I never knew Greg Hebert.  

Blues for Newtown

I really wish Adam Lanza were still alive.  Because everyone's got an explanation why he would have gone to an elementary school to shoot and kill children and their teachers, and at least some of those people are wrong.  Only Lanza knows why, and he's not going to tell anyone, and that's either a problem or a blessing.

I suppose the response to this event is proof that it is still possible to blow the Western world's mind.  And yes, it took the mass gun death of children to do it, but the past week of rhetoric has been a general referendum on "My god, how did we get here?" across many platforms.  As so often happens, and will happen again, mass disaster is the only wake up call that registers on a large enough scale to have people reexamine their priorities.  Everyday tragedies are just too personal, right?  And there are many issues at hand here, so come on and walk with me.

GUNS.  Observation of much of this discussion has reminded me of one point:  I am not an American.  I live in Canada, and though I am greatly influenced by American culture, and I consume their products, and I am connected in some personal way to a number of American citizens, I don't live on American soil.  And what that means is that I don't, to the best of my knowledge, know a single person who actually owns a gun which is kept in their home.
The immediate knee-jerk reaction of many who live in a non-gun culture is that Americans are nuts to keep insisting on their precious Second Amendment.  But I've come around to the idea that there really is no easy fix.  I've witnessed an ongoing online discussion - and a genial one, surprisingly - that's been attended by advocates on both sides of the gun argument.  I've seen levelheaded arguments in favour of not just guns, but high-powered assault weapons, and high-capacity clips.  And what eventually struck me is that it's rather difficult for a Canadian to appreciate the climate in which this discussion is held in the USA.  Over the course of this discussion, I saw a gun ban advocate eventually move his thinking around to the viewpoint that perhaps he ought to consider purchasing a personal weapon of his own.  Newtown effectively became a trigger in convincing this person that, rather than taking others' guns away, perhaps he should arm himself too.
I'm a man of colour.  I am vigilant in public.  I am aware of what's going on around me, and situations I should avoid.  But I have never once considered that perhaps I should arm myself.  Being Canadian, I have completely internalized our fact that ballistic weapons are only to be held by law enforcement officers and soldiers. 
Though I am aware that life could change around me at any time, I am not paranoid about it because I still believe that I live in a largely just society.  I have never once, in my life, felt like a situation might arise which I might have to kill my way out of.  And what I see now is that a surprising (to me) number of Americans actually feel like this.  Like it's still the 1700s, or something.
I used to have a very simple position - ban guns.  My position is even simpler now.  I can't tell Americans that they should ban guns.  But as long as Americans continue to enjoy this hard-earned complete freedom - which it is - I personally have no desire to ever set foot on American soil again.

TEACHERS.  Yes, we've heard of many acts of everyday heroism.  I know what teachers do, I know many of them, and I know that they would die for my kid.  It's bigger than that; I would die for your kid.  President Obama says we are all responsible and I agree.  I've been on a field trip.  I've been in the schoolyard.  I would take a bullet for your kid, and so would any teacher I've met, and I would hope you would do the same for mine.  Because I hope that's who we are.

"MENTAL ILLNESS."  I'm actually more interested in seeing what the American discourse on this element of Sandy Hook will be.  How are you going to define mental illness now, and what effect will that have?  Aside from his brother saying Lanza had Asperger Syndrome, what clinical evidence have we that Lanza's acts were a result of any "mental illness" at all?  Is that not just a gigantic assumption?
I actually worried for about six seconds there that Asperger Syndrome would immediately become somehow demonized, that we'd see things like the next James Bond movie featuring a super villain with Asperger's.  People with Asperger's aren't violent, if anything they appear withdrawn and aloof to others.  There's a whole lot more going on here than that.
And frankly, as long as we're talking about "mental illness", how are we going to answer questions about the role of Lanza's mother?  The guns were her possessions.  One thought is that mentally ill people should be prohibited from purchasing weapons.  According to anecdotal and unverified sources, she was somewhat of a "survivalist", someone who chose to arm herself and her household in the event that the economy would collapse.  Sounds a little to me like someone spent too much time watching creepy HBO TV shows.  Isn't extreme paranoia a form of "mental illness?"  What's your perspective?  The President of the National Rife Association, Wayne Lapierre, said that "the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."  From a Canadian perspective, that line of thinking might indicate a form of "mental illness" in itself.

MEDIA.  They're everywhere.  They're us.  And they're interviewing kids coming off school buses who don't even know their friends are dead yet.  Quite the spectacle.  As someone with many friends who work in media, it's been interesting to see how tastelessly my ex-colleagues feel their own cohorts have behaved.  But this is what the business of news journalism has become - a mad sprint to produce "Content".  Many more people work in the content producing business today than who used to.  Schools are cranking out talking heads who know little of the old school ethics.  Giant media companies are focused on filling up airtime regardless of what is used to fill it up.  How are young journalists supposed to learn their craft in such an environment, anyway, now that the older ones can't even show them the ropes because they've been dispensed with?
As a highly online person, the fact is that today I learn about current events first through social media.  The world happens, people react, and I see their reactions.  But then I go to traditional media sources for information, data, and confirmation of fact. 
Traditional media needs to behave, hold itself to higher standards, and conduct itself with respect for its own profession.  Because if that sequence is ever reversed, that's when traditional media will become irrelevant.

TRUTH.  A six-year old boy named Jack Pinto was shot to death.  (Jack Pinto subsequently became famous for being a fan of New York Giants player Victor Cruz, which only made Victor Cruz more famous in the past week, which says a whole lot of what about our culture exactly?)  Jack's little friend John wrote a letter to him, and this is what he said:

Jack, you are my best friend.  We had fun together.  I will miss you.  I will talk to you in my prayers.  I love you, Jack.
Love, John

Speak like a child, indeed. 

I'm done now.

Blinded By The Light

Provin' it all night

A few weeks ago, I went to see the fella on the right and his E Street Band play, for the first time ever.  Yes, the first time.

I finally saw Bruce Springsteen live.  At very close proximity - that's my shot, taken from "the pit."  Now, you may suppose you know how the rest of this is going to read.  But no, I didn't get religion.  I didn't "see rock and roll's future."  Something a little more remarkable happened... I found a little piece of me that I'd lost track of.

I first heard Bruce Springsteen's music in what must have been 1979.  Tony and Branko were playing the hell out of Darkness On The Edge Of Town, in that summer when we started driving around lookin' for nothin' to do.  I already knew I liked rock music harder and faster, bluesy, more guitar driven, melodramatic and explosive.  Springsteen was kinda different.  Lots of piano and organ, - saxophone! - and no showy guitar solos, but the cat brought genuine intensity to his music.  Significantly, the man was a real storyteller, using lyrics as sledgehammers, every line painting a concrete picture that dissolved into the next in cascades of emotion.  Not a word wasted.  I was already finding myself writing things, snippets, lyrics in some form... and Bruce became an immediate influence on my style.  The River came out, and in the face of new wave, skinny jeans, and British people who for some perverse reason loved reggae, I really did think the guy was the last best hope for what rock was "supposed" to be.

That's when it all started to change.

Rock was getting louder and hairier and faster.  Bruce released Nebraska.  Yeah, I didn't get it.  I get it now, but not then.  Not when I was 19 years old and wanting to turn everything up, dress up, go out dancin'.  New wave started to find its pop legs.  MTV exploded.  The freaks came out at night.  And then Bruce came back with Born In The USA, his shot at the heavyweight championship.

He won the belt, but he lost me in the transition.  It's a pop record.  It was totally misunderstood, by the frat boys who didn't listen to lyrics, who sang "Born In The USA" like it was the "America, Fuck Yeah!" of the time, who didn't realize how pathetic the story of "Glory Days" actually is and turned it into a beer commercial in their heads.  But Bruce became a massive rock star, married an actress, later made a divorce album with lots of synthesizers on it... broke up the E Street Band.  I still didn't get it.  And the guitar players were getting more awesome sounding all the time.  So while deep down I still loved the music that Springsteen used to make, I put all that away... for over twenty years.

And in all that time, I had never seen Bruce live.  Of course I'd heard the legends about three, four, six hour shows... yeah right... but he rocketed from cult status to playing stadiums, at a time when there was no place in Ottawa to play.  In the 80s, no one came to Ottawa.  All the best shows I saw were in Montreal or Toronto.  So by the time Bruce got the E Street Band back on the road in the late 90s, it wasn't something I was along for the ride for anymore.  And a lot of that was my fault.  The hair had been cut, the illusion had been used, I had begun to see through what was left of any rock and roll dreams.

Because it was never about rock and roll anyway.

It's 2012, and I'm older now, still runnin' against the wind, and Mike and Mark and Gail said come see Springsteen with us.  Because he plays Ottawa now, we've got a stadium and I don't have to go on the road.  They've seen him many times... prior to the show they're adding up how many times collectively and it totals well over thirty... and this is my first time.  You can find probably eight million Springsteen reviews on the internet.  That's not what this is about.

Because I wasn't expecting him to still be The Champ.  And he is.  Bruce is the most comfortable artist I've ever seen on stage.  The man is fully in his skin.  I've always wanted to see an artist and a band change up the setlist every night.  Decide on a whim what the next song is going to be.  Tell someone in the front row, "you know what, that's a good song and I'm gonna play it just for you", send the whole band offstage and just do it by himself.  Play new songs I've never heard before and they're absolutely great, they stand up with the best things he wrote thirty-five years ago.  I saw a rock show with absolutely no rock convention, no rock bullshit, no rock ego.  Who else turns all the house lights up for the last forty-five minutes, so you can look into all the eyes of the people around you who you don't know, and realize that you're all sharing a little Christmas morning together?

What makes the legend is the uncontrovertible generosity of spirit that Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band bring to the stage.

The very greatest have it.  My idol Carlos Santana has it (though I never got close enough to see it in his eyes - I saw Santana at Bluesfest from a distance of about 300 yards); young Aussie troubador John Butler has it.  And legions of rock "greats" don't.  The very best artists realize that the experience of a live show is about you, not them.  And this is what I've been missing, in the last twenty years of wondering why rock and roll had to die.

Because it was never about rock and roll anyway.

Once upon a time I played in a band.  I was the singer.  It was a great band, and I was privileged to play with those guys.  And all I wanted to do was sing with them.  Just being a part of it onstage was the most fun I've ever had.  I'm not a great talent.  I can sing a little, I can stay in tune most of the time and remember words and get the job done, but I know what magic voices are and I don't have one.  So sometimes someone might say "you were good tonight" or "you guys were great" and I always made sure to say "I'm glad you enjoyed yourself" because that's what it was all about.  If someone else has a good time with the music, that's what the job is and you got it done. 
The most repugnant thing I ever heard... we were breaking in a new drummer, and the guy had a terrible attitude.  We were practicing for a gig, and this Carl jackass starts going off about how he hates the people who come to bars, all they want to do is drink, request crap songs, and they don't respect him or us.  So I'm staring at this jerk, wondering why even play music for other people you profess to hate?  Never spoke to him after that.  Left the band soon after that.  It was just another brick in the wall.

Life goes on.  Things happen to you.  And events take you away from rock and roll.  But it was never about rock and roll anyway.  It doesn't matter what kind of music it is, because you'll find it in jazz, you'll find it in gospel, you'll find it it blues and reggae and klezmer and polka and even country - not new country but old country - and you'll even find it in techno, believe it or not.  It's the generosity of spirit in the shared experience, that makes music worth having. 

I'd seen too much that lacked that spirit.  And I'd forgotten where that part of my soul came from.  And the truth was revealed to me once again, by the heavyweight champion.

Thanks, Bruce.  I won't forget this time.

I'm done now.

That's What Makes You Beautiful

This is an open letter.  It's my confession, and my final stand.  It's a declaration of independence, and an unconditional surrender.  It's my ultimate strength, and my absolutely fatal weakness.  It's the hole in my soul, and my reason to live another day.  It's a warm safe place where as a child I'd hide, and wait for the thunder and the rain to quietly pass me by.

I love women.

This may come as no surprise to some.  But this is not going to be a list of double entendres for your entertainment.  No, that sentence was meant in one way only, and it's three words, and it's a world of trouble, but it's the only way I know how to do things.

Perhaps I'd better start explaining.  Long ago, I had a close friend.  He and I would hang out all the time, and being young enough to question everything, we would spend a lot of time trying to figure out the hows and whys of things.  But he always had one particular viewpoint, he was the type of fella who just could never understand why women had to be so damn different than us about everything.

And me, I could just never understand why he would women to not be different than us.  About everything.  For various reasons, we're not close friends anymore, but that's another story.  Maybe it's because I grew up in a house full of women, and I've never had a particularly functional relationship with my father, but... I've never found women to bug me.

What's the most common complaint men make about women?  Probably something like "they're unpredictable."  So it's true.  And it's true that men are, for the most part, predictable.  (No one wants to be around a man who's unpredictable.  That's called "prison.")  Now, I have eventually come to understand that I'm a writer.  That means I need stuff to write about.  That means I have to ask questions.  That means I have to learn things.

And I don't learn from men.

My favourite schoolteachers were all women.  My mentors, in business, in life, have all been women.  The four smartest people I've ever known are my mother, my sister, my best friend's wife, and the woman who hired me out of college and made me a professional writer.  Men are predictable.  The only things I've learned from men are about sports, cars, and computers.

When Carole died my immediate loss and regret was that I would no longer have her daily presence in my life.  Yes, she drove me nuts at times.  I needed it.  A woman's presence is an eternal counterbalance, an unanswerable question that gives you something you don't have because it is something that you're not.  I regret that I cannot properly source the following:  upon the launch of a tasteful but graphic exhibition on the nature of sex at the Canada Science and Technology Museum this year, I read an op-ed piece in the Ottawa Citizen written by a professor in human sexuality at Carleton University.  The professor opined that, while the exhibit was well-done and factual, it sorely lacked any explanation of the spiritual need for sexuality... that the true gift of sexuality is in the joining of two so that they may experience and take the qualities of each into themselves.  I'm paraphrasing, for my own purposes.

It's what I consider to be true.

But - and I mean this wholeheartedly - my addiction and obsession is not about physical sexuality.  I don't have to be attracted to a woman at all to reap the value of her simply being a woman.  Once again, it's something I'm not, so it's endlessly interesting to me.  Over time, I've realized that I've never been happier than in the presence of a woman... friend, lover, colleague... and learning something I didn't know.

As I said, a fatal weakness.  I hear you saying it'll be the death of me, except you're too late - it has been already.  But no one ever told me I'd come back.  Can it kill me twice?

I have no doubt that I'll find out.

I'm done now.