My little brother Mike and I were raised in a trailer park located in the teeming metropolis of
Wrights Corners New York - population 40. Not everyone can boast of singlehandedly increasing the population of their birthtown by 2.5%, but that was our accomplishment simply by being born.
Funny, living in a trailer we never
thought of ourselves as
white trash; unlike most of our
farmer neighbors (great folks, by the way),
we didn't have to use an
outhouse and
we didn't have to pump our own water -
we had indoor plumbing!
Needless to say, with an
alcoholic mother and alcoholic step-father, bent each night on getting
fucked up and fucking each other up (and us if we got in the way)
family life wasn't that great.
Mike and I spent a lot of time running away from home.
Living in a
rural environment, we'd naturally head straight for the woods. And when The
Asshole came looking for us, we'd hide in our most secret hidden
fort. It would usually take the
State Troopers three or four days to find us.
Even though we'd have to eat whatever we could find out there (not impossible for
hicks like us, by the way)
we'd get some peace until we were caught and they took us back to the trailer.
This all happened in the mid
1960's, right when the
consumer culture was begining to take hold in the States.
Unlike the kids of today, we didn't have to wear the
right jeans or the
right sneakers to school - being clothed was enough.
But we did notice that lots of the other kids had
Japanese transistor radios and naturally we wanted a radio ourselves.
Both parents preferred to piss away all their money on
booze and any cash Mike or I came across
was immediately spent on food. Clearly we couldn't afford to buy a transistor radio.
So I made our radio.
I took an
oatmeal box, some
copper wire, a
geranium diode a science teacher gave me, and with the help of my
Boy Scout
book I created our own little
AM receiver.
Located in
Western New York State, Wrights Corners was about ten miles from
the Canadian border, and Mike and I would lay out there in
the woods at night listening to this fantastic music from equally wonderful,
Toronto based Canadian
DJ's.
Its been too long to remember the names of the stations or the Disk Jockeys, and they aren't the subject of this write up, but when things got fucked at
home - which was most every night - and when we'd finally had enough of getting the shit kicked out of us, we'd drop out a bedroom window,
and head for our fort in the woods.
Lying there at night, almost always hungry and cold, we'd be at peace listening the most fantastic
music coming from such far off places;
Jim Morrison and
the Doors,
Jimi Hendrix,
The Who,
Jethro Tull,
Frank Zappa,
T-Rex, the
Filmore East, the
Paladdium, the
Filmore West The
King Biscuit Flower Hour,
New York,
Los Angeles,
San Francisco, the list of
artists,
venues, cities and
programmes could go on and on.
And most of these broadcasts were live, so we usually would hear the crowd in between songs; "Whoooo!", "Frank Zappa man",
"Keith is a fucking god" , "Louder, faster", and "more more more more more more".
We agreed with many of the comments, but never could understand why sometimes the crowd would complain about the pace or volume of the music;
there was nothing that my brother and I wanted more than to get away from that fucking trailer and Wrights Corners and to be at one of these wonderful live shows.
How could folks at these fantastic shows complain about
anything?
They tell us the progress of music is measured in
beats per minute;
18th century classical, twenty to eighty beats,
60's rock, thirty to ninety beats,
and
70's punk maybe eighty to one hundred fourty. And todays
Ravers and
Club DJ's clock in at well over two hundred beats per minute at times.
When I was sixteen and Mike was fourteen my
grandparents legally adopted us and we got the hell out of that fucking trailer and into a more normal home.
I soon left to attend
University, and later went to work for
Bell Labs in the early 80's, moving to
Investment Banking in New York (following the
technology and
money) in the later 80's.
Manhattan was a remarkably fertile ground for bands during that time.
Clubs like
Pyramid and
CBGBs had live music seven nights a week, sometimes for as little as $5. I had a ball, at times seeing bands every night of the week. But I never failed to relate these experiences with my little brother. And he had some wonderful live shows to tell me
about also!
Three and one half years ago I moved to
London; another fantastic place for live music.
But no matter where Mike and I were, we would always talk about music,
groups and
albums; it was our shared connection, a reminder of the bad
times past.
Talking about music implicitly gave us relevance on how far we'd come since we were kids. Without saying so, we knew that no mattter how bad things seemed now, as long as we had food to eat, a roof over our heads and music it just couldn't be that bad. The radio and the fort were long past us.
But Mike can't listen to the music anymore, having passed away a few years ago after a long struggle with
cancer.
So I listen to the music for him.
Every year, on his birthday, I put
CDs on his grave. Hot fresh stuff that I know he'd love. And I still go to see bands.
Just last night I went to a free show held a local pub and featuring a young group of
blokes, probably none of them older than twenty.
They gave it their best, doing covers of
The Clash,
The Stones and
The Who, pretty much any group with guitars. Sweating, smiling, exhausted, fingers raw from hitting the strings so fast, they were probably doing one hundred and ten beats per minute.
I had a few pints, and thought it was great!
But after every song the cries were remarkably like what we used to hear on the radio over thirty years ago: "Faster, louder, more, more, more, more".
The crowds are relentless Mike. And the music always gets faster.