13. Music is the healing force of the world
“It is also rarer to find happiness in a man surrounded by the miracles of technology than among people living in the desert of the jungle and who by the standards set by our society would be considered destitute and out of touch. – Thor Heyerdahl
Music has been around for millennia. Many years ago, the Gladiator Amateur Hour was sponsored by the Heston Chariot Corporation. The time changed from B. C. to A. D. but AC / DC wasn’t on the scene. The Rolling Stones didn’t perform in the Stone Age nor could you find Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Years Eve there either.
In the early twentieth century you could hear classical music, blues and jazz, soon to be followed by rhythm and blues and rock and roll. I’m not sure when elevator music appeared – probably around Otis’s time. I’m not talking about Johnny Otis or his son, Shuggie either. Fusion was happening for some time, especially with blues, rock, classical rock, jazz rock and country rock. Around the 1980s we were blessed with punk, grunge, Indie rock, alternative and rap. Besides the others, I almost forgot about disco. Technology made all this possible, getting better as time passed.
Musical notes were saved on cylinders, leaving much to be desired, fidelity-wise. It improved immensely with records, some of them labeled as hi fidelity. Then advancements brought us records in stereo, including a disc or two that moved beyond the normal three-channel sound. I owned one record of that concept by Robert Byrne, Sound in the Eight Dimension. Soon music was on tapes: reel-to-reel, cassette and 8-track. The latter was short lived to the relief of us all. This was followed by CDs, which I appreciated immensely since an identical collection of songs on CDs weighed a great deal less than the corresponding records. I could say good-bye to hospital visits and back problems.
Within a few years, a person could have music collections without records, tapes or CDs, thanks to MP3s. For many years FM radio provided songs without having to have CDs or records. Don’t forget about satellite radio. YouTube, which has only been around for a decade, not only gives us sound, but also the video, thanks to the Internet. Tech also blessed us with more advances including streaming of sounds from across the globe. It’s so much better than screaming. You can listen to my brother Ken’s radio program from the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams online. It’s only on Tuesday afternoons from 3 to 6 pm. The link is www.mcla.edu/wjjw. I tune in to it and jazz stations from Toronto (JAZZ.FM), Newark (WGBO.ORG) and Seattle (JAZZ24.ORG). If you choose, you can find streaming blues, rock, country and just about anything else by searching the web.
The second edition of my cookbook is still on YouTube, with its schmaltzy music – or so I thought. Someone else added it a few years ago but said she couldn’t delete it. I don’t think I can either. I looked for it but couldn’t find it so it may have been purged, for good reason, especially the background noise. The original cookbook was revised, resulting in the original becoming out of print, then republished and thanks to the greed of big business, unpublished. Now it’s available only as an ebook. You can go to my web site, click on information under the cookbook on the home page and read all about this travesty.
Lou told me about a YouTube video from the early 1970s, performed by Don Potter. The song, “She’s Gone”, not to be confused with the song of the same name by Hall and Oates, is from the early 1970 Chuck Mangione Friends and Love concert, in Rochester, NY. I was at the sequel a year later, Together, at midnight. The air was perfumed with weed. I don’t do that stuff but nonetheless it was a highly memorable performance.
In early 2015, my brother Ken sent me an early YouTube link for Potter and Bat McGrath, when they were in the group, the Show Stoppers, formed in 1965 from The Three Majestics. The link is youtube.com/watch?v=ergw_9L85eY. Before that, I became aware of a site that easily converted a YouTube video to an MP3 – very hard to believe but it works quite well. This is done with www.vidtomp3.com. Another thought worth mentioning is that you need not log onto either site. I felt I’d never use the conversion site, but that changed quickly.
From an early age, music permeated our home, even if it included polkas on the weekend. If you like rock and roll, it’s so similar to this Polish tradition, you’ll like both. I bought my first LP record in the 1960s. Soon after I owned a cassette player and I was recording music on that device. Four influences developed my music appreciation further than it had been: record clubs; Hugo, a former boss; libraries; my brother Ken. I mentioned the latter earlier but didn’t add that his collection of records is gargantuan, later becoming more so with the arrival of CDs. Living close to him and his wife, I cat sat at his home for a short time. Maybe it’s more like record sat since I listened to numerous discs and eventually put some songs on cassette. I was also introduced to more music on other visits there.
I joined two record clubs and besides buying a record here and there, spent ten dollars a few times for grab bags. Some of those offerings I listened to only once, but others I liked, including the 1969 record by Julie Jools Driscoll, Brian Auge Auger and The Trinity. Called Streetnoise, Clive Toli Thacker and David Lobs Ambrose also contributed. I must have been delighted with this fusion of jazz and progressive rock because I later purchased the CD version. I was fortunate to see Auger in Greenwich Village a few years after the record came out. Being there was a great evening.
Hugo was related to either a record company executive or a DJ. He handed over records to me that he could live without. There were some that managed to be almost OK but others that I really liked, including two jazz records by the psychedelic group, the Blues Magoos. I’ll say a few more words about them in a bit. Naturally I recorded some of the songs on cassette, which I also did with music I checked out of libraries, both records and CDs. I joined libraries as soon as I could, though CDs weren’t around at first. I’m not sure if you could borrow records then, but that didn’t matter since my interest was books.
Many of the songs on my records wound up on cassettes, with some being recorded on CD when I bought a CD recorder for my stereo system at the end of the twentieth century. If I had waited a bit, that purchase wouldn’t have been necessary with YouTube, streaming and MP3 players. I still have many cassettes of music, with good fidelity. One day I entered the name of a group from way back, Dakila, and found it on YouTube. The album cover appeared; I recognized it; I heard one of the songs, which with I was familiar. I tried a few more musical groups, such as Archie Whitewater, US 69, Loading Zone, Butts Band, Chimo and City, which you may not know. They were all there as well as most of the others I tried to find.
Listening to music from Toronto, I heard some fine notes and then found that song on YouTube. I used the video to MP3 converter and before long I burned two rock CDs and a jazz one. I had the option of recording many more CDs the same way but figured the music was already on my cassettes so why bother. In some cases you can listen to a concert or full album on YouTube. Because of all these music possibilities, thanks to the wonders of technology, my CDs and cassettes have had more of a rest.
One thing I’m not thrilled about is a YouTube video with advertisements. It’s even worse when some video has an ad in the middle of it. That’s what I saw on the reunion of David Sanborn and Bob James just recently. At first I wasn’t able to separate the ad from a video or one song if the video is of an entire album, specifically a song by the Blues Maggos. Using my stereo system I managed to do the split. One song by that group is on the jazz CD I made and another on one of the rock recordings. I really want to achieve the same result using only my PC. I’ll have to send an email for help in this matter.
I can’t say enough good about YouTube as I found musical groups still rocking today, such as Swing Out Sister, the European sax player Candy Dulfer, Matt Bianco and Tower of Power. I also discovered an outstanding tribute concert to the late George Duke who died much too young.
Technology has been a great thing with regards to music. It’s not without flaws, as streaming has some compatibility problems. I mentioned a few stations but my favorite is 91.1 from Toronto because I think it’s the greatest jazz station as well as the ease with which I connect to it on my desktop or ERD. I mentioned the influences in my music appreciation and I must mention my teachers, especially music ones. I never took lessons in the subject, but they were directors of choruses and choirs.
The song, “I Love Music”, by the O’Jays, was released on the album, Family Reunion in 1975. That tune reached the number five spot on the charts. The words of the title at the beginning of this chapter are from the song. As you can tell, the title describes my outlook. Music can heal people much faster and more safely than any drug. You can’t fight someone, friend or foe, if you’re dancing or singing.