Music was limited when I was a kid because, as I understood it, my mom, who was an aspiring pianist, had frozen during a recital and had made the choice to eliminate music from her life. For that reason, the short wave radio was my source of music as a young kid. I remember on long car rides having cassette tapes to play that my dad had purchased. Mostly big band sounds, the rat pack and that sort of thing. It was not until I was about nine or ten that the sounds of the Beatles made their way to South Africa. I remember telling my gullible sister that “Ringo Starr was at the corner café” and she literally got in her car, a blue mini-minor, and raced to the café.
When I was about 12, my mom and dad gave me a little record player of my own, and I began to investigate music I could buy. My very first 7 single was “Proud Mary” by Creedence Clearwater Revival. I played that and the next single I picked up was Elton John’s “Crocodile Rock”. Over the next few years, I got a little job and used the money to buy a real stereo. Big old speakers, an amplifier, a tape deck and a turn table. It was so great to sit in my room listening to music on my headphones while I paged through Asterix and Obelix or TinTin books that I loved reading in those days. As I got older, my reading was more in the Mad Magazine realm.
Malcom, my brother in law’s dad, Jimmy, worked for a record importer, so I got his samples. (he called them “cut outs” because the album cover had a bit cut out near the title. he never had great music, but I enjoyed listening to all the new artists.
I used to love going over to my sister Sue’s place. She and her husband, Rex, had this great couch and they had some killer music I loved to listen to. Their collection included Cat Stevens, Bread, America, Dave Mason, Derrick and the Dominos, Crosby Stills and Nash and so on. I loved that stuff. As I grew into my teen years, it was the 70’s, so disco was big. Our teenage parties had tunes by Carly Simon, Tina Turner, Donna Summer and Barry White to name a few. Artists like Rodriguez, Thin Lizzy, The Four Seasons, and others ruled the day.
At home, I tended to listen to Gethro Tull, Bad Company, Spooky Tooth, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Beatles, Grand Funk Railroad, Jimmy Hendrix, Led Zeplin, the Moody Blues and so on. When I was 13, we got to see a bootleg version of Woodstock, and that opened my eyes to more music including Janis Joplin, Carlos Santana and others. When I went to Germany in 1975, I picked up a copy of the Made in Japan by Deep Purple and I was the talk of the town. Parties were largely dance parties with a DJ running the tunes. Mostly it was dance music of the disco variety. I remember kissing a girl named Gail at one party and another girl named Kim at another. Elton John was a massive record producer with him and Bernie Taupin just turning out album after album.
You can really divide my music experience into my South Africa days, and then my American days. South Africa was somewhat behind the American scene. We had a shitty Top 20 on Friday nights on the radio where we got to hear some hits from overseas, but by and large, we were behind by several years. In 1976, while I was preparing for my Matric exams, I remember listening to Heart on the radio playing “Crazy on You”. It only stands out because I moved to Seattle in 1977, and of course, Heart is a Seattle band. I wanted to meet the band so much.
Compared to Johannesburg, Seattle was a music town. Bands came through town, I had just missed seeing Pink Floyd playing “Dark Side of the Moon” at our local university, and one by one, bands came through Seattle. My early college days were quite music driven. I had discovered pot, and listening to music stoned was amazing. I think my all time favorite music experience was getting to see Bob Marley and the Wailers on their “Babylon by Bus” tour. I had front row seats and that concert is still my gold standard for rock concerts. I got to see several bands over the next several years. I say Billy Joel, Carlos Santana, Third World, Joan Armatrading, Boston, The Who, The Kinks, Pink Floyd, James Taylor, Dan Fogelberg, Carol KIng and many more. We had a great rock station here in Seattle, two actually, KZOK which is still around and KISW which was the station I listened to more often, I think they may be around too. they had this great show on Sunday nights, called the King Biscuit Hour or something, where they played a whole album all the way through. I remember my dad asking me “How come there were no ads on the radio”.
This is a typical playlist from KISW 1983, in their best 25 of the year which inlcudes:
25. “Middle of the Road” – Pretenders
24. “Pride and Joy” – Stevie Ray Vaughan
23. “Love is a Battlefield” – Pat Benatar
22. “Rainbow in the Dark” – Dio
21. “Sister Christian” – Night Ranger
20. “Sunday Bloody Sunday” – U2
19. “Shout at the Devil” – Motley Crue
18. “Lick It Up” – Kiss
17. “Big Log” – Robert Plant
16. “Mr. Roboto” – Styx
15. “Gimme All Your Lovin'” – ZZ Top
14. “Foolin'” – Def Leppard
13. “Every Breath You Take” – The Police
12. “Seek and Destroy” – Metallica
11. “Pink Houses” – John Mellencamp
10. “Holy Diver” – Dio
9. “Let’s Dance” – David Bowie
8. “Bark at the Moon” – Ozzy Osbourne
7. “Owner of a Lonely Heart” – Yes
6. “Cum On Feel The Noize” – Quiet Riot
5. “New Year’s Day” – U2
4. “Separate Ways” – Journey
3. “Rebel Yell” – Billy Idol
2. “Sharp Dressed Man” – ZZ Top
1. “Photograph” – Def Leppard
When I was first in Seattle, I was fond of acoustic guitar music and I listened to artists like Eric Tingstad and David Qualey, as well as jazzier sounds like Spirogyra and Al Di Miola. I LOVE Spanish guitar. Music here in Seattle during those years was ubiquitous. I enjoyed visiting the record stores and fingering through album covers. This was all pre-CD’s, and album covers were great art. When I was a kid, and I picked up “Thick and a Brick” by Gethro Tull, I used to lie on the floor listening to the album as I paged through the cover, which was constructed like a newspaper to reflect the story of the concept album. Concept albums were a thing. The Who did “Tommy”, I remember seeing the movie with my then girlfriend, Shani James when I was 16. The Who did, “Quadaphenia”, Pink Floyd did “The Wall” and Tull made “Thick as a Brick” as sort of a rock opera. The two big record stores, Peaches, in the U district, and Tower Records near the Seattle Center were great fun. You could go listen to part of an album on their headphones before you made your decision to purchase. I loved those stores.
I loved paging through the music rags to see who was coming to town. I got to see interesting bands in little venues as well as bigger bands in much larger venuies. I really liked the Paramount Theater where I saw bands like Bob Marley, vs the smaller venue, the Showbox, where I saw Paul Simon and also Devil Makes Three as well as David Crosby. It compared very favorably to the large stadium sounds. I remember going to see the Grateful Dead at Memorial Stadium and it was, well, wet. When I saw Pink Floyd and The Who, those shows were in the Kingdome, a concrete toumb like venue that no longer exists. There were always flyers posted around of upcoiming concerts.
We had a friend, Dave, who was an audiophile. He had thousands of records and only listened to his music through high end earphones. When CD technology first became available, he poo pooed it stating that the CD sound was too austere and that the bumps of the stylus over the vinyl was part of the experience that CD’s missed. For a time, you could sell still records to purists who were opposed to the CD revolution. A few years later I ran into Dave and asked him if he was “Still a vinyl-only snob?” He laughed and said, “No, I have gone to the dark side.” Its hard to explain what it was like to have vinyl. You had to have a big box to keep your albums in, you needed a record cleaner, you needed to have your turntable perfectly balanced and you needed your stylus to be mint. Your turntable needed an amplifier and speakers. Your speakers needed to be balanced and you had to have subwoofer plugged in as well in order to get those base notes just right.
The 1980’s brought the first wave of new music, and bands like Blonde, DePeche Mode, The Pretenders and others all hit the streets. Brian Ferry was one of my favorite artists. His MTV videos were great. MTV came around at that time too, and that was a great way to consume music. The artists used video to make amazing representations of their music. The Talking Heads was one of my favorite bands with their MTV videos.
Now of course, we have electronic access to our music on iTunes and Spotify and others, and it is remarkable how easy it is to find a song or a band and get the specific song you are searching for. Like record stores, the CD stores came and went. I know when my kids were teenagers, I used to wonder how those rap tunes would play when they are older. I still defintely listen to the tunes that were the sound track of my youth. I just never really appreciated rap music.
Even as I am writing this, I am listening to the Bob Marley and the Wailers albuim, “Kaya”. It’s still a great album.
My Life: A Memoir 