April 22nd, 2008 §
Imagine, if you will, a series of rolling thunder strikes, rumbling over and over again. Suddenly, a guitar tunes in with a melody that, although forgettable, lodges into your mind. Garth Brooks begins, “Three thirty in the morning/ Not a soul in sight/ The city’s lookin’ like a ghost town/ On a moonless summer night.”
Now, imagine this scene, over and over again. 24 hours a day, seven days a week, without fail, “The thunder rolls/ And the lightning strikes.” Followed by a half hearted, anthem-esque stadium shaking guitar lick. Before you put the gun in your mouth, remember to scream, and check outside to make sure it’s a moonless summer night, ‘cause otherwise, Brooks’ mopey wannabe poetic ballads significance will be lost.
In the summer of 1999, Estes Park’s radio station, KREV, 104.7 went out of business. Instead of the standard static or colored coded emergency tone, KREV, during it’s transition from safe, contemporary music to safe, contemporary and classic music; a process which lasted about seven months, the station had Garth Brooks’ “The Thunder Rolls” on repeat. Every day, all the time, it was playing, over and over and over and over again.
Granted, most radios have an on/off switch, a remarkable little knob or slider that places the radio in a position of mute or volume, depending on which way you move it. My work vehicle had no such device, or I should say, it had the device, but the knob and slider seemed to have traveled away on their own, perhaps into the mouth of a greedy four-year-old child. The vehicle, a ’95 Dodge Caravan, was used to deliver office supplies and computer parts around town. I was 18 years old, traveling around Estes Park in the dead center of tourist season, driving a mini-van, forced to listen to Garth Brooks at a, well I could lie and say an obnoxiously loud volume, but I’ll tell the truth for once, it was a moderate volume, not too loud, some might even say just right. But that’s not the point. The point is that is was totally uncool. I mean, I could have changed the station, sure, but being wrapped in a mountain range the mini-vans’ AM radio couldn’t pick anything else up. No cassette player, no FM, just AM, a broken volume knob and the diseased KREV blasting Garth Brooks to hundreds, perhaps thousands of elk-hungry tourists, and more importantly, to me. There was absolutely no way I was going to be getting any tourists gals to hop in the mini-van with me.
I was delusional to considerate it to begin with. The reality was that I was in no place to even put the windows down. I looked like an overexcited, pimple-ridden computer geek in a blue polo shirt, driving around with thick black glasses, Garth Brooks and a mini-van with an office supply logo on the side. Perhaps delusional is too kind, I was fucking out of my mind to even allow myself to dream the dreams I was dreaming. I should have been trying to figure out how to turn the blasted radio off, not daydreaming about tourist girls “Waitin’ by the window/ When (I) pull into the drive.”
Regardless, “Thunder Rolls,” is still consistently playing inside my head. It never seemed to leave, it’s embedded there, waiting for a karaoke challenge or moonless summer night to burst out in a sing-song, pseudo country, but more Midwestern accent. Be careful folks, you never know when it’ll happen.
Thunder Rolls
February 13th, 2008 §
I was about nine or 10 when I found out that I had the magic power of the music in me. I remember the situation with the utmost of certainty, but I can’t seem to recall where I’d gotten the copy of Triumph’s Allied Forces. I’d come home from school to an empty house. It must have been in the vicinity of four o’ clock in the afternoon; I seem to recall that CBS was broadcasting a series of highlights from one of Cheyenne’s rodeo’s. What originally prompted me to put the Triumph tape into the tape deck I can’t say, but the second I heard “Magic Power” I knew that I’d found something special.
It was a period in my life where I was still wearing shorts, and fancied those short brim bicycling hats as being fashionable. On top of my shorts (more than likely my favorite pink and black bike-shorts) and rat-tail, I was likely to be adorned with a neon t-shirt, likely to have a dinosaur on it, hopefully glow in the dark, and a pair of shoes, which I believe were Nike’s or Reeboks, with the shoelaces replaced by Velcro and a number of spots where there wasn’t any shoe at all. I’d adorned my room with a miniature basketball court (all the lines were made out of duct tape, I believe my dad had to rip that carpet out, as there was no use in saving it at that point), with a tiny hoop emblazed with a picture of Shaquille O’Neal dunking a ball on it. The ball was blue and white, about the size of a tennis ball.
I’d popped the tape in not really thinking about it, and throughout the first track I didn’t pay much attention, I was locking my attention on the basketball and the hoop; it was a difficult task to play this miniature game of ball without hitting the six foot high ceiling. Seemingly out of nowhere the song hit its chorus, “I’m young, I’m wild, and I’m free, I got the magic power of the music in me,” I dropped the ball, startled, thinking to myself, I’m young, I’m free. Then it dawned on me, if that’s the case, then I too must have the magic power of the music in me as well!
I was overrun with excitement. I quickly ran over to the stereo, pushed rewind and started the song again. Rik Emmett screeched out that, “Somethin’s at the edge of your mind, you don’t know what it is,” and I couldn’t help myself, I answered him in a loud and, pardon the pun, triumphant yell, “I know what it is! It’s the music! The magic power of the music! It’s in me, I know!”
It wasn’t until years later that I realized the stupidity of my remarks, and of the song as a whole. I’d always thought that Triumph really had it; they were something deep and meaningful, something that really made me care about stuff. But I was humming the song to myself one day before work and couldn’t resist grabbing a copy of Allied Forces, for old times sake. I tossed the LP on and, although it was greatly amusing, I suddenly had my childhood dreams all shattered in about three and half minutes. This is terrible I thought to myself, the magic power of the music? You have to be kidding. What was I thinking? The B side wasn’t much better, kicking off with “Fight the Good Fight,” the record was quickly slipping out of my highest honors into the deepest recesses of my memory, where I’d hoped that no one would find out about me singing along to “Magic Power” in my bicycle shorts and short-brimmed hat.
February 1st, 2008 §
Overture – The getting out of bed
i.) Yawn.
Lyrics: A yawn in the morning as the sun begins to rise, a deathly destructive voice of a monster, a monster willing to hi-de! (guitar solo) My head the night before, stammered through a dream, and a capital idea of destruction struck me. (drum solo) I must wake up and destroy the world with my voice.
ii.) The rinse of life
A.) The washing of thy parts
Lyrics: Yow! That water it is too hot, and now is too cold, make dragons spice up the night and leave it heated yeah!
B.) Washing of thy part (contd. side B)
1.) A dance breaks out, motorcycles are involved, I am still unclothed but elegantly covered by soap.
C.) The beheading of work
Lyrics: Now I must behead the work to live my life by my own rule (drum solo, 18 minutes). The work is what has destroyed me, and like the dreams I had before, the dreams that take my life, I must begin to speak, to destroy, destroy their might. (guitar solo, followed by keyboard solo, which sounds like things exploding and the world ending and stuff, this symbolizes my grumpiness.
Bridge – Venturing into the unknown
i.) The transportation.
Lyrics: On the back of thy dragon I travel to the west (or north if I’m going to work) to destroy the monarchy of a world filled with toiling mess. The violence begins to overcome me, but I must, I must retreat. I cannot destroy them all, I must not fester this beast. (Wicked, wicked guitar solo, one of the best guitar solos you’ll ever hear). (This is the part where the dragon turns into that dog thing from the Neverending story, and you the listener, realize that only you can arrange my fate.)
1.) Destination starship .
Lyrics: You must help me, help me find the way, otherwise I will destroy the world. Please, please save me, flip the side to D or E (This is the cool part, you decide the fate of me by flipping to either side D or side E of the record. On one side I head off to work, the other I call in sick).
Requiem – The return home, the eating, the bedding.
This part is only a guitar solo and may have a keyboard solo at the end as bells and chimes come in to reveal my descent into sleep. Both sides of the record end this way, as what I did at school and work are hardly worthy of their own entire sections. Mostly just waking up. Play everyday of the week if you want to know what I’m up to.
January 22nd, 2008 §
The recorder, the ancient marvel of equipment that enabled children across the globe to be able to play music in ways that they never though imaginable. Granted, the instrument is used for formal classical performances by real, educated adults, but the recorders acumen lies not in the professional exposition, but in the amateur’s usage.
When I was in elementary school we would play the recorders as a class, to a tune that the teacher, the crotchety Mrs. Fray, who, I believe was teaching to us from beyond the grave. She appeared to be at least 620 years old, give or take a few, seeing as how I could only count to about 30 at the time. Each Halloween we were assigned two things, one, learn Grieg’s “In the Hall of Mountain King,” and two, take an excerpt from your favorite book or commercial and make a tune out of it.
Grieg was, unfortunately just an ugly excuse to force us into reading sheet music. When the assignment ended up being due, Mrs. Fray would simply tell us to bow our heads and close our eyes, and then she would proceed to play “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” on a dusty, scratched old LP. The song was, when listened to it in this manner quite frightening, but it wasn’t the music that frightened me, it was the ideas that it gave me.
The image that I’d created in my mind of the mountain king’s hall was something like this: A cumbrous underground hall, by underground, I mean under a mountain. The hall was elephantine and elegant, with tapestries and other meaningful displays all around it. The king himself was a colossal ogre of a man, sort of a combination of Andre the Giant and Gollum. He would exhibit robes that were crimson and covered his entire body and would scream aloud to his minions the tasks in which he decided for that day. He could also make lightening spark out of the mountain… and lava. He also had a sizable crown that was made out of the bones of the frightening and snarly monsters that he would capture inside of the mountain. I was always there, eyes closed at first, but suddenly whisked away to the King’s hall, where I would be forced to sit and watch as he tossed around orders and would speak with his gnarly teeth to his disciples. I was never noticed, thankfully, but at each moment I felt on the verge of being spotted and eaten by the King.
After listening to the song in the dark music room we would give our “midterm.” Our “original” piece that we’d converted into music. I chose the Shane Company commercial at the time. It was really the only thing I could remember without having to actually work at it. It was located right off Arapahoe Road on Emporia Street, one mile east of I-25. It was open Monday through Friday till eight, Saturday an Sunday till five. That was my song, I said the words and then played some random notes on the recorder, I think my napkin that had my notes on it read something like: 4/4 A# B# C D E# F G# this is stupid.
I passed the class, in case anyone was wondering. I think I got an S.
