Phase 2
The first phase of my musical history was all about discovery. I discovered music, and then discovered a love for it. Phase two began between the years 1959 and 1961 with a more relaxed exposure to music. Around the time the record player broke down, my mom and I moved out of my grandmother’s place and into a small house at the end of the street. I still got plenty of tunes, especially Elvis, as granny kept me while mom worked, but at home the television began to take on a greater role.
Even before learning to read, I was able to spell Harrigan because of the theme song to a television show called Harrigan and Son. The theme song for Bat Masterson also rang inside my skull, and “Johnny Yuma was a rebel….” My grandmother became a big Michael Rennie fan, so The Third Man Theme played every time the show played (we even had a windup music box that tinkled the theme). The incredibly apt Bernard Herrmann theme for The Twilight Zone gave me spinal chills. And, of course, Michael Rennie and Bernard Herrmann converge with The Day the Earth Stood Still, which marked my first theremin experience. Not mentioning Route 66 would be a sin, and some of the past music sources like Ed Sullivan and Perry Como still contributed, but this history is beginning to bleed over into the next one (television), and before that, lemme say that the music on tv helped my soul.
Always interested in anything that looked like a musical instrument, I had played, often mercilessly, a number of fake guitars and ukuleles (and believe this: for sheer destructive prowess, Pete Townshend had nothing on me when the urge to smash and bash took control) and other insulting fakes like four note harmonicas whose reeds bent to uselessness with one single blow, and tiny plastic replicas of violins and guitars, etc. that came stuffed with candy and other junk, Chinese handcuffs and the like, into these mesh Christmas stockings my mom bought every year. None of these really fostered anything but the most superficial aspects of musical performance.
Mom did get close when she bought me a red plastic melodica that I became fascinated enough with, in fits and starts, to play at times. For a good year or so, until the mouthpiece broke while in the toy box, I blew that thing as soulfully as possible. There’s no way to gage the quality of the improvisations, but since I had no special abilities and absolutely no training, chances are they were probably weak.
Sometime in this period I also got a kid’s drum set. It could not be compared to a serious kit in any way but looks, in that it did look real enough, but everything about it seemed to inspire failure. The bass pedal was made of a thin strip of cheap tin attached to a wooden stick with a ball on the end of it. The drum heads were made of a kind of strong cardboard (not strong enough to withstand a determined beating), but it eventually went down like the other toy instruments. Despite its shortcomings, the kit taught me that I was no natural at the skins, even though I’d tried my best to imitate Little Ricky.
No comments:
Post a Comment