Musings on Music

Since the beginning of musical recordings, music has been primarily pressed or etched into a record that people could take home and play. Even before the radio existed, broadcasting music into people's lives, phonographs existed, allowing people to enjoy music of their choice in their homes.

From the phonograph, to the record player, and then a flurry of changes -- 8-track tapes, cassette tapes, CD's, to streaming services. Nothing has changed the way people enjoy music like streaming services. Artists no longer need to sign a record deal to get access to those magical machines that etch songs into discs, they can just record it and release it. As such, consumers no longer purchase entire albums, nor even know all of the songs that may be released at once in the artist's vision of a story arc or flow.

I grew up during the era when music was moving from 8-track to cassette tapes. My Walkman was my most prized possession in high school. I'd had the unfortunate experience of having a tape player "eat" a cassette tape one too many times to want to buy my music in that format. I insisted on buying albums that I would then dub onto cassette so I could take my music with me. At least if the tape wore out I could re-dub the album again. 

Sure enough, those albums lasted for decades. I foolishly gave away or donated most of them in my 30s, when our home was overrun with children's toys and supplies. How ironic, making a wise investment decision in my teens to a foolish one as an adult. 

One of my favorite bands of the 80's was U2, and I could not wait for their newest release, The Joshua Tree, to come out. I asked for it for my birthday, and was thrilled to open it. I unwrapped the plastic wrap and carefully slid the album out from the cover. I took in the smell of a new record, a combination of ink from the lyrics written on the sleeve and petroleum from the record itself. 

After the birthday festivities were done, I took the record over to our record player and played it song by song. I laid on the floor with a pillow and read every word of the lyrics, gazing at the photos of the band members, reading the credits and imagining the process of writing songs with The Edge, Bono, and other contributors whose names I didn't know. 

Which is why, when my dear friend Lisa, who I first met when I was in 6th grade, asked me if I'd like to go to a concert called "Classic Albums Live: U2's The Joshua Tree," I immediately said yes. Of course. And yes, it was not Bono on stage. And yes, it was in a concert hall with people who politely sat in their seats, instead of dancing, even though I wanted to dance. The goal of "Classic Albums Live" performers is to play a classic album note-for-note, word-for-word, as close to the original as possible. 

I remembered every single word to every song, even those that never played on the radio. I was transported back to high school, specifically my drive to my saxophone lessons, the one time each week when I spent 20 minutes in my mom's Mazda 626 by myself, able to play any music I wanted as loudly as I wanted because she wasn't a passenger in the car.

My friend Lisa has a distinct memory of "One Tree Hill," because she was listening to it when a coach or someone important in her life told her she was a really good runner (she was a member of the high school cross country team). She associated that positive feedback and the encouragement it gave her to that song, which happened to be playing in her ears at the time. 

Together, she and I sat in a darkened concert hall and were transported back immediately to our high school days, which, thankfully for us both, were some of the most memorable and special years of our friendship. 

What a gift to share this special evening with a long-time friend! 

Our Time Warp and Wormhole Graduation Season

High school grads playing kickball on their childhood school field.

time warp: [noun] an anomaly, discontinuity, or suspension held to occur in the progress of time.

wormhole: [noun] A theoretical tunnel between two distant points in our universe that cuts the travel time from one point to another. See space-time continuum.

Both our daughters have graduated high school, and we now have a strange spring graduation season. We've been invited to the graduation parties of neighbors, friends, the younger siblings of friends of our children, and all of this seems like a distant memory. Not only a distant memory, but also a far-away memory.

We no longer live in the neighborhood where these parties are being held. Driving down those streets brings back all the wonderful memories of playing in the park with our then-toddlers, visiting with neighbors between yards, walking to restaurants with the family for a meal. And as much as I've stayed connected to friends and neighbors in Minneapolis, I don't return to the area too often, and it feels like a completely different world altogether. 

The graduation parties are mostly for kids graduating from Southwest High School, the school my children would have gone to had there not been mental health issues, neurodivergency, and a pandemic involved. My children stopped being these kids' classmates after 8th grade. Looking through each graduate's photo displays was a strange experience. I recognized the graduate, I recognized many of their classmates, but my children were never their classmates at this stage in life. My own kids are now 18 and 21, yet I still picture their classmates as the 1st and 2nd graders that I knew them as most. 

Paula, the parent of one of the graduates, and I.

How I remember her daughter (Sophia, far left, Lindsey and Marissa)

I recognized and re-connected with so many parents of kids, some of whom lived just a street or two away from us, but our kids were never friends. Most surreal was visiting with 3rd grade teacher for both our daughters. She is a lovely and kind person, and had such an incredible influence on both our girls. She has one more year of teaching ahead of her and then she is retiring. She said how wonderful it was to be invited to the graduation parties of the children she taught years before. If I thought I was living in a time warp, I'm sure she feels that a hundredfold. 

Miss O'Hara and I

The last grad party we went to was across the street from the lower grade school that our girls attended through 3rd grade. As the evening wore on, the new grads organized a game of kickball on the school field, the girls were in their party dresses, the boys in their good pants or dress shorts. And as I watched them play, I imagined them as little 5-year-old kindergarteners on that same field, learning the rules of of the game they so easily played now.

Maybe it's because I moved around a lot as a child, but the idea of playing on my elementary schoolyard field as an adult is an utterly foreign concept. 

That evening, driving the 40 minutes to our new home in the country, I reflected on the changes in our lives. Our children are now out of high school, one nearly done with college. We live in a completely different area, surrounded by trees and open sky. Back through the wormhole to our new little corner of the world. 

The Glue That Holds Us Together: High School Reunions

Class of 1989 in 1989

Class of 1989 in 2019

This weekend was my 30th high school reunion, and it was pretty amazing.

I graduated with around 150 students from Sheboygan Falls High School. I have fond memories of my high school years — playing in the band, acting and playing for musicals, forensics competitions, and all-around fun.

Social media makes these reunions so different from what they used to be. We all keep up with each other's lives from a distance, but only what we all share on Facebook. A fun day, first day of school, a special dinner out for an anniversary, a kid's sports accomplishments.

But when we all get together, we share each other's lives. And because we've known each other so intimately, granted a long time ago, we are all pretty open about challenges facing each of us. Divorces. Careers gone askew, demanding jobs that suck the life out of a person. Challenges raising children. Caring for aging parents. The real deal that doesn't get shared on Facebook. And often these troubles are met with encouraging words of "I know what you're going through," or "You should talk to so-and-so, they went through something like that," or just, "I'm sorry that's happening to you."

Plus there are things to celebrate. One classmate opened a tab and let people know to have a drink on him. His explanation? "I've just been so fortunate in my life, and I want to share my good fortune with others." Wow, that's awesome, thank you!

I was speaking with another classmate and asking how life was going and he said, "I love my job, I love my family, I've got good health, I'm about as happy as I can be in my life right now, and I'm so grateful for it." That's the best any of us can ever hope for, and I'm so happy for him.

And sharing those high school memories, oh my! What is it about graduating high school together that becomes a glue that holds people together?

As seniors, my girlfriend Jody and I once had Domino's pizza delivered to the school for lunch. (There were other people who did this with us, I can't remember all of them.) We brought it into the lunch room to eat and the vice principal just about had a conniption, I've never seen that man's face so red. He was a small guy, not very tall or broad, but we got out of there with that pizza pretty quickly. Eventually we got smart and had pizza delivered to Jody's house just across the street. We would run to her house so we wouldn't get caught leaving the school to eat it, then dash back before the bell rang.

My friend Judi recounted spending hours in my basement, listening to music and goofing off. Had Wendy been there I could have told some good stories of a sleepover at her house where she pretended to be sleep-talking but wasn't really, she was just giving us a hard time.

Our class is planning on creating a scholarship fund and at our reunion appointed a committee of people to work on this. That's a pretty amazing legacy that we'll be leaving for future generations of graduates from Sheboygan Falls.

It was a great weekend getting together with my classmates, and I am so grateful for their being in my life, even if it's only every 5 years.

Comparing cute shoes, 25th and 30th reunions (Myself, Kelly and Rachel)

Goofing off.

Nostalgic for Jesus Christ Superstar

This is the album cover that was in our cabinet under our record player.

A live performance of "Jesus Christ Superstar" played on NBC last night, and I was the only one in our household interested in watching it. Lindsey watched the first five minutes, declared it "noise" and went upstairs to watch a movie on her kindle in her room.

Not that I'm religious, I just really like a good rock opera. Actually, I think JCS is the only rock opera I know. There is no dialog that is not set to music, and the whole thing is all electric guitars, drums and screaming solos, I'm pretty sure that's the definition of a rock opera.

I first got to know Jesus Christ Superstar as a kid. It came out as a record in 1970, and my parents had the album. It was a two-album set, with sides 1 and 4 on one record, 2 and 3 on the other. Our record player let you stack up to two records and it would play two sides one after another, and then you had to flip the records and re-set them to play sides 3 and 4. I still remember the anticipation of hearing the second record drop, the click of the needle picking up and then the scratch as the needle hit the starting groove and began to play. I would sit with the lyrics, which were written like a script, and study the words as it played.

Original performers in the 1970 Jesus Christ Superstar album.

The original album featured Murray Head as Judas and Ian Gillan as Jesus. Ian Gillan was the lead singer for Deep Purple, and later joined Black Sabbath. You can just imagine the initial recording, right? Literally screaming vocals, funky guitar rifts, slap bass solos.

The live performance last night maintained much of the original rock performance, but updated with today's vocal talents and instrumentation. I've only ever listened to the music, never watched a performance of it, and it was only last night that I realized that "Jesus Christ Superstar" is not about Jesus, it's about Judas. Judas has more solos and attention focused on his very human angst at not wanting but needing to betray Jesus.  

Brandon Victor Dixon as Judas in NBC's "Jesus Christ Superstar." He already killed Alex Hamilton as Aaron Burr in "Hamltion," betraying Jesus was next on his to-do list.

In Judas' final solo, he has ascended to heaven and is accompanied by angels. Dante Alighieri would not have agreed with this idea, as he put Judas in the final circle of hell in his epic poem "Inferno." But in this interpretation, Judas did a necessary deed to make a martyr of Jesus, and his payment is ascension to heaven.

I knew every word and completely enjoyed this interpretation of this classic. I thought Ben Daniels, who played Pontius Pilate, was weak on his final proclamation sentencing Jesus to death, and Alice Cooper was not the energetic King Herod as he should have been, but he did add entertainment value.

Cast and costuming of the 2018 NBC live performance of "Jesus Christ Superstar."

Of course, I smiled thinking that Paul Gilles was a huge fan of Alice Cooper, Deep Purple AND Black Sabbath. I think he would have cringed seeing the great Alice Cooper in this diminished role. But perhaps not, maybe he would be happy to hear that some of the classic rock sound that he loved is being embraced by a new generation. I know I did.