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Regular Columns Listen Hear!
Regular Columns Listen Hear!
Listen Hear!
| Issue 3: Listen Hear! |
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| Written by Jaimie Vernon |
| Friday, 11 September 2009 22:20 |
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 THE PUCK STOPS HEREPop culture archetypal perceptions of America follows that they have an unwavering love of Mom, apple pie and baseball; the perception of Canada is beer, beaver and hockey. If God had wanted man to skate, He/She would have made our ankles pre-sharpened. It cannot be overstated just how bad a skater I was – after eight years, I still couldn’t keep the blades pointed down on the ice. They were usually facing skyward, or at best, sideways…rocketing toward the boards along with the rest of me. Inertia is a bitch. It became my undoing when, in 1978, I crashed for the 91st consecutive time that season. Knees first. I made it through eight seasons in the West Hill Minor Hockey Association by making up for my lack of skating with the ability to stop pucks with my face, groin, ribcage or other available body part (many of them simultaneously). Where the opponent’s shot went, I artfully slid across the ice in time to drag the puck into the corner where the play would stop. An excellent skill set for a goaltender. Not particularly useful for a left winger. And so it was on this one fateful super-slide across the ice at Art Thompson arena in Pickering that I conversed with particle board and Plexiglas for the very last time; I immediately handed my kneecaps over to the ‘Bobby Orr Home For Retired Bodily Functions’. As far as doctors could ascertain, the closer I got to puberty, the farther the space between my knees grew. At the rate my growth was going, I would soon have sufficient room to smuggle six Pomeranian dogs and an imported Romanian automobile in the pit of my knees. The reality of my situation was that the cartilage was bruised and in danger of eroding. One more severe blow and I’d be unable to walk for a very long time. My Hockey Nights In Canada were to be permanently pre-empted. Somewhere out there were league officials dancing jigs of joy knowing that my Hockey Mom would no longer be tormenting players, coaches, parents, Zamboni drivers and snack bar hostesses with epithets like “Get off the ice, you idiots!” Even though hockey was my favourite sport, I never agonized over not being able to play anymore. The game was getting too competitive, too violent, and far too expensive. It was costing my father an arm and my two legs to maintain this hobby and I felt a responsibility to ease up on his wallet. However, being fourteen years-old and most likely to do things that teenagers do, my parents were determined to keep me off the deserted ‘mean’ streets of suburban Toronto (ironically, Malvern was a quiet bedroom community then not going to hell in a hand basket until 20 years later).  They asked me what I wanted to do for a new hobby. I didn’t even blink. I don’t think I even thought about it. The words just blurted out of my mouth: “Play guitar!” They thought it harmless enough. Little did Mom & Dad realize that they wouldn't be sending me out to cause havoc in the streets, but in nightclubs instead!  LET THE MUSIC PLAYThe real impetus for wanting to play guitar was a subliminal yearning to emulate my new musical heroes. Not long before the ‘Vernon Hockey Mishap’ my musical palette was broadening. I had just made friends with some new kids on the block named Gord and Brad Giblin who were playing me a lot of new music including a re-introduction to The Beatles (well, it was new to me). I had been impressed with the release of the Red & Blue albums in 1973 when they had come out, but I was too young then to appreciate the material or buy them for myself, so it wasn't until this new influx of spinning tunes at The Giblins that I really got rolling not only with the Beatles, but music in general. It was my spiritual awakening, as it were. My ritualistic bond to AM radio was still intact and so with a displaced American friend, John Shuler, along for the ride, we lived and breathed radio that summer. And in 1976, the airwaves were alive again with the strains of Queen, Sweet, Thin Lizzy, Peter Frampton and classic '60s acts making big comebacks – The Four Seasons, Johnny Rivers, The Beach Boys and, of course, The Beatles. The band's deal with Capitol Records in North America was to expire and the label negotiated revised terms for a renewal that included a bigger commitment to repackaging their catalog and to exploiting the vaults. It wouldn't be long before the new Beatlemania would strike with 'Live At The Hollywood Bowl', and 'Rarities'. But it was 1976's 'Rock And Roll Music' – on the heels of McCartney's re-domination of the charts with "Let 'Em In" and "Silly Love Songs" – that made Baby Boomers start buying records by their heroes again. I got 'Rock And Roll Music' for my 13th birthday that year. It glistened with a tinfoil sheen and was decked out with artwork that seemed to suggest that the Beatles were 1950s sensations...wing-tipped Cadillacs, jukeboxes and soda fountains -- all symbols of an innocent era that died with the assassination of JFK in 1963 -- only seconds before the Beatles got off that airplane in New York in February of 1964. The irony of those images was lost on the art department at Capitol. And it's still debatable whether Capitol's decision to call the album 'Rock And Roll Music' at the same time their former act The Beach Boys recorded a remake of the same song that summer was deliberate, a happy accident, or another ill-conceived marketing strategy.  Re-branding the Beatles legacy of Top 40 hit songs as a '50s-styled "Rock And Roll" band seems ridiculous now. Yes, they were once a teen pop act but then grew into a serious songwriting pop entity. They stopped being a tried-and-true Bill Haley & The Comets type R'n'R act the minute they left the hellfire of the Star Club in Germany and Brian Epstein stuck them in charcoal grey collarless jackets with stove-pipe pants. But the brilliance of picking the band's 'rockers' as a compilation was second to none (save for the inclusion of "Helter Skelter" which was not so much a rock song as a pre-cursor to heavy metal). Pitting McCartney's Little Richard impressions against John Lennon’s Gene Vincent bravado was the first sign that the two Fabs had more in common than previously believed. And the history of Ringo's contribution was immediately re-written with a choice selection of cover tunes otherwise relegated to album filler on those American versions of Beatle albums post-1964. "Boys", "Matchbox", et al. George, alas, received short-shrift as he had during his entire tenure with the band.  Needless to say the album, having burst onto radio with the 10-year-old-but-fresh-sounding "Got To Get You Into My Life", sparked an interest for me in the Beatles that I can truly call obsessive. Christmas of '76 became a hunt for all things Beatle. I finally got the Red and the Blue albums and spun them until the grooves turned white. Being Canadian, I was fortunate enough to have gotten the version of the Red album that contained previously unavailable mono mixes of five early Beatle tracks AND the George Martin James Bond theme lead-in to the song "Help"...none of which was on other global releases of this set. Then something wonderful happened in early 1977. Radio began playing a track called "Sub Rosa Subway" by an act named Klaatu. DJs were quick to point out that the song SOUNDED like The Beatles. And Steve Smith of the Rhode Island Journal went a step further saying that the band's debut album, ‘3:47 EST’ (released to NO fanfare in September 1976), was a good case to believe that maybe the Beatles, who were hot again, might have been building up to a secret reunion. After all, Capitol had failed to re-sign any of the band members to solo works EXCEPT Paul McCartney that year; Lennon had done ‘Walls & Bridges’ and then let his contract lapse (to a life of blissful retirement until 1980 as it turned out), Harrison had launched Dark Horse and allied himself with WEA for distribution while Ringo went to Atlantic Records.  True or not, Klaatu might have been the closest thing to having a ‘new’ Beatles record we were going to get. Until KISS came along to deflect my interest for a few years, The Beatles remained my favourite act for years...and led me to Klaatu...which, in turn, foreshadowed events that would change my life 20 years later. On the cusp of the Beatles' remastered works being re-issued, this edition of GWN is dedicated to all things Fab as it pertains to the influence it had on Canada and the music scene here. We'll even give you the REAL story behind that conspiracy theory that Klaatu was The Beatles. Goo goo ga ju-jubes, Jaimie Vernon |
| Last Updated on Thursday, 01 October 2009 16:08 |