| | James, on the drug topic: sorry, I'm a little touchy about that. I grew up around them, saw firsthand what they do. (Not that I didn't do my own experimenting.) I am not naive; I know that much of rock music culture is influenced by the tune in drop out mentality. I was the outcast for not going that route. And after losing a few friends, I hate to say "I told you so..." but I told em so.
But I am bemused, at best, and resentful, at worst, about accusations that come my way about my interests when people say I must be on drugs to like this or do that. Truth is, I'm just wierd. Growing up, I was out there, I like weird things like aliens and sci fi and such. (What little kid doesn't ?) But it's not weird to me.
I remember being 4 years old when I was aware of my mom's record collection. I'd hear Pink Floyd, Yes, Rush, Elp, etc. I was too young to know about drugs, politics, philosophy. All I heard was the music, and I loved what I later learned was called prog rock. My mom played other stuff from the 50's 60's and 70's, (and eventually the 80's), and while I was aware of it, and liked some of it, I fell in love early on with the funny sounding music with the keyboards and sound effects. I was 5 when I told myself I wanted to play guitar like David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. (I didn't know his name at the time.) I was in love with the album art, which was so much more interesting than the photos of most rock albums, with the long haired guys who looked like my mom's friends. (And the art reminded me of Dr. Seuss. I think Dr. Seuss played a large part in all this. I love Dr. Seuss.) I didn't know there were restrictions in music listening, I didn't know that if you liked prog, you couldn't like new wave (and for the longest time, I thought the Cars were prog because of the keyboards. Tell that to a new wave punk fan and they will spit on you.)
But I also like astronomy and space, and I remember that when I was 4, and my father died, my sister and I were told that when you die, you become a star in the sky, and that my father was up there. I've been looking at the night sky ever since. When I was four, I wanted to be an astronaut. It was 20 years later when I realized why. But put that together with the prog and the Dr. Seuss, I think you can begin to see why I resent the drug claim. You can see why I can appreciate Lanza, and symphonic music, and rock and Motown, but they will never mean to me what Pink Floyd, Yes, Rush mean to me. When I hear "Star Man" by David Bowie, or "Rocket Man" by Elton John, I don't hear a story about a burned out hippie, I think of my father "waiting in the sky..." I see the Star man on the Rush album, and I see my father. I see Star Wars, I see my father, my dark father who I will never know. I see a spaceship on Yes's FRAGILE album, I see myself leaving Earth to find my father. I heard Pink Floyd THE WALL when I was 5. I heard the words later:
"Daddy's flown across the ocean,
leaving just a memory.
A snapshot in the family album,
Daddy what else did you leave for me?"
Roger Waters, the songwriter, may have different ideas about how to fix the world, but he and I "bonded" the day I heard those words.
Of course, I'm grown up now, and I know that it's all just a fantasy. The space Cadet set out for his father, and realized that the universe is much larger than that.But what I learned from prog rock, especially Pink Floyd, is that these tales of outer space are a metaphor for inner space, who we are on the inside. I didn't need drugs for that. I had my music. Leonard Piekoff had it right when he said that drugs don't expand your mind, but making mental connections do (something like that.) So for me to hear from people that "you have to be high to listen to it"...I know I'm not typical, I've seen the stoners burn their brains to the Dark Side of the Moon...but that's their loss. But it just reinforces the fantasy that I was born on the wrong planet, and that it is they who are the aliens.
(Edited by Joe Maurone
on 5/06, 6:28pm)
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