Music
Music has been important to me and played a significant role since I was young. Although I didn't like to attend lessons or practice very much, I had early training in piano from the age 6 to 8. At that time, being the youngest of three children my parents caved in to my demands to quit. Shortly afterwords, I belive around the age of 11 or 12 I got my first tape recorder / player. This openned the world of music up to me, along with the Beatles and 1960's pop music that I heard on a regular basis. I remember having the Beatles Red and Blue albums, the long and winding road was likely my favourite of all their songs.
With my parents at home and in my Dad's car (which had an 8-track!) we would like to pop or popularized classical music like: Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Glen Campbell, Burt Bacharach, and even Mozart Mania! I remember singing Beatles songs at a cabin on Sakinaw Lake on the Sunshine Coast as a kid, as well as seeing the BeeGees live at age 12.
Around that same year, Abby Road came out and the Beatles split up, each going their own way, I gravitated towards Paul and the Wings, Band on the Run most profoundly, At the Speed of Sound, and of course Venus and Mars. It was a few years later that I tuned into John's Music, never to forget the day he was shot, weeks after Double Fantasy came out. Throughout Highschool I began to like Classic Rock, although it wasn't classic then, it was new: Deep Purple, Led Zepplin IV, Heart, The Guess Who, Trooper, Chilliwack, Bob Seger, George Thorogood, Steve Miller, Lynyrd Skynyrd, as well as progessive rock like Emerson Lake and Palmer, and Blue Oyster Cult.
Billy Joel, George Benson, and of course Fleetwood Mac! They were my first ever big concert, held at Empire Stadium in Vancouver, where Banister and Landry had, on May 6, 1954, broken the four-minute mile. What proved to be most central to my taste from early teens through to today is the music of Supertramp, (Crime of the Century for sure in top 10!) as well as Pink Floyd (Dark Side being near #1; Animals & the Wall). I also began to get into Jazz and Big Bands in those years, hanging out with the "band boys" although I wasn't playing in the last years of highschool. Steely Dan and Frank Zappa were also common heard in those days. Jean Michel Jarr, ELO, Alan Parsons and other forms of electronic music were also often listen to. Especially in the early 80s, like the Cars,
After highschool while doing undergrad at UBC I got into the Vancouver jazz scene, hanging out with friends who were either studying music at UBC or playing around town in different ensembles. The Veji Band was becoming at Big Deal in the mid 80s, lead by Hugh Fraser, other amazing players filled the ranks. I got to hear DexterGordon live at the (old) Soft Rock Cafe that was like a small dance studio with tables in the front and a stage at the back. Coltrane was really "The One" to capture me, inspired me to start playing tennor sax again. He, along with MilesDavis became almost all that I listened to during those first years. Then got into a flurry of other bop and free form players like Sonny, Bird, Pres, Dizzy, Duke, Mingus, Ornette, Albert Ayler, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp and, Monk! I also really got into a lot of standard vocalists, like Ella, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughn, Shirley Bassey. I also started listenting to more "classical" orchestral, modern symphonic, concerti and quartets.
Through the mid 90s I got well into Jazz, saw Miles Davis Live in Vancouver in 1984, being unusually interactive with the people in the first few rows, not the Miles I had heard stories about on Don Warner's Jazzland from CBC Radio Halifax. During the later 80s I started listening to the Grateful Dead, really enjoying their jamming, normally second sets, into drums and out of space. I Saw Carlos Santana play in the same bill as the Dead at a show at theTacoma Dome August 26, 1988, and caught the Dead's New Year's Eve show later that year as well! Meanwhile Miles was still Rocking it on Arsenio and telling us that Prince is Genius and that basketball is music.
Through the 90s my tasted really broadened to include Zakir Hussein, Salif Keita, Gypsy Kings, R E M, and Phish to name a few. During that time I volunteered with the Vancouver Jazz Festival as a driver, and I got to drive, and sometimes hang out, with a lot of really interesting people, including: John McLaughlin & Joey deFrancesco, John Scofield and Charlie Hayden, Don Cherry, The Blind Boys of Alabama, to name a few. In 1994 I got to finally to see Pharoah Sanders live at the "Cultch".
Musica Cubana had also really grown in my CD collection, especially after spending six weeks there in 2004. Since then my tastes continue to expand and evolve, espcially as a parent having to listen to what my children listen to. As I began teaching music psychology I have also been introduced to a great range and richness of music from my students.
Travelling also has introduced me to a lot of new music, including the sounds of the jungle in southern Mexico, and the traditional music of Guatemala.