Music Before the Money

(From August 2007)

My brother had a chrome Craig tape deck hanging below the console of his new ’70 Ford truck, only his continuous-loop tapes (not to be confused with the new Compact-Cassette decks) had a round hole on the underside. He had bought the package – deck and tapes – from a guy he knew up North and the tapes included; The Tremoloes, The Byrds and The Mamas and Papas. Unlike the newer 8-Track tapes these wonders had only 2 tracks of stereo. With his 3 x4 speakers in the doors there was a not even a hint of bass in the songs.

So the Byrds were the first band that I could listen to while driving – the first albums, that is. “Mr. Tambourine Man” is so ingrained in my very being that I could sing it backward. “Chimes of Freedom” is another favorite and the rest have the same jingly-jangly sound that Jim (now Roger) McGuinn made famous with his Rickenbacker 12-string guitar. He claims he bought one after he saw the The Beatles in “A Hard Day’s Night.” Through their many changes – booting out David Crosby being a landmark decision – I followed them, seeing them in concert in ’71 as a long-haired country-rock band belting out “Jesus Is Just Alright With Me” and “Chestnut Mare.” As with their earlier recordings Bob Dylan’s songs were the mainstay of their albums. In fact it is safe to say that Dylan – along with The Byrds and part-time Byrd, Gram Parsons – invented the country-rock genre just as they collaborated to start folk-rock. Parsons came a little later on to the group and stayed a short while. He inspired British bands like The Rolling Stones and Elton John with his country-blues.

McGuinn was such a role model for Tom Petty that Petty’s early sound was a mimic of McGuinn. This is a strange occurrence because McGuinn’s vocal style was an attempt to copy Bob Dylan. (Again, I digress.)

The good news and bad news was that this particular 4-Track deck could also play 8-Tracks which started me on my long and harried relationship with the colored-plastic cartridges. Anyone who has ever owned them knows that you had to be an “8-Track mechanic” too. Because if you left them in the sun or out in subzero weather the tape stretched or wound incorrectly on the spools and you had to cut them open, fix the problem and then tape, yes tape, them back together. My 8-Track collection, at $8 a pop in the early ’70′s, amounted to thousands of dollars. Now I have hundreds of “buggered-up” cartridges that won’t play anymore.

Suggestion for you 8-Track enthusiasts with hundreds of old tapes: Stack your unusable cartridges on your patio and build a wall out of them. The bright colors will be pleasing to the eye. Fashion the wall like you would a small monument and plant a bonzai tree before it. Then, every morning, you can greet the rising sun in the lotus position and hum a few tunes to the long dormant collection of tape that faces you. (Now that’s digressing!)

I still have the 4-Tracks . . . . One of these days I’ll find a player on ebay and crank up the Byrds. I may yet find the bass on the tunes.

Everyone has seen music videos in which the stereotypical band vehicle- usually a brand-new MCI coach with customized interior- pulls up to the back door of a club and disgorges the boys in the band, their roadies, a couple of girlfriends and a dog. (Willie Nelson’s “Honeysuckle Rose” was a perfect example but Willie used an old early 60’s bus.)

Although buses aren’t new to the music business they weren’t the only mode of conveyance at first. They became popular as roads became more prominent across North America – and coincided with the demise of the Big Band Era when trains carried almost everything. When the followers of Jack Kerouac and TV’s Route 66 began their own voyages on the roads more and more bands – ones which basically haunted local venues – began to tour, school bus-type coaches began to appear. (Jefferson Airplane is the perfect example of a group that, according to Grace Slick, was happy to stay in California and record. But they were the exception.)

The band bus was brought to folklore by the TV show, The Partridge Family, where the fictional family (based on The Cowsills) painted up an old school bus in cute colors and used it to truck their gear, and themselves, around. This, however, was not the first such usage. If you watch then opening of Woodstock you’ll see a school bus packed with concert goers plodding onto Yasgur’s farm.

The real truth about bands using school buses was that they were cheap to buy. Why? In essence, school boards got rid of them when it was no longer financially wise to keep repairing them. But this did not deter many bandsmen – and women. So, in the 70’s and ’80’s, it was not unusual to see one broken down on the road – any road.

And the cost for repairs? Big bus tires, even retreads, were more expensive than ordinary car tires and there were more of them. What about brakes? Way more expensive. Broken axles. The list goes on-and-on. And not to mention that, even when gas was cheap, school buses were as aerodynamic as a brick.

Also,i f you’ve ever been out on the lone prairie in a an old school bus at night, the middle of January, you’ll find out in a hurry that the heaters were never even adquate and neither was that little fan that was supposed to act as a defroster.

I first saw the Chapman Stick in a copy of Guitar Player magazine in 1973. As the name implies it looks like a piece of 2 X 6 with strings, or something from a Medieval orchestra. This instrument was created by guitarist Emmett Chapman around 1970 in order for him to playing a style of guitar he developed. By creating a two-handed technique that encompassed tapping Chapman was able to play two musical ideas simultaneously like pianists did.

The two-handed tapping is what guitarists would call hammer-ons. The player’s fingers attack the strings in much the same manner as they would a piano thereby producing tones. Since an ordinary guitar is limited in this use the Chapman Stick filled this void.

The first prototype of Chapman’s instrument, called “The Electric Stick,” was first played in 1970. Later refinements produced a commercial model in 1974 that was sold to the public as the “Chapman Stick”.

Looks-wise, Emmett Chapman’s “Stick” is a long guitar-like fingerboard that uses 10 strings (or 12 strings for the new Grand Stick) up 25 frets. There is a stereo pickup near the base and conventional tuning pegs on the machine head at the other end. The neck is a narrow 3 1/4 inches wide and stretches 34 inches from nut to bridge.

The floating, stereo allows the treble and bass to be passed through separate amplifiers for different effects which makes for a very full sound. There are individual volume controls the pickup easily accessible for the right hand.

There have been many varieties of materials used in the manufacture of the Chapman Stick during its long run. In the late 1980′s, when experimental guitars like the Bond Electraglide were in vogue, a small number of polycarbonate graphite Sticks were produced. These were heavier, came in a variety of colors and the tones were crisper. However, most of the Sticks were, and still are, made in one piece from warmer-sounding exotic hardwoods such as rosewood. Because the grains are different no two Sticks are exactly alike except in quality.

Through the years the most accomplished Stick player has been Tony Levin, who performed with Peter Gabriel and King Crimson. Levin also did a cuts on the Pink Floyd album Momentary Lapse of Reason. Alphonso Johnson has played with Santana and Fergus Marsh was a Stick player with Bruce Cockburn. Locally, Brian Bourne is featured with the group the Newfoundland group, Rawlins Cross.

The Chapman Stick retails from between $2,000 and $3,000 depending on the number of strings and pickup type.

“Going down the old mine
With a transistor radio.”

- Van Morrison, Brown Eyed Girl

When I watch kids bopping down the street with wires from MP3 players flipping in the breeze it always reminds me of my first portable music machine, a Sony 2 transistor radio with a black leather case. The radio was about 4X the size of the first iPod and had holes in the tight leather case for the speaker and slits to adjust the volume and to tune in stations. The radio wasn’t mine but I absconded with it. My brother won it is a newspaper delivery contest and he wasn’t into hauling it around so I pinched it.

In 1958 an upstart Japanese company struggling for post World War II prominence began manufacture of the TR-610 making it the first transistor radio to reach the masses. Texas Instruments had one for $50 but the Sony came in at under $20. Now the portable record player with the 50 foot extension cord and the car radio had serious competition.

Iwe only had one radio station in my area and it used to play rock and roll from 4 to 4:30 on week days. the rest was Perry Como and The Living Strings and such. So it was at night when i would take the radio outside and look up at the stars thinking that I could see this invisible magic carpet to the great songs down south in the U.S. called “the skip.” Ham Radio guys named it this because powerful radio waves from the U.S. bounced of the ionosphere and into the little tuner in my Sony. Then the tunes would spill out of the 2″ speaker for maybe 30 seconds at a time before another song or a religious station would cut in. And this is how it was all night long. So I got pieces of a pile of songs!

I never went anywhere without my radio. Even if “square” music was playing the Sony was a companion because I knew that when the sun went down I would be in “Music Wonderland.”