Music Before the Money

I wrote Road Food in Word Perfect 5.1 on a 1991 Tandy 386 laptop while cruising back-and-forth from Bergen, Norway to Newcastle, England approximately 20 times. I did it without any library books (and there were no internet connections at the time) or any other source material. But that was my plan. I wanted to write a book without having to pause for research.

The main reason for writing this story was to get down on paper some of my experiences in a band. For example, do you know that a Hammond M-3 organ does not just turn on-and-off. There is a start and a run switch. Start activates a starting motor, similar in purpose to an automobile engine starter. Its job is to get the main tone wheel motor to spin on its own. Then, with an oily-electronic smell, the organ is ready to play.

Road Food is about a ’70’s band, Jannie Mack and the Silver Track. Just when they have a recording contract in their hands Jannie disappears. The leaderless band distintegrates and the members drift off to other bands and jobs. Twenty years later Jannie’s daughter appears at wanting to know what became of her mother. This takes her on a cross-country trip to interview the remaining members of the band.

This was fun because I knew what a few of my many band members were doing so I could incorporate their experiences into the characters. The venues were collages of many of the places we played.

Maybe one day I’ll polish it up and get it on the shelves.

I was instructed many years ago in the art of dream interpretation. For example, there are many different realms of sleep and the images that haunt us every night. Each episode, I was taught, can be construed to be a certain reflection of an aspect of everyday life or the life to come - or the life lived.

As I mentioned in a previous posting many people put a pad of paper by their beds so they can write down what they remember from their sleep. These precious seconds are like a piece of paper on fire and you scribble as much on your pad as you can before the fire consumes the paper, that is, your dream disappears.

I believe there is nothing metaphysical about understanding dreams. What’s needed is a certain degree of intuition, mixed with a real knowledge about what’s going on in your life. Issues that are suppressed during the daily survival process might sneak out at this time. I say “might” because we are all different and our value systems as varied as snowflakes.

What I do know is that there is no definite meaning for all dreams. A person who dreams he or she is drowning might mean that they actually almost drowned a a child or could mean that finances are overwhelming.

I haven’t tried the pad beside the bed yet . . . but maybe I’ll do it tonight.

Some of the most vivid memories of my days playing across western Canada are of the old hotels. Whether it be in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan or Fort Kent, Alberta these venues were basically a bar with a bunch of rooms upstairs. Most didn’t even have a restaurant.

There was a pretty standard routine for checking in. After loading in we were given keys by the caretaker and, after he pointed to the old staircase, he usally disappeared leaving us to find our own way. The keys were always the same: brightly-colored plastic tags with the name of the hotel and room number stamped in the plastic. There was always instreuctions on how to mail the key back if you walked away from the place but I wonder how many people actually did. I still have one from the Daysland Hotel in Alberta.

Few rooms had bathrooms. That meant you had to share a large one at the end of the hall. If you were dilligent, you got up early before the drunks. That way you asured a moderately clean place.

Because the place was a wooden structure the hotels had a life of their own - squeaks, rattles and groans - and that was beofre the occupants finally hit the sack at 4:00am. Then, just when you were about to get to sleep, the radiators would get up and gallop down the hall - or seem to.

We would practise in the morning before they opened the bar and the aroma of the place would be fully realized: stale beer, cigarette smoke and the failt odor of puke. In the afternoon the strippers would start, bored-looking women of all ages and shapes who would attempt to tantalize a group of middle-aged drunks and, on certain days, us. The tables were covered with orange terry-towel cloths with stretchy bottom that snug-fit the tables. Like the red-and-black carpet, these had black holes from the cigarette butts.

At night the place came alive. Revellers seemed to emerge from the prairie grass and the real spirit of the town was out in full force. With them came the reason why we played.