Like David, I am messed up this week with the clocks going forward last weekend. Losing one hour should not be so dramatic. I didn’t even lose sleep due to my dedication to nap therapy but coming come from work yesterday felt like leaving elementary school at 3:15 pm. Except no one was up for playing before supper. Something to do with the wearing of ties, I guess.
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The Police
Early in the fall of my grade 11 year, 1979-80, I went out on a Friday night to find the house across town in Truro where Håken (that year’s exchange student from Sweden who played on my high-school soccer team with me) lived. We were meeting up to do some reasonable underage drinking and record listening. The nice lady he boarded with saw the “Support the Police” button my my army surplus coat and told me how nice it was that I was so civic minded. I explained it was a little different (as she would have if he had read the “White Dopes on Punk” one next to it) but didn’t get far into it when I quickly realized that, though 16 like us, what Håken had landed was an apartment of his own. Being European, he was very much up on his drinks and records and he was the best player we had on our soccer team (we won one game that first year) so he was good to know. Having his own apartment made him gold.
One of the groups we listened to the most was The Police who put out five albums before Sting went solo. Yesterday, when hunting out the CD for The Darkness, and also picking up the newSarah Harmer as well as the Robert Plant retrospective of his non-Zep work “Sixty-Six to Timbuktoo”, I picked up the first four Police albums on reissued 25 year anniversary CDs for nine bucks each. [I am, by the way, quite pleased with the 233 Princess Street Sunrise Recordslocation which always seems to have what I want for less than Amazon.]
So here I am, like Ian, thinking about what this music meant and means to me. For the most part, in terms of instrumentation, we were more interested in the guitar and syncopated drumming than Sting’s contribution. It was dubbed “white reggae” which was fair enough for the first two albums but starts to get wonky when you try to figure out Zenyatta Mondatta(released Oct. 1980) or Ghosts in the Machine (released October 1981). I don’t know how many had the soundtrack to the 1983 movie Rumblefish – Amazon reviews here – by the drummer for the Police, Stewart Copland, but I did. I also nicked the CKDU 45 of “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic” for the not otherwise released b-side. I guess I was a fan. And why not? The dual menace of nuclear war and impending computerization is pretty heavily layered in among all their work, Gorby was years off and Ronnie Ray Gun had the button. Good stuff to dance to when you weren’t listening to “Da, Da, Da” or Falco. When Sting went solo where was definitely a feeling he had done a bit of a post-Jam Paul Weller and the Style Council years – gone a bit soft, a bit recorded in the south of France. Bruce bought those albums. I never did.
Time for the Image Consultants?
Why does Paul Martin most often in my mind appear with this expression? Where has he mislaid the thing he wants so badly?
The Darkness
The Darkness’s fitba team at the Music Industry Soccer Six, 2003
Months too late to be cool, I picked up The Darkness‘s CD Permission to Land. The entire thing is such a worthy tribute to 1970’s power rock or whatever you would call it – the nudie arse on the cover, the Marshall stacks, the ELO spaceship theme, even the fact that it is on the Atlantic label – home to Zep. I was very surprised to find out that I can actually sing along with the rapid falsetto lead vocals of Justin Hawkins – but only alone in the car when there is no one in view. I am in touch with my inner 13 year old channelling to 1975 rec room and it is going to be alright.
Wellington at Clarence
Smokes, money and guitars. This block between Clarence and Brock on Wellington holds a Cuban cigar shop, a currency exchange and, on the corner, the Kingston Guitar Shop which is a wonder to behold and the present home of my future axe to practice my Dick Dale licks on. Or perhaps a 3/4 double bass. I have played a double bass. I married the daughter of a man who played the double bass. I could do it. Bongos for Portland and a double bass for me.