It was my first taste of live music that wasn’t played on a church organ, and I couldn’t have been more captivated had John Lennon himself entered our Grade 3 classroom and started playing the opening riff of “Come Together” on electric guitar.
I don’t remember if we even had music class in our earlier grades, but when Marcel Lefort arrived that year to lend his musical knowledge to elementary-aged kids at Mabou Consolidated School, my mind was blown. A mainstay for many years in the Chéticamp music scene as a member of The Phantoms, this mustachioed troubadour was young, enthusiastic and he was in a band!
More importantly, to that point in my life, I had never heard someone play a song on an instrument that I could also hear on the radio. The radio, by the way, happened to be the only thing anyone in my family could play.
So, when “Mr. Lefort” strode into the class with a guitar case slung over one shoulder, he was Jim Croce, James Taylor and John Denver all rolled into one. He would regale us with stories of his exploits with The Phantoms, and at the end of every class, he would pick up his guitar and treat us to something from his band’s setlist.
John Denver’s “Country Roads” was a popular choice, and he’d get us kids to sing along with the chorus. It was pretty heady stuff for a kid who hadn’t yet discovered music, at least not in any meaningful way.
That came a couple of years later when my older brother started bringing music into our house. I remember the first time I heard Elton John’s “Daniel.” It was on the eight-track player in our family van, and my brother had just gotten his driver’s licence, and I was able to ride shotgun.
We had an old Pioneer eight-track deck which sat atop our fridge with one small speaker. Dad would fire it up most mornings to listen to Ray Mac’s morning radio show on CJFX in Antigonish, or in the evening to enjoy his favourite fiddlers on the same station’s “Scottish Strings” program.
A small collection of eight-track tapes sat alongside that deck, but they didn’t get much play – that was until my brother purchased his very own set of headphones. I will never forget the first time I got to use those headphones. Charley Pride’s “Crystal Chandeliers” would never sound the same after that.
But the real turning point came when the entire family loaded into that same family van for a trip to Woolco in Port Hawkesbury and brought home one of those entertainment centres that were so popular in the 70s.
For those too young to have had the privilege of experiencing those behemoths, they were large enough to house a small family, dominating any room in which they were placed. They featured a turntable, an eight-track player, AM/FM radio and a cassette player/recorder, with enough room between two giant speakers to house your entire record collection.
Since it was sort of a Christmas gift for the family, Boney M.’s Christmas Album, which had just been released, also came home with us. It was a modest start to a record collection, and we played the Feliz Navidad out of that thing.
A Columbia House Record Club membership eventually outgrew that entertainment centre, but not before I had rediscovered the music of The Beatles with the purchase of the Red Album and the Blue Album, which split the band’s anthology between a couple of two-record sets. “Rediscovered” is probably misleading, because with little more than CJFX providing the soundtrack to my life, I was actually discovering songs like “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and “Revolution” for the first time.
Columbia House’s propensity for screwing up your order allowed me to discover a lot of amazing music I’d otherwise not be exposed to. I’d never even heard of Huey Lewis when his Picture This album made its way erroneously into my mailbox. I also had no idea who Supertramp were when I accidently received Breakfast in America in lieu of my actual order.
Over the years, I’ve owned a lot of the same albums in all three formats – vinyl, cassette and CD. Many of them are greatest hits collections because I was never a big fan of buying an entire album just because I liked one song. But of course, that conundrum is now a thing of the past as my main source of music is an Apple Music membership.
There are thousands of songs in my Apple Music library, as it encompasses almost every genre of music. In fact, MIKA directly precedes Minglewood in the alphabetical list of artists whose music I enjoy.
But while Apple has broadened my appreciation for music in ways that other formats can’t, there’s still no substitute for live music.
On Saturday evening, my wife and I made a last-minute choice of our local bar for supper. They had pushed the boat out for Valentines with a fake flower and a candle adorning each table, and a singer was tuning his guitar and setting up an amp when we arrived.
His first three songs featured Cat Stevens, George Harrison and James Taylor, as he had correctly sized up the musical appetite of the predominantly 60+ crowd assembled, so it was no surprise when we had finished our meal that he started strumming the opening chords of “Country Roads.” Only this time, there was no encouragement necessary to join in the chorus.