When it comes to the life of the ear, we all have our stories.
Because life tends to send us in circles rather than straight lines, we can sometimes catch glimpses of our earlier selves many years later. Look hard enough, and we see at least some recognizable landmarks that we revisited more often than we might think. It is those kinds of moments that can make it seem like a subject picks its author.
In my case, a pattern emerges early and turns into a persistent interest, a magnetic north, always in sight. A lifelong passion for sound began as one of many adolescent boys in the 1950s who built crystal sets and tried to get a scouting patches for knowing how to send and receive Morse code. It was clear even then that radio rivaled food and water as one of the essentials for sustenance. That first “cat’s whisker” receiver was one of many breadcrumbs dropped over the years, creating a meandering trail that rarely strayed from the peculiar geography of the auditory world. When I did wander off the path–as with a hand-me-down movie projector that rewarded my tinkering with frequent electrocutions–the message to stick to the machinery of sound was clearly received.
Words and music that found their way to the ear always held me in their grip, like the weekend nights spent listening to KOA radio’s live bands from Denver’s old Elitch Gardens. It had to be KOA, the 50,000-watt giant with a tower and building that stood majestic and completely alone out on the flat prairie. At night and under a cloudless sky, it was an Art Deco apparition of glowing amber windows next to its broadcast tower. Lore has it that the fountain in front was also cooling water that circulated through the bowels of the building to keep the huge transmitters from overheating. Fact was then stranger than fiction to know that the high voltage equipment inside came into its own at dusk, sending its clear-channel electrons deep into six other states.
If it wasn’t radio as a subject, it was a one-tube electronics kit purposefully miswired to become a nuisance transmitter sending the sound of 45s as well as a generous dose of interference to the rest the neighborhood. Then there were also a series of shortwave sets attached to a hundred feet of naked copper wire surreptitiously attached to a nearby utility pole. Hearing the BBC from London was one of the rewards.
This was the 1950s. New long-playing records joined the singles on a two-tone portable Symphonic phonograph. Ravel’s tonal fireworks and the Eastman School’s Frederick Fennell were favorites purloined from a modest household collection. A family friend and Fennell’s Mercury recording of Leroy Anderson’s music-Volume 2 combined to rouse an interest in the acoustic mayhem that was possible with drumming. Lessons and an assortment of school and private bands followed, producing a musician good enough to play in a statewide concert band, but one who also made more of a splash falling off a stage mid-performance than with mastery of the forty rudiments.
If I was just an ok percussionist, I was still swept along with the post-war generation that was completely captivated by the many riches of audio recording. Record browsing at Tower Records or Sam Goody was a Friday reward for surviving the week. Bargain label reissues of classical and jazz albums began to accumulate, as did recordings of European organs that puzzled college friends looking through my stash of vinyl for the latest from The Doors. Bach and Buxtehude learned to hang out on the shelf with Basie and Brubeck. It was all stuff that had to be heard, even if the playback equipment was a sorry collection from Radio Shack’s sale table.
I’ve written before about the “sound-centric” person. The label fits, and represents more Americans than we might think. Especially in these times, our easy access to recorded music is such a gift.
We have a new understanding of where the “front lines” are right now, and they are much closer than the beaches of Normandy the Korean demilitarized zone.
A book series I edit includes two volumes of scholarly research exploring the meanings and feelings associated with the great monuments built in in Washington D.C. Visitors usually look forward to seeing the elaborate edifices put up to honor Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and others associated with the nation’s real or and sometimes imagined enemies. Most cities emulate these monuments in their own tributes, frequently featuring generals and other leaders on horseback. Statues of generals on top of a horse have become their own urban clichés.
Even so, it strikes me that all of us involved in these projects were busy cataloguing the familiar while overlooking the obvious. In truth, scores of nameless individuals soldier on quietly doing much of the nation’s work, which can become ominously dangerous. These men and women are often not in the sights of the hero-makers, but it’s time they were. In the time of the COVID-19 virus we have suddenly realized how much we owe our safety and perhaps our lives to nurses, doctors, sanitation workers, first responders, grocery store employees, senior-care aides, postal workers and delivery men and women. We now have a new understanding of where the “front lines” are now, and they are much closer than the beaches of Normandy the Korean demilitarized zone.
I’ve never seen a monument to a check-out clerk from Target, an E.R. doctor in scrubs, or the employee behind the Deli counter at the local grocery store. Right now their heroism during hurricanes, natural disasters and especially this virus seems much more tangible than the tributes to individuals who have been affiliated with battle-ready organizations, but never had to consider the possible dire consequences of helping a customer. It’s interesting that the iconic actor John Wayne fought World War II and the Vietnam War only from the soundstages of Hollywood, keeping up his faux toughness with a heedless and rabid form of anti-Communism. And yet, for all of these dubious achievements he’s been honored with his name on a major American airport. Sometimes we seem to miss the greatness of people around us doing essential work.
We should have the grace to realign our thinking to more clearly honor that those who have the patience and perseverance to show up and provide help when the health and lives of Americans are in peril. They deserve our gratitude and far more recognition.
Words and music that found their way to the ear always held me in their grip, like the weekend nights spent listening to KOA radio’s live bands from Denver’s old Elitch Gardens. It had to be KOA, the 50,000-watt giant with a tower and building that stood majestic and completely alone out on the flat prairie. At night and under a cloudless sky, it was an Art Deco apparition of glowing amber windows next to its broadcast tower. Lore has it that the fountain in front was also cooling water that circulated through the bowels of the building to keep the huge transmitters from overheating. Fact was then stranger than fiction to know that the high voltage equipment inside came into its own at dusk, sending its clear-channel electrons deep into six other states.
