The Band I Grew Up With

I haven't talked about music much, and not for quite a while. Growing up, my parents played lots of music in the house; Mom had several vinyl collections of classical music (including one that had a mistake on it, but I was the only one to pick up on it for some reason). They also had lots of stuff from when they were growing up, music from the 50s, mainly, like Elvis, the Platters, and the crooners of the day. And when I was about seven or eight, I was gifted my uncle's record collection, which had stuff from a few years later: the late 1950s and early 1960s. But no Beatles. Instead, it was American rock n' roll: Everly Brothers, Four Seasons, Sandy Nelson (a drummer who did his own albums), Gary Lewis and the Playboys, etc. It was a decent collection, and that's mostly what I grew up listening to

My first experience with the music of my generation was when some of my Grade 8 classmates did a heavy metal tribute band at the school talent show. I distinctly remember they played Black Sabbath's Iron Man. In a small, elementary school gymnasium. With amps borrowed from Spinal Tap.

Some readers may know that I have Aspergers, which is a form of autism. I didn't know that at the time; I was just different from the other kids. I was, and still am, sensitive to loud noises. I had grown up next to an Air Force base and been nearby when CF-101 Voodoo fighter jets took off and did airshows overhead. I had never heard such a concentrated wave of noise in my life, and I literally had to leave and return to the classroom to get hold of myself. I absolutely hated it, and went back to the classic rock n' roll that I knew.

Fast forward a couple of years. The family had moved to Toronto, and I was in a new school. A friend of mine, Jason van Sluytman, was listening to something on his Walkman. Yes, it was a cassette tape; it was the mid-1980s. Curious, I asked him what he was listening to. He offered me the headphones. Remembering the metal concert in the gym, I was hesitant, but he showed me where the volume knob was, so I gave it a listen.

The album was Huey Lewis and the News. Their debut album from 1980. The first song was Some of My Lies are True (Sooner or Later). And I was hooked. I had never heard anything like that. And it was a new band, not something from my parents' generation. Sure, the album was about five years old, but so what? I listened to that song about fifty times in a row. I bought the cassette, the first music I'd ever bought. And for my birthday that year, my friends got me the rest of the News cassettes. At the time, there were three others: Picture This, Sports, and Fore!, which was the newest release. I was a Huey Lewis fanatic. I didn't listen to anything else for quite a while, but I listened to those albums a lot.

If I were to be asked what it was about this band that grabbed me, it was the sound, plain and simple. It had echoes of what I had listened to from my uncle's records, with groups like the Ventures, who were an instrumental group. Their debut album cover was a part of that as well; they looked like a band from the golden age of rock n' roll. But the opening riff of that song...it blew me away. And even though it didn't chart and had no hit songs, that debut album was like a window on a whole new world for me. I loved every song on the album. I still do; I can replay the entire album in my head.

So, as I settle into a new month and a new book (hi, Cameron!), I'm going to spend a bit of time reminiscing about my favorite band, looking at their albums and doing some reviews. Nothing spectacular or commemorative; I just felt like talking about them. And listening to them again as well. Because even now, nearly forty years later, it's still the best band I ever heard, and my greatest regret is that I never got to see them live. I almost did, shortly before I met my wife, but it was an opportunity missed.

So, I'll take a closer look at that debut album tomorrow night. In the meantime, time to do some research...