End Of Week 1

The end of the first week of the first month of the year, is already here and I still haven’t talked about music.  Music has been one of those constants in my life just like smells or pictures or even tastes that every memory may have its own song and every song lead back to a memory.  In addition, songs and music have been a source of advice, or support, or release or inspiration or courage or even pain.  Music is in my life just as much as water and air.

It was Christmas of 1982 when my dad brought home those weird-looking rectangular boxes that had knobs and lights on them. An amplifier, a tuner, a tape deck, a turntable and two speakers.  Up until then we only had a really old record player that could play some old 45s, from when my parents were still young.  The new toy brought the excitement of LED lights and new terminology that included stereo, Dolby NR, FM, Hi-Fi and LP.  We had no idea what they meant and that was making them important!

After my dad hooked up all the cables, we turned on the radio to make sure it was working.  Then tried some old tapes and found out that they worked too.  Finally, we tried some of the old 45s on the record players and discovered that they worked as well , and switching from 45 rpm to 33 rpm made the songs really funny!

The first jewels that arrived home were a record from Anna Vissi, an up-and-coming Cypriot young singer that had a really good presence in the Eurovision contest, the all accomplished ABBA with their album Visitors, and some record from Stelios Kazantzidis.  Shortly after starting listening to the radio, we demanded that dad would buy us the Rocky III soundtrack with the unforgettable Eye Of The Tiger, which he did in a tape that had that soundtrack on that side and the soundtrack of Fame on the other.  Keep in mind that Greece had just entered the European Union, socialism was on the rise and the Cold War between Reagan and Brezhnev was peaking.  Nevertheless, I was on my way to rock n roll…

Dexys Midnight Runners released Come On Eilleen and my friend from school Christos and I were constantly mumbling close-enough lyrics while riding our bikes, but at least we were in tune.

June of 1982, I spent two weeks at the YMCA camp, at Agios Nikolaos, where the theme songs, for different reasons and from different sources, were David Bowie’s Cat People (putting out fire with gasoline), and the Beetles’ Yellow Submarine.

The following year we bought a collection album of the 1983 pop hits, which included Every Breath You Take, by The Police, Total Eclipse Of The Heart by Bonnie Tyler, Don’t Pay The Ferryman by Chris de Burgh, and Africa by Toto.  

Growing up in the city, under conditions of pressure from school and basketball and family, and raging hormones, was tough.  I needed an ally, someone that knows and understands and went through the same aggravation.  No, no, it was not my parents, cause parents know nothing.  No, it was not friends as I was still in the process of discovering them.  Yes, it was rock and roll, it was the Boss himself, it was the musical genius of Bruce Springsteen.  

To be fair, in 1984 I loved two albums: Reckless by Bryan Adams and Born In The USA by Bruce Springsteen.  Learned them by heart, sang them every day, on my way to school, on my way back from school, wrote the lyrics in my books and on my desk, thought about the lyrics when I was thinking about a girl, then thinking about the girl when I heard the lyrics.  I discovered poetry in the sleeve on an LP and I got hooked for life.

The air waves over the city were now filled with music-pirates.  Music for all tastes was available all day long.  A boom-box appeared in our house and slowly made its way to my room where it lived permanently.  If I was in the house, the radio was playing, even when I was sleeping, or studying.  I knew all songs that were popular, I knew all artists and what they sang, I followed the American and British charts and picked the tunes that resonated with me.  Whenever I hear Solid as a Rock from Ashford & Simpson, I recall a cold winter Sunday, studying Chemistry at my desk, in the corner of my room, and being able to see the top of the mountain across the city, where the first snow would fall.  That was the period when I discovered Elvis Presley, through a 2-hour show dedicated to his life, which I recorded on tape and listened over and over and over…

1985 was a great year in my life.  I was miserable as any adolescent would be, but thinking back, I love the feeling of that year.  My cousin Mary was tasked to teach me English but since my focus was on basketball and girls, I was not studying and making her life quite difficult.  In a moment somewhere between inspiration and desperation, she bought me an album in order to use the lyrics for the English classes:  Brothers In Arms by Dire Straits!  One of the best albums of all time!  Listened to it, read it, studied it, sang it, quoted it!  How many times have I sang Why Worry, trying to overcome a bad situation, or whispered Your Latest Trick, in heartache and disappointment.

Fully engaged to my rocking journey, I bought Bruce Springsteen’s 5LP box set, and in my amazement I found out that the Boss was writing epic songs for over 10 years.  The lyrics were astonishing, the music was captivating and the journey became alive.  It goes without saying that I learnt everything by heart.  I was singing Thunder Road when walking to school or coming back, emphasising in the last two lines.  I slowly sang Born To Run when running laps around the YMCA tennis courts, and I loved singing Bobby Jean when thinking of… anything really!

Getting up and going to school or to practice always included blasting a couple of songs, loud enough for the neighbours to listen.  Except the albums I mentioned already, the top of the list included Sting with Nothing Like The Sun, Rick Springfield with Tao, Phill Collins with No Jacket Required and Wet, Wet, Wet with Popped In Souled Out.  Later on the repertoire included Madonna, Steve Winwood, The Havalinas, The Beloved, Toto, Glenn Frey, Whitney Houston and lots of radio hits.

The technology changed and the LPs were replaced by CDs.  Still the hunger for more music was there.  In 1987, a small local authorities revolution created independent radio, against the government line and supporting opposing politics.  Still, the people remember that mayor Sotiris Kouvelas freed the FM radio.  Music was now everywhere and appeared to be legal.  Music was now everywhere, along with MTV and other music TV shows.  Music was not only the background of our coffee, but it was part of the conversation.  What video clip was cool or not, which song would be number one, who was a better artist than the other.  Music was the reason we would go to a club or a bar, it would be the reason or not hang out with someone, and we would all hug and scream at the top of our lungs With or Without You.

The college years were not different.  The groups and sounds were changing but the soundtrack was still playing.  Got the chance to watch live Billy Joel at Syracuse, in a powerful concert filled with piano and lyrics.  I watched 10,000 Maniacs on campus in an alternative presentation of college rock.  I watched James Taylor in an acoustic presentation of his iconic songs.  Finally, I watched Bruce Springsteen at Syracuse, during his Lucky Town tour that was after his divorce and marriage and children and 5 years of silence.  That was a show I will never forget!  Drums, guitars, a saxophone, poetry and explosive energy.Yeah!

During my college years I felt loneliness and the presence of the black dog of depression.  That translated into a lot of self-talking, a lot of music, and quite a lot of writing.  Discovered Marc Cohn, Acoustic Alchemy, U2, Peter Gabriel, George Michael and learnt to appreciate other types of music, like Jazz and Soul.

Next stop of my personal journey was the Greek Army, where the survival recipe includes four things: Coffee, cigarettes, army buddies, and music. Well, in my case 3 out of 4 ain’t bad, since I never made any friends in the army.  What a waste of time that was…

Growing older and maturing meant that other priorities popped up.  Priorities like getting a job, building a career, making friends, having relationships, staying healthy, keeping in touch, making a family, keeping the family, and continue growing.  The journey doesn’t end as long as we breathe, and as long as we breathe there is a rhythm inside us.  Our rhythm loves to have a song, an anthem for all it’s heartbeats, something to listen to while absorbing the rays of sunlight or even more under the moonlight. 

The Counting Crows remind me of walking or driving around the city singing of a Long December, a summer night I drove back from the beach listening to Senior by Pyx Lax for two hours, and Dancing Barefoot was a song of hope and desperation over a broken heart, uniquely sang by Bono and the U2.  Coldplay, Richard Ashcroft, Matchbox Twenty, Train, Foo Fighters.  Sounds of a later era of rock, that kept me company for days, nights, weeks, months and years, while looking for human connection, looking for meaning in my life, trying to make a difference in the world, trying to navigate the complicated alleys of the modern adult life.  There are musical attachments in every step of that journey.  Happy or blue, the sound of music makes the difference.

Nowadays, I don’t have the time and the space to listen to the music that I want.  In a house of five, there is never consensus on what we should listen.  Of course the generation gap makes things even harder.  My thirst for music is still here and needs to be quenched.  So I put my favourite songs in a playlist, and every chance I get, I play these songs.  When driving in my car or when running in the streets, I add these pictures to the memories already attached to the songs.  The memories can be happy or they may be sad, because that is how my life has been.  Shirley Do You Own A Ferrari by Chris Rea was playing in the car when driving to the hospital for the birth of our son.  I was listening Gravity by Embrace when I was driving to the very same hospital the day I lost my mother.  

I remember my mother when I listen to a lot of songs as her presence or absence is attached to a lot of them.  She used to make fun of the way Bruce Springsteen sang, but she knew how much I liked him.  She was arguing with me about the volume of the music in the morning, but she ended up humming the tunes.  She loved to sing, sometimes off tune, and she loved having people in our house to dance and sing and party.  I miss her terribly!  

The technology changed, the rhythm changed, even the voices are not the same anymore .  What doesn’t change is the fire inside, the one that dictates the beat, the one that dresses up as a conductor in front of the orchestra and waves the wand to a tune never heard  and never played.  That is how unique we are.  That is how unique is everyone’s music.  That is how important it has been for me.  That is how much I still need it.