Earth, Wind and Fire Makes Me Happy

I was browsing through my collection of MP3s, playing songs purely based on whether I felt like listening to them or not. Bob Dylan? Don't feel "Bob-ish" right now. Marshall Tucker Band? Oh yeah, "Fire On the Mountain." Lighthouse. Reminds me of my first date (she stood me up). Earth, Wind and Fire. Sweet. "Got To Get You Into My Life" and "Getaway." I then concluded that Earth, Wind and Fire makes me happy.

Earth, Wind and Fire's "happiness" got me thinking about other songs. Some don't make me happy at all, like "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" or "The House of the Rising Sun," or anything by Leonard Cohen. Paul McCartney makes me happy, so does Corb Lund. Sometimes I'm in the mood for "non-happy" songs and will gleefully wallow in musical misery. Sometimes I feel like loud, fast music, sometimes I feel like honky tonk. Sometimes I want the transcendence that is Beethoven's late string quartets.

For the most part, we all have our favourite music, music we like, music we dislike, and music we are ambivalent toward. Some people do not listen to music and proudly wear their musical void like a badge of honour. Some treat listening to music like a vice or an addiction they overcame. "I used to listen to music," they say, "now I have other things to do." Other more important things like watching Dancing With the Stars. I digress.

Trying to pin down what it is that makes a song popular or a "favourite" is akin to nailing Jello to the wall. Studies have been undertaken, theories have been posited, even software has been written that attempts to determine the "hit-ness" of a particular song, but still, the mechanics around musical taste are, for the most part, unknown. Musical taste, like other aesthetic choices, is ephemeral at best.

Listening to music reaps huge rewards. In addition to "happiness," music transports us to far off places, recalls memories long buried, and can help alleviate stress among other things. I feel for those people that do not listen to music and wonder if they are even a tiny bit cognizant of what they are missing. My guess is that they are not. Pity.

Marathons and Meloids: The Stampede Lesson

The Calgary Stampede has started. That venerable time of year when everyone pretends to be a cowboy and drunken foolishness is forgiven. Stampede was, at one time, a veritable cash cow for local musicians. Gigs were abundant. Even those players that did not usually play country music cranked out terrible versions of Hank Williams' songs, in an attempt to cash in on the gig windfall. Virtually every company, gas station, mall, and community centre had a Stampede breakfast, dishing up greasy pancakes, limp bacon, and cold eggs to the milling throng that gathered to partake of the free grub. It was not uncommon for bands to play three gigs in one day. First, a breakfast, then some kind of afternoon bar-b-que, and finally the regular gig at night.

My first Stampede taught me a valuable lesson. The Trails End Band was booked at the Palliser Hotel for eight days (Sundays off) and we had to play from 5 p.m. until 1 a.m. Seven hours and we never repeated a song. This was in the days of the big downtown cabarets such as the Golden Garter and the Silver Slipper. People would start to queue up around 3 p.m. and eventually the line snaked out of the hotel and down 9 Avenue to the entrance of Palliser Square at the base of the Calgary Tower. Every night was packed. The beer was flowing. Good times were had by all.

Being caught up in the excitement, and somewhat inexperienced when it came to a marathon gig like this, we played with a fervour and zeal that was more suited to final Friday night set than the opening one of a seven hour night. Undaunted, we churned through the remaining six hours and the next day the effects were manifested. I could hardly talk. My voice was a croaky, hoarse, cracking-like-a-thirteen-year-old mess. Now what. I had seven more nights to do and could barely speak let alone sing.

I had heard somewhere that lozenges called Meloids were especially effective. I scampered to the nearby Shopper's Drug Mart to buy a package. Meloids are little tiny black licorice-flavoured lozenges. "Made for people that work in smoky environments and for speakers and singers," the back of the package proclaimed, and after a couple of hours and a half dozen Meloids, my voice miraculously returned to the point where I could make it through Saturday night.

Meloids became a fixture on stage for me. They saved my voice on more than one occasion. I haven't been able to find them lately; instead all I can find is the inferior imposter Fisherman's Friend. Meloids help aside, that first Stampede taught me to conserve my voice on long gigs, a lesson that came in handy over the years.