FREEEEE-DOHM!

When I was a kid, the first time I was exposed to serious rock n roll was when I arrived back in East London.

I went to Cambridge High School in 1974 when 15 years old. The first person I made friends with was Carl Johnson, an Englishman. There were several things I learned to enjoy for the first time in my life when I was his friend: yoghurt and rock and roll music. I still like both of them today. I remember one of our earliest conversations about what type of music I wanted to listen to. Heavy rock and roll was my answer. Thus I was introduced to Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. My first album was “volume 4” of Black Sabbath, I then wanted to buy a Led Zeppelin album but I was disappointed to find that they were sold out. Reluctantly I bought an album from a band called Budgie. I didn’t really like the guy’s high pitched voice but the guitar work was good. Many years later I got to appreciate the band more fully.

I still remember that the price of that single “LP” was R6.99, you must remember back then music was on vinyls; 33 rpm for the albums, and 45 rpm for the singles. A person had to take meticulous care of your record, dust was its greatest enemy. Dust led to scratches and crackly sound, the worst was when the needle would jump several grooves across, due to a bad scratch, this would ruin my listening experience and I would be in despair as we would have put all our money into buying new soundtracks. So we always kept our plastic sleeves neat and wrinkle free, because it was the protection against the cover of the album. Art was so “cool” on the cover, or pictures of your rock stars.

Every person had their own collection of music, we used to go to each other’s homes and listen while the owner of the album would enthusiastically point out various highlights in the music being played. I used to listen to the music while studying chess. The best aspects of my two favourite bands were the voices of their vocalists, Ozzie Osborne and Robert Plant.

(Ozzie)

(Robert)

Jimmy Page and Tony Iommi were great guitarists, especially Jimmy. Obviously we played the music as loud as possible and tried to imitate the lyrics. At various points air guitaring and air drumming occurred. The lyrics were powerful to me, particularly those of Black Sabbath. When I think back, my overriding emotion was that of anger, anger at the injustices of society.

My father hated my music, he called it a lot of noise, there was no clarity of sound. Of course this made me love my music all the more. He loved classic music, particularly opera. He would listen to the radio while washing the dishes. Also the music from his youth (the 1930’s), thus my music forty years later appalled him.

The themes that were sung about by most bands in my day revolved around freedom. Freedom from social restrictions regarding sex, drugs and politics. To the teenagers in my day it was fascinating, to see the vast sums of money that were wasted, the beautiful woman and the fame. Jet setters they truly were, free from the drudgery of study, work and families. They were the idols of youth.

That is exactly where we all stopped thinking, certainly where I stopped thinking.

Yet as time passed, some these idols suffered premature deaths. We were shocked and saddened, some of my peers were heartbroken. Drug overdoses and alcohol abuse seemed to be a common factor.

All these thoughts came to my mind over the last day or so when I read a post on Steemit about Kurt Corbain from Nirvana, who had committed suicide, the poor man probably had other issues in his life that would be problems for most of us but the heroin addiction and alcohol magnified the chronic depression he suffered from. Ironically he ended his life following some of the darker themes from his music where he sang about suicide.

(Kurt Corbain)

So Freedom was advocated, and is still advocated in much music today. Our society strives so hard to attain it, be it political, or gender equality, or gay rights. Yet freedom comes at a price that society tries so hard to ignore, or is unwilling to pay.

CONSEQUENCES.

They can never be avoided.

One of my favourite sayings is “there is no such thing as a free lunch”. Once you have jumped off a cliff, you can’t change your mind halfway down. Life, real life, must have consequence for action. It is an iron truth, regardless of how unpalatable. If I eat more food than my body requires, or drink too much cool drink, I will probably get fat! There are those whose metabolism is high and they can get away with it. I used to play a lot of squash so I could eat a lot, but now I can’t play squash but my eating didn’t slow down so I got fat. Now I am dieting, I am winning but it is hard continuous work. Would it have been easier for me to just cut down from the word go? Of course it would have been, but now I must pay the price if I want to be comfortable in my clothing. Another part of that price that must be paid is that I have to learn about foods, what is good and what is bad.

(me at the end of the year after regularly attending my water aerobics classes)

Another aspect of life that is crucial for all mankind is to turn consequences to their advantage. To become stronger when we have to overcome an obstacle. For example, Tony Iommi lost the tips of the middle fingers of his right hand in a work related accident. He had to work unimaginably hard and endure a great deal of pain to learn how to play the guitar. The playing field of life was not fair to Tony, he was way behind others due to his disability, he was told he would never play the guitar again. Yet he overcame and he excelled, in fact he is ranked in the top 25 guitarists of all time.

(Tony)

How many times in life have we not seen people overcome great personal hurdles to excel greatly?

So how does one obtain this freedom? It is clear that words, thoughts and actions have consequences. If we are wise, we will understand that discipline will not restrict us, but rather allow us to grow into eventual freedom. I always tell my kids this, pay now and play later. Study hard now and enjoy financial freedom later. My kids work incredibly hard and for the older ones it is now starting to pay off.

But do we want to be free from work? I thought I did, but now that I am older I realise I love work. It gives purpose at the start and satisfaction at the end. Not only that but most importantly for me, I grow in skills and confidence. I am not saying that one must work in the formal work environment but work we must. If material things are the reward, then so much the better.

So discipline and self-control give freedom to society, not only for the individual but for each member of the community, conformity to traffic regulations optimises the flow and speed of traffic. If not obeyed chaos and traffic jams can result, huge delays in reaching the intended destination.

(New York)

My Dad was a pilot in the last war, this impressed me greatly as a youngster. I used to ask him what stunts he could do. I was disappointed to find that he never did low altitude stunts like other aces of the air used to. He told me it was too dangerous and for him the risks were too great.

A few years ago I heard a comment of another pilot who said that when you fly above the minimum safety altitude, you are truly free.

That struck me.