As some of you may know, I’ve made hundreds of dollars in the music industry over the years, and was once known as ‘That Guy In That One Band’ by both friends and strangers within the North American city where I performed my songs.

Recently, I’ve decided to try quitting music.

detaching from the keyboard

Music Just Wasn’t My Thing

I wasn’t born to play music, and aside from a few piano lessons as a child, I wasn’t trained in the craft. While I sometimes carried a harmonica around as a child (I had somehow concluded that there were certain laws pertaining to being a young boy in the USA in the 1960’s; I was required to carry a pocketknife, a yo-yo and/or a slingshot, a marble or two, and a harmonica) my rendition of 'Oh Suzanna!' hardly qualified me as a musician by any standards, it only qualified me as a kid with a harmonica who’d discovered a noisy and annoying way to breath.

My Secret Novelty Spy Pen-radio

I had music problems early, now I can admit it. With a flesh-tone earphone and a secret spy pen radio, I could sit surrounded by the serenity of a classroom full of quiet children while grooving solidly to the AM radio’s early ’70’s sound, nobody knowing that I was developing a serious music problem.

The choices during the early 70's were; gospel, pop, and soul, and I listened to whatever my spy pen radio would pick up, immersed in the alluring AM crackle, well-pleased with my forbidden toy.

Beaker Street Radio

It wasn’t just happening at school though-- another radio at home piped music for freaks into my childhood by way of an underground radio show called Beaker Street, and nightly it played, softly whispering through the night, until eventually I had a serious music problem.

Consumed by Dank, Swampy Grooves

That’s fair wording: I had become consumed by dank, swampy grooves, and by the time the '80s rolled in, I'd realized that no matter how well the new FM radio signal improved the sound of music, the grit of AM radio and it's Beaker Street was gone, leaving me with the haunting pulses of underground funk rippling through my skull in repeating loops and standing waves of tasty melodic interplay, torn asunder by overworked amps and blistering tubes, all churning inside of my head, day in and deep, moaning, soulful day out.

I Wonder if I Could Sell This Stuff?

Utterly enchanted by those AM radio waves, I was madly spilling with song parts, and my little harmonica certainly wouldn’t be agile enough to release the symphonic funkiness that I had become so burdened with.

While it made sense to me that if I was to be smitten with incessant song and rhapsody, then maybe others could hear what I was hearing, perhaps even recognizing the smell of that swampiness-- that funk that had been trapped in the dark chambers of my head since the early 70’s-- it was ripe indeed.

Opening Up the Brew

When I began to hum one of the trapped melodies out loud, it did attract some of the finest musicians around, and soon I was devoted to capturing jars full of this thick potion that thumped inside me without end.

Thereafter I was fully expected to learn how to play some kind of musical instrument so that I could effectively translate the musical sounds into coherent bundles that could be called songs.

The Fender Rhodes Electric Piano

The Rhodes piano: here was a true conduit for soul, combining the biblical punch of a church organ with the electrifying tone of a near-human voice, and I discovered that just laying an elbow on the thing would prompt the Rhodes to belt out the climax of some missing celestial symphony, roaring with the delight of a drunken choir.

A Decade Passed, Then Another...

Armed with the powerful Rhodes piano, I became a significant force, and that power stirred more madness, further churning the symphonic foam that swirled between my ears. With 72 little black and white levers before me, amplified and distorted with a warm growl, I squeezed millions of tunes from that beaten old piano, freeing many dozens of these songs as they flowed from the instrument.

So I was consumed, and for 30 years I remained a servant to music: every melody that spun itself together inside of me demanded to be let out into the physical world, each charming riff knowing that I would devote myself to it’s release.

The songs knew that I would chain myself to the piano so that they could be freed, enslaving myself in order to release them.

Becoming the Human Jukebox

Bound to the keyboard, the years came and went, and soon I was getting requests for old songs-- tunes that had tormented me with their charm and beauty years before-- now I was expected to recall that old romance, and now I was forced to pretend that those old songs were still relevant in my life.

The Solution that Saved Me

Listening to a particularly grand anthem in my head one day, an idea formed, and the fresh song served as the soundtrack for the revelation. Something that I’d never thought of before, and it seemed so simple.

What if I just listened to the music, making no attempt to release the songs into the physical world?

I’ll just enjoy the music, like I used to do. Was that a major seventh chord there in that soaring phrase? Who cares! It is beautiful as it is. What are those angels singing about now? It doesn’t matter, and I don’t need to learn Italian just to enjoy an opera-- I can just listen to the music simply for the joy of listening, probably for the first time since the ’70s. Liberation!

Retirement

I still won’t turn on a radio, and I haven’t touched a piano in weeks now. The anthem that decorated my recent epiphany still plays in my head-- a persistent little thing-- and who knows, maybe some day I’ll free it, just for fun.

Until then, I won’t be available to join any new bands, and I won’t be practicing piano.

I’m just going to listen to the music for a while here. It’s liberating.

Meanwhile, I found the final AM Beaker Street radio show on Utube, have a listen to a sample of what I listened to so long ago:

a sample of Beaker Street Radio; the soundtrack of my mind

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