The good news is that my Mom did not follow my Auntie Annie’s advice to put me in accelerated music class which guaranteed me the journey I would take on my own. When my Mom offered me piano lessons (my brother and sister both had the lessons) my reply at age five apparently was: “Just because you have a piano doesn’t mean that I have to play it”.
So, my Mom didn’t push me for piano lessons. I think I was ten when I got my first play drum set. The skins were made of paper and I wore them out in about two weeks, but those were glorious weeks. My first drum idol was Dave Clark from the Dave Clark Five. Three reasons:
1) He played the drums and had dark hair (so did I)
2) He sung and got all the girls (so did I .... I wished)
3) My sister liked the Beatles.
I actually went around my block with my best friend canvassing everyone on whom they preferred ... The Dave Clark Five or the Beatles and came back proving everyone like the DC5. I think this was my first foray into fiction. (Sorry, D.C.)
Well, I had to wait another three years until my Bar Mitzvah to get a “real” drum set. This time with real skins, the newspaper that was between the one ply of wood and the outer blue sparkle were Japanese comics, I would one day learn. But this drum set meant I could begin to play day in and day out (much to the consternation of the neighbors).
Within four months, I was playing in bands. The first song I remember drumming to was “Lucky Man” by Emerson, Lake and Palmer. I also wrote my very first song called “You’re a fine, man, Mr Morris” Not a catchy name but, hey, it was my first song.
I went to Jewish People’s School from Nursery to Grade seven learning English, French, Hebrew and Yiddish. I hated every moment of it. The only thing I remember from the whole thing was a story about concentration camps that a survivor/teacher had told us.
The other thing I got out of the school was to love and appreciate books. It was a simple gesture but if the Chumash (the five books of Moses) fell on the floor, the student was expected to kiss it.
That love and respect resonated with me deeply and still does to this very day.
I met a few really wonderful people there, one was the future principal; Mrs Moss. A great lady.
Another was Stephen Wilchesky, just a kid who seemed like a force of nature even at that age.
The only moment I remember was us both pantomiming the worst things you could do with sneezing on your hands, I think I won by taking the imaginary sticky stuff and making into pasta and then eating it. (imaginary, but won the gross out contest).
Well, I did my time and then it was off to a regular high school that had “band” ...which meant...... DRUMS! Another story my Mom liked to tell, was that on the second day of High School I came back from school and told her that they had made a mistake in music class. Apparently, we had been tested for instruments and I was given the baritone ( a lovely instrument .. for someone else). Everyone wanted the drums so it was hard to “get”.
I decided to go back the next day and ask to be re-tested for the drums. I got the drums. :-)
We often miss the blessings that our parents give us. (sigh) To my recollection, my Mom always let me do my own thing. I also remember her telling me that, I was smart, talented and hard-working, so that one day I would get what I wanted. Another thing she always said about me (I think with a little admiration) was that I never took the easy way.
I tell you these things about my mom, not so much for the insights about me as to honor her.
I guess I should mention my Dad. He died at age 54 from a heart attack and there were so many people at the funeral that they were overflowing into the street. Truthfully, I didn’t notice that because at the time (age 17) we had not had an easy time together. What I learned in the many years after (some of which I had known) was that my Dad had a great sense of humor, he could be very generous to strangers and acquaintances, he was brilliantly inventive and loved my Mom very much, deferring to her judgement. He let it be known that her even-handedness and insistence that both sides of the story be looked at, drove him nuts, but he ultimately took her very wise counsel. So, I was probably about 35 when I was able to understand his strengths and weaknesses and accept all of it.
During my four years at West Hill High School, I pretty much lived, ate and slept percussion. Although I had a knack for snare drum, I played all the percussion instruments equally well.
I ended up on the timpani (kettle drums) mainly. Some people call them the second conductor.
I loved them.
My music teacher had us listen to some interesting music; Concierto D’aranjuez by Narcisso Yepes, and african version of a Christian mass (absolutely amazing) and The Four Seasons by Vivaldi. Each of these pieces resonated with me profoundly.
But, when I went into a used record (like a cd, but bigger and scratchier)
store, it was my next two purchases that changed my life. One was a
version of Concierto D’aranjuez by Miles Davis and Gil Evans and the
other was “The Essential Gene Krupa”. Gene Krupa became my idol.
Most people at the time were more into Buddy Rich, but for me it was G.K.
(Sorry DC5).
If I had to explain the difference between the two,
I would say that Rich was more of an acrobat,
creating amazing acts of technical wizardry
(very cool to watch) but Krupa was a dancer.
He told a story and made you feel things.
This was to be a theme in everything I loved in music
and everything that I would create as a composer. (Buddy Rich & Gene Krupa)
My drum teacher was a kind, gentle soul, who really could make the drumsticks dance. His name was Jack Black. He would tell us stories about Chick Webb and his times playing on the “Boats”.
Although I had just started playing and was in the grade 8 band (the lowest of the low) Mr Black invited me to play some drums behind his vibraphone playing on a song. He told me that there would be some people in the audience and that I would play on one song and sit out on the other .
Sounded fine to me. Well the curtain opened and every student in the whole school was in the audience (about 1,500). I really wasn’t prepared for that. I went into my “work mode’ (OK, let’s play this puppy and get the heck outta here). Mr Black started to talk and I took that as the cue to start playing ( would have taken a hiccup as a cue to start playing). He turned around and I can still see the kindness and understanding in his smile (probably seeing the panic in my eyes). He let me know that he would cue me when it was time to start. I don’t think I ever saw him featured again at the school. This was his moment to shine and he could have felt that I was messing up that moment in the sun. But he saw and knew what I was going through and gave me exactly what this very nervous amateur needed.... kindness. I think of that to this very day, when I am sharing a moment with a newbie performer.
The song actually went really well. I hadn’t anticipated what to do with myself on the following song that I didn’t play. I must have shifted and put my hands in and out of my pockets about 40 times.
later on at the bus stop, my best friend told me: “You looked soo stupid up there!”.
It’s funny the epiphanies we have. Some might have said “well to heck with that , I’ll never do that again!” My response was: “if that’s as bad as it can get, I’m never going to be nervous on stage again” Who knows why some people respond one way and others, another way.
I remember where I was, in West Hill, when it dawned on my that I didn’t have to make the choices everyone else was making as far as CEGEP (grades 12 and 13) went. (Doctor, Lawyer, Nuclear Physicist, Emperor of a small Latin American country, not that there’s anything wrong with being a Latin American dictator) I could make music my focus. It was one of those epiphanies that come to one a few times in one’s life.
So, off I went and signed up for Vanier College in Music. At the same time, I had a new musical hero. Gary Burton, four mallet vibraphone player extraordinaire. In my first year of CEGEP, my and a fellow drum student, Arnie went to see Gary Burton play at a club in downtown Montreal (it has long since disappeared) for the the first of 6 nights that Gary’s band would be playing. They had driven in from Boston during a snow storm and were about one and a half hours late. Well, we had already paid our tickets and we intended to stay to the bitter end.
When they finally arrived, the drummer Bob Moses set up his little Jazz drumset with a bass drum the size of Colonel Sanders extra large family bucket (food I was all too much familiar with at the time) and Arnie and I made some sort of smirky, smart-alecky laugh. (He would soon show us, musically, of course). It was my first of many lessons about not judging a musician by appearances.
The band consisted of Berkley School of Music teachers and one very precocious student. The teachers: Gary Burton (vibes), Steve Swallow (Bass), Mick Goodrick (Guitar) Bob Moses (Colonel Sanders Drums) and some kid named Pat Metheny.
From the first note until the end of the night (they played three full sets of an hour each) our jaws remained dropped, not only from Bob Moses’ brilliant drumming, but from one of the most wonderful bands I have seen in my life up until this day.
After the entire show (remember they had driven from Boston to get here in a snow storm), Arnie and I asked Gary to show us his famous “Gary Burton Vibraphone Technique”. He spent close to an hour showing us the grip and then helping us master it. He was my first glimpse at what a great teacher was and what it meant to be a gracious performer (not forgetting Jack Black, of course)
I went back every night for the six nights they performed and was allowed backstage to Gary’s shows for several years. My next band called “Arly” had me featured on Vibraphone (with the Gary Burton technique) and drum set. The last time I went to see Gary’s band perform in Montreal, it was Pat Matheny’s last tour with them. I sat around and listened to him talk about all his guitars and this new band he was going to put together. I asked him what he thought about my band and what I should do.
Pat said: “Get rid of the Vibraphone, it’s dead. It started with Lionel (Hampton) and ends with Gary. We have the Fender Rhodes, a piano that sounds better than vibes and you can use all ten fingers”.
I told him that his suggestion would be a tough on for me, since I was the vibraphonist. He apologized profusely telling me that with al my interest in his guitar technique he thought I was a guitarist. I did end up leaving the vibraphone behind but not because of what Pat had said. It was just that I knew there was something greater in me that I needed to express.
During the two years I played vibes (as well as Timpani and drum kit, I had been playing in a amateur (but very high caliber) orchestra as timpanist. My feel and timing were pretty good but my intonation (tuning) sucked. I was always asking Danny, the french horn payer to help me make sure that I was in tune. Once I was in tune, I kicked butt.
The timpanist is often called the second conductor and I had that part down. Well except for one time. Let me preface is by saying that I am against any kind of mind altering substances, especially during performance.. I was about to learn that lesson big time.
I didn’t drink much or often but I considered myself a fairly hip “jazz guy”, so when the clarinetist offered me a shot from his hip flask during a break in the middle of rehearsal, I figured “Hey, I could handle anything some classical dude was sipping”. So I took a big swig.... it was 80 proof alcool.
I was lucky I didn’t go blind. (BTW, this “dude’ drank it like it was water, there’s a lesson for you).
I very carefully negotiated the floor back to the timpani, (it seemed to want to sway) and I gave myself a pep talk; “Ken, you can do it. You know this music backwards.”
I should mention that the part we were working on after the break included a 238 bar timpani rest followed by a 192 bar timpani solo. The reading was fine, I was more concerned about the floor continuing to do the samba.
Well, somehow, I counted those 238 rest bars and was raring from my solo. I gave it everything I had on those two timpani drums and I was brilliant.
Did I mention that this was the final rehearsal, so beside the 90-odd musicians, there were also the 75 men and women vocalists.
At the end of my solo (roughly 2/3’s of the way through the Beethoven pieces, the Conductor, Ms Elizabeth Haughey, (a great person and an inspiring conductor) stopped all 165 people there and yelled out in her thickest Scottish brogue; Mr. rrrrabow. What in the world are yew doin’?
I had known the piece backwards and that was apparently how I played it. Playing it rhythmically perfect but reversing the big drum (B flat) for the little drum (F) and vice versa.
