Music

It Was the Best of Times: Musical Memories from College

Leave a comment

College Music Memories, 1979-1995

Dear Spirit of Cecilia Readers, welcome back!  We hope and trust you’re each doing well.  We had such a great and nostalgic time reminiscing about our years in high school and our love of music, we decided it was time to take it to the next level and talk about our post-high school years.  I say post high school, because not all of us went immediately to college.  Our beloved Erik Heter served brilliantly in the navy–as a submariner–immediately after high school.  The rest of us, though, went directly to college.  So, we cover the years, 1979-1991.

Brad: Well, the single most important thing that happened to me my freshman year (1986-1987) was meeting our own beloved Kevin McCormick.  Kevin lived in the dorm next to mine, and we had crossed paths several times in September.  In mid-October, though, we found ourselves on the same flight, home for our week-long fall break.  Though he was ultimately heading to San Antonio, and I to Wichita, we had the same flight from Chicago to Denver.  Recognizing one another, we sat next to each other on the flight.  Almost forty years later, we’re still best friends!  

I really didn’t like flying, but Kevin taught me a great trick as we took off–to set up an album on the walkman so that the music began as the plane began to take off down the runway and then hit full stride as it went into the air.  Brilliant.  

After take off, though, we talked non-stop on the flight and then had time together in Denver before our connecting flights.  A moment that changed both of our lives.

Though I knew much more about older prog and jazz, Kevin seemed to have limitless knowledge about New Wave.  As it turned out, he didn’t just listen to music, he was a full-fledged (and mighty good) guitarist (classical and electric), composer, and poet.  To be blunt, in 1986, Kevin, more or less, defined cool.  He even, amazingly enough, looked like Bono.

Though I really, really liked Rush, Kevin adored them and knew every single thing about the band.  My love of the band had grown since first encountering them in 1981, but it was Kevin who really convinced me of their brilliance, and especially of the brilliance of Neil Peart.  Kevin also introduced me to Blancmange and other New Wave bands.  He also convinced me that it was ok that Sting went out on his own, forsaking the Police!  And, when I tried to convince Kevin that albums like Invisible Touch were still great, he would have none of it.

But, most of all, I just loved hanging out with Kevin when he jammed on the guitar.  We would talk for hours and hours about everything music related.

Tad: Okay, Brad, you’ve opened up the floodgates when you want to know what music I was into in college! I was an engineering undergraduate at Vanderbilt from 1979 to 1984. I’ll start with 1980, which was an incredible year for new music. By that time, I was a DJ at the school’s radio station, WRVU. As a newbie, I had the 6 – 8 am shift. I loved going through all of the promo copies we’d get, and planning my playlist.

Here are a few(!) of my favorite albums from that year:

Utopia: Adventures In Utopia
Joe Jackson: Beat Crazy
XTC: Black Sea
*U2: Boy
*Robert Palmer: Looking for Clues
Yes: Drama
Genesis: Duke
Roxy Music: Flesh + Blood
Devo: Freedom of Choice
Group 87: Group 87
*English Beat: I Just Can’t Stop It
Weather Report: Night Passage
Rush: Permanent Waves
Peter Gabriel: 3 (Melt)
*Pretenders: Pretenders
*Talking Heads: Remain In Light
David Bowie: Scary Monsters
Elvis Costello: Taking Liberties
Gary Numan: Telekon
The Cretones: Thin Red Line
Ultravox: Vienna
Hall and Oates: Voices
*B-52s: Wild Planet
*The Police: Zenyatta Mondatta

*I was also on Vanderbilt’s concert committee, and these artists all played live there. U2 played in the law school auditorium to maybe 400 people, believe it or not! Talking Heads gave the best show I’ve ever seen, with an expanded lineup that was incredibly funky. During the B-52s show, we were seated in the balcony in the basketball gymnasium, and everyone was bopping so hard to the music that I could feel the concrete floor flexing up and down. I was currently taking a course in reinforced concrete design, and I knew that if a crack developed, the whole thing would collapse. I grabbed my date and we ran downstairs. The band actually announced from the stage that people in the balcony had to sit still, or they would stop playing!

A few notes on some of the above albums: 

Group 87 was an instrumental trio consisting of Patrick O’Hearn (bassist for Missing Persons), Mark Isham (trumpet, keyboards), and Peter Maunu (guitar, keyboards). It is still one of my all-time favorite records.

Weather Report was the group that got me into jazz – Wayne Shorter was a coleader, and through him I discovered Miles Davis and Art Blakey. Jaco Pastorius was their bassist, and he had a unique sound that Joni Mitchell used on her Hejira and Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter.

Robert Palmer’s Looking For Clues was an unusual album for him – very electronic, and featuring some songs by Gary Numan. 

Elvis Costello’s Taking Liberties was proof of how incredibly prolific he was early in his career. He had released four excellent albums in three short years, and Taking Liberties was just a collection of B-sides. Every single song on it was as good or better than any other song he had released. How many people can come up with lyrics as witty as That the word upon everyone’s lipstick that you’re dedicated/Though you may not be an old-fashioned girl, you’re still gonna get dated?

XTC’s Black Sea is where Dave Gregory really makes his mark in that band. Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding were both at the top of their songwriting form.

Rush’s Permanent Waves remains my favorite album of theirs. 

The Cretones were a new wave band from LA, and their songs were wonderfully catchy. Linda Ronstadt recorded several for her Mad Love album. They disappeared after two great albums. I don’t think they were even reissued on CD.

Hall and Oates’ Voices is probably the most mainstream album in my list, but what a great lineup of songs! They were definitely listening to new wave music and taking notes.

I think I played Peter Gabriel’s third album more than any other on this list. I was obsessed with the sound he came up with on it. Tony Levin on bass, Jerry Marotta on drums (but no cymbals!), and David Rhodes on guitar. Every song was so dark and powerful.

Erik:  So I’m going to be the outlier here for reasons Brad mentioned above – namely, the fact that I served six years as a submariner in the US Navy right after high school.  Oh, I did eventually go to college, after completing my service, but my college days were spent working a full-time job while going to school part time.  And a majority of those years were in the 1990’s, which didn’t have the same impact on me musically as the 1980’s, in which my navy years fell. 

Joining the military, traveling around a lot, and eventually getting assigned to a sea-going command certainly changed how I listened to music.  I went from a vinyl guy to a cassette guy; from a turntable guy to a Sony Walkman guy.  And man, did I go through a lot of Sony Walkmans in that period. And the number of cassettes I owned rapidly overtook the number of vinyl albums I had collected up to that point.

 Music significantly shifted during my high school years that immediately preceded my navy years, and that change continued to reverberate.  But at the same time, there were some consistencies.  For example, my fandom of Yes didn’t waver, and in fact was supercharged in 1983 with their new album 90125.  With a new guitarist (and excellent vocalist to boot) in tow, Trevor Rabin, Yes released an album that was both a radical departure from their previous work while still sounding like something only they could pull off.  And it drew me in like the proverbial moth to a flame, as I couldn’t get enough of it.  I’ve listened to that album all over the world, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Sea of Japan and many locales in between, some on land and some underwater.  And despite using a Walkman with headphones, when I listened to 90125, so did the people in my vicinity.  Nigel Tufnel wasn’t the only one who knew how to turn it up to 11.

But 90125 wasn’t the only album that resonated with me to such a strong degree.  In 1984, Rush released what I consider to be their second-best album, Grace Under Pressure.  Having joined the military, I started to ponder what it meant to be in situations where “the world weighs on my shoulders.”  Being at an age of just entering adulthood, I was “overwhelmed by everything, yet wanting more so much.”  Neil’s lyrics definitely spoke to me on that one.  Better yet, on the first, glorious Saturday night of November 1984, I saw Rush play on the Grace Under Pressure tour.   That was my second of six Rush shows (spread across 5 different decades), and it remains to this day the best one of the bunch.

I also quite enjoyed their subsequent albums Power Windows and Hold Your Fire, which also came out during that timeframe. 

Embracing the new wave of rock music came a little slow to me.  But in early 1983, while undergoing some electronics training in Great Lakes, IL (north of Chicago), I first heard U2’s War album.  That did the trick, and I started paying attention to subsequent releases as well.  I still like War the best of their albums, but Bono’s inflated sense of himself notwithstanding, they made some good music over the years.

My heavy metal listening expanded a little bit during those years.  And in particular, I took a liking to the prog-adjacent heavy metal band, Iron Maiden.  My introduction to them was via a concert in San Diego on their World Piece Tour (no, ‘Piece’ is not misspelled here), and soon after that I owned their then-current album, Piece of Mind.  I would go on to purchase their next three albums as well, all of which appeared while I was still on active duty.

A few other albums really knocked my socks off during these days.  Once Upon a Time by Simple Minds is jam-packed with lush melodies and great songs overall, and was in heavy rotation for about a year after its release.  And while I liked some of The Cult’s earlier songs (Rain, She Sells Sanctuary), they really sealed the deal for me on 1987’s Electric, which is chock full of raw guitar and more of a roots rock sound.  I also really liked Pete Townsend’s solo album White City that he released in 1985. 

Another thing I enjoyed was watching Robert Plant’s evolution as a solo artist.  Unlike others who were famous from their time in another band, Plant’s output during the 80’s neither rested on his Led Zeppelin laurels, nor did it run away from them. 

I, or should I say we (referring to myself and the other sonar technicians I served with) also had fun with our music … meaning we figured out how to jerry-rig our Walkmans to input signals into a spectrum analyzer in the sonar room of the submarine upon which we served.  This allowed us to see the music along with hearing it.  And let me tell you, a young Robert Plant, when he really wanted to belt one out, could produce some massive harmonics!

My time in the service came to an end in November of 1988.  When I entered six years earlier, it felt like our country was on its back and the Soviet Union was ascendant. But those six years later, America was confident and one could sense that the Soviets, no longer led by a stodgy old hardliner, were on their last legs.  I too had changed quite a bit.  When it comes to music, the change in my tastes was primarily one of expansion and broadening.  I still liked the music I listened to in high school; in that era when so much of what a person listens to becomes embedded in their personality.  At the same time, a lot of great new sounds emerged, and many of them caught my ear for good.  It was a great time, and I miss it.

Brad: A second critical thing happened to me at the end of freshman year.  My tape of Invisible Touch, of all albums, broke.  I bought a new one at the campus store, but it was broken as well.  As was its replacement.  I got so fed up with defective Invisible Touches, that I decided to buy something totally new, something I knew nothing about. And, yes, I very much judged the book by its cover!  I came across an album adorned with a whole slew of colorful moths, one large one dominating all the surrounding ones.  I immediately loved it.  It was called “The Colour of Spring” by Talk Talk.  Taking a chance, I bought the album, knowing nearly nothing about the band or the album.  I had had a good friend in high school, Ritchie, who had bought a Talk Talk EP, but, otherwise, they were new to me.

I proudly showed Kevin the new purchase, and he assured me it was a great band.  I popped the cassette into the tape deck, and I was immediately blown away by every aspect of the music.  From the beginning there was something deeply alluring about Mark Hollis’s voice but, for the life of me, I couldn’t make out the lyrics, and there was no lyric sheet with the cassette.  I, however, listened to it so many times that I had the vocal cadence down pat, even if I didn’t know the words.

The following school year, July 1987-July 1988, I spent two semesters at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, and Kevin spent the same year in Rome.  That March (1988), we ventured together to London and stayed in a friend’s flat.  While in London, we visited EMI (trying to meet Talk Talk), Virgin, and Trident Studios.  At one point, we found ourselves in a record store, and the shop had a vinyl copy of The Colour of Spring, complete with lyrics on the sleeves.  I studied that sheet for nearly an hour.  To say that I was blown away would be the understatement of the year.  I was utterly gobsmacked by everything Hollis had to say.  I’m not ashamed to admit that I cried rather openly, so moved was I.  “Try to teach my children/To recognise excuse before it acts/From love and conviction to pray.”  These were words of immense love and immense integrity, words to live by.

I had already had a profound religious experience a month earlier in, of all places, central Morocco, and Kevin and I had talked theology nonstop.  Prior to February 1988, I was a proud (if idiotic) atheist and skeptic.  By April 1988, I was a full-blown Roman Catholic.  To ignore Hollis in all of this would be a crime and an absurdity.  My movement back to my childhood faith had Morocco, Kevin, and Hollis written all over it.

Tad: Brad, that is a very moving memory of yours; thank you for sharing it. I also didn’t really get into Talk Talk until The Colour of Spring, but they soon became one of my favorite groups. As a matter of fact, they are the reason you and I connected. Spirit of Eden is an all-time favorite album of mine, and I was bored one evening, so I did a search for reviews of it. I clicked on a link to something you wrote about it on a site called (I think) Stormfields. It resonated with me so much that I left a comment thanking you for your review. The next thing I knew, I had a friend request from you on Facebook, and the rest is history! So I also have a lot to thank Mr. Hollis for.

Erik, it is so cool to learn how you accessed music while in the military. You and I were listening to a lot of the same music, especially Once Upon A Time and Robert Plant. The Principle of Moments  is my favorite of his solo works.

Okay, here is my list of favorite albums from 1981. Not as many as in 1980, but still pretty extensive:

Genesis: Abacab
Squeeze: Argybargy
The Human League: Dare
King Crimson: Discipline
The Police: Ghost In The Machine
The Vapors: Magnets
Rush: Moving Pictures
Devo: New Traditionalists
Ultravox: Rage In Eden
Psychedelic Furs: Talk Talk Talk
B. B. King: There Must Be A Better World Somewhere
Joan Armatrading: Walk Under Ladders
Jaco Pastorius: Word of Mouth

Abacab is one of those albums that I never, ever, tire of. It’s just a perfect set of songs.

King Crimson’s Discipline kicked off my favorite iteration of this venerable prog group. Bill Bruford, Tony Levin, and Adrian Belew clicked perfectly with Robert Fripp.

The Vapors had a minor hit on their first album with “Turning Japanese”, but I always thought their followup album, Magnets, was much stronger. It sank without a trace, though.

We’ve discussed Ultravox’s Rage In Eden elsewhere here at Spirit of Cecilia.

I heard the title track to B B. King’s There Must Be A Better World Somewhere on the radio, and it moved me so much I immediately bought it. My poor roommate told me I had to be getting tired of listening to it, but I never did. I didn’t know anything about the blues, but this album really spoke to me. I got a group of friends to see him live with me, and we were pretty much the youngest and whitest people in the audience!

The production of Joan Armatrading’s Walk Under Ladders blew me away. The liner notes said Tony Levin and Jerry Marotta played on it (the same rhythm section as on Peter Gabriel’s Melt!) as well as synths by some guy named Thomas Dolby. Hmm…

I’ll go ahead and share my albums that define 1982 for me:

Prince: 1999
Roxy Music: Avalon
Laurie Anderson: Big Science
George Winston: December
Thomas Dolby: The Golden Age of Wireless
Elvis Costello: Imperial Bedroom
Adrian Belew: The Lone Rhino
Joe Jackson: Night and Day
Donald Fagan: The Nightfly
Richard and Linda Thompson: Shoot Out The Lights
Utopia: Utopia
Joni Mitchell: Wild Things Run Fast

Roxy Music’s Avalon is one of the finest albums ever produced. It doesn’t hurt that it is also  the album my future wife and I listened to frequently while we were first dating.

Laurie Anderson’s Big Science was a hit that shouldn’t have been – it’s really weird, with Anderson’s mostly spoken vocals, but for some reason it’s compulsively listenable.

George Winston’s December is a wonderful collection of solo piano pieces that are Christmas-related. One of the first “new age” albums (a classification Mr. Winston despised), it set a very high bar that has rarely been reached.

Donald Fagan’s The Nightfly remains one of the most immaculately produced albums ever made. The songs are delightful, and I still love to listen to them.

Shoot Out The Lights is an amazing set of songs by the guitarist for the British folk rock group Fairport Convention and his wife as their marriage was falling apart. It is both heartbreaking and beautiful.

Utopia was Todd Rundgren’s group, and their Utopia album is a really fun set of catchy power pop songs. It was a three-sided record: two vinyl discs, but one only had songs on one side! I think the label went bankrupt, and the album never got much distribution. If you like Beatlesque melodies, this is right up your alley.

Brad: Tad and Erik, I absolutely love your recollections.  Erik, I know I’ve told you this before, but I want to thank you for your service, especially during the absolutely critical Reagan years.  Our nuclear deterrent–especially our subs–were so essential to ending the Cold War.  Thank you for playing your part, above and beyond what most give.

Tad, I had forgotten that we initially bonded over Spirit of Eden.  That’s wonderful.  What a blessing your friendship has been.

There are still a few things I’d like to mention about college.  Again, Kevin is at the center of them.  First, during my junior and senior years of college, I had a Friday night prog show, which I goofily called “Nocturnal Omissions.”  Yes, I really did.  Of course, we were making fun of our sexuality, but I also wanted to have a show that played music most folks missed.  Not surprisingly, I played a ton of prog, even though I wasn’t really supposed to.  During the day, WSND 88.9 FM was a classical station, but at midnight, its format changed.  We were supposed to play only “college rock” or “alternative rock.” I did that, but I also played a ton of prog.  Our station reached Chicago, and I used to get a huge number of callers, usually guys five or ten years older who were stunned that anyone was still playing prog.  We did nights of nothing but Yes or Rush or Pink Floyd.  Hours and hours of it.  In between prog songs, we’d play XTC, English Beat, Blancmange, and Tears for Fears.  We also played lots and lots of Talk Talk, especially after Spirit of Eden came out and lots and lots of Kate Bush.  Interestingly enough, I purchased Spirit of Eden using station funds, and my station manager was upset because it only had four tracks on it!

Second, Kevin (yes, our Kevin) had the single most popular band on campus, St. Paul and the Martyrs.  They played almost every Saturday evening at Ted’s–our dance club on top of the student center.  And, every Saturday, I was front and center, dancing like a mad-man.  I was a terribly uncoordinated dancer–tall and gangly–but I decided early in high school, I would never give a damn what anyone thought of me and that I would have a blast.  And, lo and behold, I did!

As I think back to college, I think about deepening my old loves–especially Yes, Pink Floyd, Kate Bush, Simple Minds, and Kansas–but also adopting new ones, such as Talk Talk, Ultravox, The The, Psychedelic Furs, and The Sundays.

Tad: Brad, I didn’t know you did a stint as a radio DJ as well! I love the name of your program, and I’m surprised the station manager let you use it! The 80s were a wonderful time to be in college radio, because we had (relatively) free rein in terms of what music we played. I’m glad you mentioned The The, because their debut album, Soul Mining, was one I played a lot on WRVU in 1983. One of my favorite segues was between Martha and the Muffins’ track, “Several Styles of Blonde Girls Dancing” and The The’s “Uncertain Smile” – the former flowed perfectly into the latter.

Speaking of 1983 (how’s that for a segue?), here are my most-played albums from that banner year:

Yes: 90125
Vangelis: Antarctica Soundtrack
Brian Eno: Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks
R.E.M.: Chronic Town EP
Martha and the Muffins: Danse Parc
Everything But The Girl: Eden
Genesis: Genesis
Gang of Four: Hard
Paul Simon: Hearts and Bones
Tears for Fears: The Hurting
Bob Dylan: Infidels
Joan Armatrading: The Key
David Bowie: Let’s Dance
Mark Knopfler: Local Hero
XTC: Mummer
R.E.M.: Murmur
Robert Plant: The Principle of Moments
The Fixx: Reach the Beach
Stewart Copeland: Rumblefish Soundtrack
The The: Soul Mining
Steps Ahead: Steps Ahead
Eurythmics: Sweet Dreams
The Police: Synchronicity
Mark Isham: Vapor Drawings

Looking back at 1983, I realize that was the year I really got into ambient and space music. My local public radio station played Stephen Hill’s program, Hearts of Space, and I faithfully taped it every Thursday evening. That’s how I learned about Vangelis and Brian Eno’s Apollo. Mark Isham’s Vapor Drawings wasn’t ambient, per se, but I was familiar with him from Group 87 (see my 1980 notes). 

Besides being a great year for music, 1983 was the year I first met my future wife! We both loved Joan Armatrading, and we had the good fortune to see her live. Before the show, we were walking up to the auditorium when we saw Joan smiling and watching some skateboarding kids. We chatted with her, and she was really nice. When The Key was released, we ran down to the record store to buy it that day. I ended up working in that store while I was in graduate school.

Erik has already done a fine job extolling the greatness of 90125. I’ll just add that it and Roxy Music’s Avalon were the first compact discs I bought. I would play “Leave It” to demonstrate how quiet, crisp, and clear CDs were.

Paul Simon’s Hearts and Bones wasn’t a huge seller for him, but it remains a favorite of mine. He had just married Carrie Fisher, and it was full of romantic songs.

Steps Ahead was a jazz “supergroup” consisting of Michael Brecker (sax), Mike Mainieri (vibraphone), Eliane Elias (piano), and Peter Erskine (drums). They played a show at Vandy, and it knocked me out!

Finally, Mark Knopfler’s soundtrack to Local Hero remains one of the most haunting sets of Celtic-inflected ambient music ever recorded. It never fails to put me at peace whenever I listen to it. The movie itself is still one of my favorites – a very quirky comedy about a young oil company exec in Houston sent to acquire a coastal village in northern Scotland. 

Kevin: So fun reading your reflections, Bradley, on those years and fascinating how much we have in common, Tad! Early college (‘86-’88) were years of exploration for me. Besides all that Brad shared above, I also was amazed by the music of U2, XTC, the Police, Echo and the Bunnymen, particularly, Ocean Rain, which I hadn’t realized was such an amazing album–punk folk with string orchestra! 

After returning from a year abroad, Brad and I had our never-forget moment listening to his early copy of Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden. Also learning tunes for the college band introduced me to a lot of new music and older music that I had missed. Learning the music to perform the entirety of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon was quite a masterclass. We did lots of late 60’s/early 70’s rock including The Who, The Stones, The Beatles, Lou Reed, Steely Dan, Yes. But there was a lot of college radio music as well. We even covered Talk Talk’s “Desire” from the new album. The other players were quite talented and there wasn’t much we weren’t willing to give a try.

It was a formative time and between the band and Brad’s library and radio show it really expanded my listening palette immensely.

Brad: Kevin and Tad, loved your recollections.  Thank you both for those.  I will admit, though, that there were bands that I adored in college that didn’t last beyond college for me.  I was huge into A-ha and The Smiths.  Neither of those stuck.  But, bands like the Cure—especially when Disintegration (a top 10 album for me) did.  I also came to love Bryan Ferry, and I still do.

Tad: Kevin, I wish I could have seen your band perform! Brad, I think Bryan Ferry is one of the most talented artists of the twentieth century. Roxy Music was my favorite group all through high school and into college. I still love the Smiths; I think Morrisey’s lyrics are hysterical, and Marr’s melodies fantastic.

My final year in undergraduate school was 1984. By this time, I had a job at Cat’s Records, near Vanderbilt. We had lots of fun in-store events, and a huge import section. Working there exposed me to Cocteau Twins, The Blue Nile, Guadalcanal Diary, and countless other alternative groups.

Here’s my final list – favorite albums of 1984:

Let’s Active: Afoot EP and Cypress
Don Henley: Building the Perfect Beast
Thomas Dolby: The Flat Earth
Lindsey Buckingham: Go Insane
The Smiths: Hatful of Hollow
Howard Jones: Humans Lib
This Mortal Coil: It’ll End In Tears
dBs: Like This
Psychedelic Furs: Mirror Moves
Depeche Mode: Some Great Reward
David Bowie: Tonight
Cocteau Twins: Treasure
Michael Hedges: Aerial Boundaries

Let’s Active was led by Mitch Easter, who produced the first two R.E.M. albums. He recorded four near-perfect albums of jangly rock that are a blast to listen to.

I always thought Lindsey Buckingham was the secret sauce in Fleetwood Mac, and his second album, Go Insane, had everything that I liked best about his music: quirky lyrics, catchy melodies, and terrific guitar.

This Mortal Coil was a “supergroup” composed of artists on England’s 4AD label. Very moody and angsty, but Elisabeth Fraser’s song, Another Day, is three minutes of the most beautiful music ever recorded.

I know Bowie fans generally don’t like Tonight, but I love it. Loving the Alien is one of my favorite songs of his.

Michael Hedges was an acoustic guitarist, and his Aerial Boundaries completely changed the way people thought the guitar could be played. I assumed he recorded it by overdubbing himself on several tracks. Then I saw him live, and he played every song perfectly, by himself. It was jawdropping. He died much too young.

Carl: I’m late and last to this party, but perhaps that’s fitting as I’m a (very!) little bit younger than my elder brothers in musical arms. And while there is some overlap, I’m struck by the huge holes in my musical tastes in college and how different my limited tastes were in many ways (for example, I didn’t get into jazz at all until I was 25, around the same time I got married).

I graduated from a small town (Plains, Montana) high school in May 1987, and a month later I was attending a year-long art program, essentially an Associate’s degree in graphic design, in Phoenix. The culture shock was real. It was also, overall, good for me in many ways. My roommate was an Italian-American kid from San Diego, and one of our first conversations was about music. I was into Kansas, CCM/John Fogerty, and an assortment of contemporary Christian (CCM) artists, especially Petra, Matthew Ward, Whiteheart, David Meece, and others. He was a huge Rush fan, which was common ground, but also into Depeche Mode and New Order, who held little to no interest for me. In fact, most New Wave bands left me cold at the time, although certain songs broke through. 

In art classes, I sat next to Tim, a transplant from London with a glorious British accent. He was a musician, and he was, he told me, into “U2, the Smiffs, and the Baytills.” I recognized the first (I was a big fan of “Joshua Tree,” of course), then figured out the third (famous band from Liverpool that I rarely listen to), and had never heard of “The Smiths.” Bands such as The Smiths, The Cure, et al, did nothing for me and still don’t. But it was not an anti-British thing on my part, as I was an established fan of Yes, the Moody Blues, Queen, Asia, ELP, and GTR. Oddly enough, I never really listened to early Genesis, and rarely have.

What I discovered was that my schoolmates broke down into a couple of different musical camps. There was the heavy metal camp (Iron Maiden!), the alternative/punk folks (Butthole Surfers, anyone?), and the Top 40 crowd. My tastes tended to be either 10 to 20 years behind the times or far too Christian (Stryper, however, was an ecumenical choice for some). 

From 1988-1991, I attended two Christian schools: Northwest Nazarene College in southern Idaho, and Briercrest Bible College in southern Saskatchewan. My one year at NNC was a strange one in various ways, but it was there that I first heard Tracy Chapman’s fantastic debut album, dived deeply into the back catalog of Elton John (inspired by his live album recorded in Australia), and went even further down the Kansas, Kerry Livgren, A.D., Steve Morse, Dixie Dregs rabbit hole, which I still enjoy to this day.

My two years in Canada influenced and shaped me in many ways, including on the musical front. It was there that I was introduced to the stunning music of King’s X, the brilliance of Phil Keaggy, my favorite Paul Simon album (“The Rhythm of the Saints”) and Eric Clapton album (“Journeyman”) and Queensrÿche album (“Empire”), as well as a host of CCM artists, several of whom I got to see perform live at the school. I would single out King’s X as especially important, as they introduced me to tunings, sounds, lyrics, and wild marriages of metal, folk, gospel, and prog that changed how I heard and understood contemporary music, helping me to appreciate groups such as Living Colour, Porcupine Tree, Soundgarden, and Radiohead.

I could well be wrong and chronologically-biased, but I think that the late Eighties and early Nineties was the final great era of exceptional contemporary Christian music, with landmark works by White Heart (“Freedom”, 1989), Charlie Peacock (“The Secret of Time”, 1990; “Love Life”, 1991), The Choir (“Circle Slide”, 1990), King’s X (“faith hope love”, 1990), Russ Taff (“Russ Taff”, 1987; “The Way Home” 1989), Margaret Becker (“Immigrant’s Daughter”, 1989; “Simple House”, 1991), David Meece (“Candle In The Rain”, 1987; “Learning To Trust,” 1989), Ashley Cleveland (“Big Town,” 1991), Chagall Guevara (“Chagall Guevara,” 1991), among several others.

Finally, a few other artists figure prominently at that time for me. First, I wore out my cassette of Trevor Rabin’s “Don’t Look Away” (1989), which is an underappreciated work of musical art. Secondly, I listened to a lot (a LOT) of Steve Morse and Eric Johnson, and I never tire of hearing any and all music by both men. Third, I was introduced to the magical voice of Maria McKee, whose debut album came out in 1989, and then to my first real Van Morrison album, “Avalon Sunset,” which came out the same year. In fact, a classmate had me listen to both on the same day, a wonderful “twofer”! And I will always have wonderful memories of driving 12 hours across Montana and into Canada—often not seeing another car for many miles—while blasting Rush’s “Chronicles”.

At that point, I was 21, and I had yet to discover jazz, which has been my biggest musical love for 30 years, or the music of Frank Sinatra, Mel Torme, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, and other greats. And Radiohead, Soundgarden, Porcupine Tree, and others were also on the horizon, along with some trips through trip-hop, electronica, ambient, and so forth. But those four years of college were filled with an abundance of memorable music, much of which I return to today. 

Tad: Well, dear readers, there you have it – some long and varied reminiscences of Spirit of Cecilia’s favorite music from their college days. The period from 1979 – 1995 was probably unique in the sheer variety of great music one could hear on the radio. We hope you enjoyed our little stroll down Memory Lane!

LITERATURE

Le Fanu’s Ghost Stories: Classic Gothic Horror

Leave a comment

Sheridan Le Fanu was an Irish author writing at the same time as Charles Dickens. He specialized in Gothic tales of helpless young women trapped in desperate situations and some pretty spooky ghost stories. Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery was his first collection of short stories. It was published anonymously in 1851, and it consists of two ghost stories and two Gothic ones.

The first story, The Watcher, is about a retired navy officer, Sir James Barton, who is engaged to be marries to an eligible young woman. Everything is going extremely well for Captain Barton, except that when we walks home from visiting his fiancée one evening, he hears some footsteps following him. Every time he turns around, the street is empty, but as soon as he resumes walking, the footsteps also resume.

He soon receives a brief letter that reads as follows:

“Mr. Barton, late Captain of the Dolphin, is warned of danger. He will do wisely to avoid —— Street — (here the locality of his last night’s adventure was named) — if he walks there as usual, he will meet with something bad. Let him take warning, once for all, for he has good reason to dread
“The Watcher.”

The mysterious Watcher continues to shadow Captain Barton, to the point that his mental and physical health decline to an alarming degree. It turns out Captain Barton has some skeletons in his closet that have come back to haunt him, literally!

To continue reading my review, click here.

Music, Republic of Letters

Some Jazz Quick Takes

Leave a comment

It’s a glorious Memorial Day afternoon – and, on this American holiday weekend, I’m looking back on five months of hearing and reflecting on America’s greatest musical invention. As always, there are plenty of worthwhile jazz albums (whether new or archival) easily in your reach; these are notable selections from what’s come to my attention so far this year. I’ve included listening links within album titles where available, along with a purchase link after my review where necessary.

The album I’ve turned to the most (despite being released only this past month) is the Jeff Parker ETA IVTet’s Happy Today. Recorded live at a congenial Los Angeles haunt, guitarist Parker, saxophonist Jeff Johnson, bassist Anna Butterss and drummer Jay Bellerose conjure two generous portions of sheer music from silence. Guitar riffs circle and morph; sax lines are looped into shimmering chords and textures; hovering above capacious, confident rhythm work, all four players constantly listening and reacting, moving together through gradual builds and sudden tempo shifts. Whether weaving around each other’s contributions in a supple dance (“Like Swimming”) or ascending a rainbow of tone colors to a light, sweet shuffle (the title track), there’s no hurry, no contention – just a collaborative climb to lofty, inspired heights. It’s a measure of how rich this album is that every time I listen, I want to hear it again!

Parker, Johnson and Buttress also lay down understated foundations on Flea’s solo album Honora. The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ bassist returns to his heritage as a jazz trumpeter here, and while he’s boned up in recent years, he knows he’s running with thoroughbred players. Flea’s vocal features on the album’s noisier bookends “A Plea” and “Free as I Want to Be” push straight to hot emotional extremes, but his trumpet work is cool and controlled (reflecting the influence of Chet Baker); his original compositions combine understated tension with winning introspection; and his choices of cover tunes (Funkadelic to Glen Campbell to Franks Ocean & Sinatra) and guest vocalists (Thom Yorke backed by a horn section! Nick Cave singing “Wichita Lineman”!) are uniformly surprising and superb. Not what you might have expected, and all the better for it.

Four years ago, I thought Immanuel Wilkins might be part of jazz saxophone’s future; after hearing his quartet’s breathtaking Live at the Village Vanguard, Vol. 1, I’m convinced he’s now the present, in every sense of the term. Taking one of NYC’s most famous clubs by storm, Wilkins and his quartet (endlessly inventive pianist Micah Thomas, rock-solid bassist Ryoma Takenaga, masterful drummer Kweku Sumbury) are all in their 20s and 30s, but they’ve already lit out beyond previously explored territory to map their own exuberant course; through the modernistic postbop of “Warriors”, the Bachian interplay of “Composition XII”, the deep-rooted, ecstatic gospel of Alice Coltrane’s “Charnam” and the two-part “Eternal” (a time-bending workout that collapses into hypnotic sub-toned minimalism), there’s elegance and earthiness, mind and heart in constant dialogue. The applause after each track is unforced, the audience reacting to the Quartet’s potential unfolding into assured maturity before their ears. (Vol. 2 & Vol. 3 are equally fine, but only available via downloads or streaming. Buy Vol. 1 at Blue Note Records, — or lobby ’em for a complete box set!)

In case you hadn’t heard, Miles Davis’ centennial is this year – this week in fact. There are plenty of reissues already out and still to come, with tributes aplenty following in their wake. The best of the latter I’ve heard so far is Gregory Hutchinson’s Kind of Now: The Pulse of Miles Davis. Drummer Hutchinson’s style as a Young Lion has blossomed into a strong yet tempered sense of groove, thoroughly assimilating the work of the amazing drummers who backed up Davis; here, he leads an all-star group on a wild ride from early bebop (“Ah-Leu-Cha”) through cool school (“Fran Dance”, “Seven Steps to Heaven”) and a quartet of enigmatic Wayne Shorter tunes (including “Orbits” and “Water Babies”) to the pioneering days of jazz-rock fusion (“Bitches’ Brew” and “Circle in the Round”). Ambrose Akinmusere’s thick, liquid trumpet, Ron Blake’s consummately attentive sax work, and Gerald Clayton’s versatile, tasty piano delight throughout; it’s impossible to know what they’ll do at any given moment, but always satisfying in the aftermath. Around and through it all, there’s Hutchinson’s drive, color and sense of space. This is a thoughtful take on the breadth of Miles’ achievement that’s consistently focused and gracious, but marvelously abstract and unpredictable as well. (Buy the CD from Amazon.)

And as always, Record Store Day has brought a clutch of archival releases courtesy of jazz detective Zev Feldman. On Feldman’s 15th production of Bill Evans, At the BBC, the music is exquisite as always, despite severe sonic limitations inherent in the original 1960s television broadcast. Evans and his current trio with Chuck Israels and Larry Bunker shift moods on a dime, using dynamics as a key component in their mutual ebb and flow. Even when they take an uptempo tune like “Nardis” or turn “Waltz for Debby” into a 4/4 swinger, the rapt contemplation at the core of ballads like “My Foolish Heart” and “Who Can I Turn To?” are still winningly present. (Buy the CD from Amazon.)

Pursuing an idiom 180 degrees away from Evans, Cecil Taylor demanded the same level of attentive listening via radically different means – a sidelong take on the jazz piano tradition that reveled in fractured time and tonality, extended compositional statements and improvisations, a nigh-incessant, athletic tsunami of notes too fast to separate. On Fragments, recorded live at a French festival in 1969, Taylor prowls the keyboard like a roaring lion, endlessly pouring out riffs, chords, clusters; saxophonists Jimmy Lyons and Sam Rivers dialogue with and echo Taylor and each other, overblowing and piling up hyperspeed motifs at a frenetic pace; drummer Andrew Cyrille miraculously cooks up a flow in the absence of any downbeat – turning, shifting, reacting, leaping ahead. The two takes of Taylor’s “Fragments of a Dedication to Duke Ellington” are 50 and 90 minutes long, and you’ll feel like you’ve run a marathon after you’ve listened. This isn’t for the faint of heart or the squeamish, but trust me: Taylor’s pioneering free jazz will open up your ears and brain even as they wear them down and possibly out. (Buy the CD from Amazon.)

— Rick Krueger

Republic of Letters

High School Music Memories, 1975-1987

2 Comments

Hello Spirit of Cecilia Readers.  The editors of Spirit of Cecilia are having a blast reminiscing about their music tastes in their high school years.  Please enjoy our conversation as we take a deep dive into our respective nostalgias.

Tad: Okay, since I’m probably the oldest person here (Class of 1979), I’ll kick things off. My high school years started with glam, eased into arena rock, and ended up with punk and new wave. Early on, I loved Todd Rundgren, David Bowie, Mott the Hoople, and Badfinger. I still listen to those guys and enjoy them. I subscribed to Rolling Stone magazine, because it was actually good in the ‘70s and had fairly reputable music critics. The Eagles and Fleetwood Mac were probably the most popular artists at the time, but they were too laid back for me. I did like (and still do) Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk album, because it was so weird. Once New Wave hit in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s ,though, I was in heaven! There were so many new artists popping up, I could hardly keep up!

Carl: I was born in 1969 and had very little exposure to popular music until I was 12 or 13. There was church music (the robust, older Protestant hymns) and my parents’ very limited collection of what I call “white gospel music,” which ranged from cringe-inducing to not much better. Thankfully, a family that I was close to (Catholic!)  got me listening to some classical in junior high, which was wonderful—and stuck—because most of the public school music curriculum revolved around schmaltzy, light pop from the Seventies (Barry Manilow! Debbie Boone! Jesus Christ Superstar!).


Then, in junior high, I started to hear and pay attention to pop/rock music, often via a jukebox (!) at the local ice cream place, or a boombox during recess or after school. Songs that made a lasting impression on me were Queen’s “Another Bites the Dust,” Kenny Roger’s “The Gambler,” Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll,” and Toto’s “Africa”. The dam broke for me in my first year in high school; that’s when my obsession with music went from 1 to 10. I would listen to whatever I could and by any means possible: radio, 8-tracks (Beach Boys!), cassettes, and tunes played by friends. 

Looking back, I was fortunate that I had older friends and a couple of teachers who introduced me to “classic rock” (of course, some of it was very new then) by groups including the Eagles, Journey, Moody Blues, ELO, Kansas, Foreigner, Elton John, Pat Benatar, Van Halen, and so forth. And 1982-84 was a great time for classic albums by The Police, Men at Work, Michael Jackson, Toto, Def Leppard, and Big Country. But the music that I was drawn to most strongly was “90125” by Yes, anything I could find by Kansas, Elton John, Queen, and some Contemporary Christian Artists, including Michael W. Smith. 

The one thing I avoided like the plague was harder rock or metal; I had no interest in AC/DC, Quiet Riot, Iron Maiden, Metallica, etc. Still don’t. It was a while before I discovered more prog-gish groups like Rush and Asia. In my final two years of high school (‘85-87), I was a big fan of Steve Winwood, Bruce Hornsby, ELO (which was some of the soundtrack for my senior year), Alan Parsons Project, Styx, Mr. Mister, and similar AOR groups. I had no interest in jazz and didn’t care for most new wave music, with a couple of exceptions (Spandau Ballet stands out). It wasn’t until “Momentary Lapse of Reason” came out in late 1987 that I first paid any attention to Pink Floyd. 

In sum, much of this was simply “in the water”; however, I see now that I was increasingly drawn to the sort of prog-gish groups that would open the door to my deep plunge into prog in the early to mid-1990s, which then (in ways) opened the door to jazz. But that’s another story for another time!

Brad: Hey guys, great to be talking with you all!  Always a privilege and an honor.  

So, I was born in late 1967, and I was in high school, 1982-1986.  These years were deeply formative for me, and I look back on them fondly.  Like all of us, I was a total music nerd and freak, and I had a huge record collection–one I inherited from two older brothers, but which I expanded by huge degrees.  I also worked at the local radio station, KWHK-1260AM/Adult Rock, but we had briefly flirted with a New Wave format–so we still got demos and Advanced Review Copies of XTC, The Cure, B-Movie, Echo and the Bunnymen, etc.  No one at the radio station had any interest in these, so I got them all, adding them to my private collection.  Really, when it came to owning music, I couldn’t have asked for anything better.

The two things–inheriting music tastes from my brothers and my acquisitions at the radio station–fundamentally shaped my music tastes.  Admittedly, though, my music tastes would evolve even more–or perhaps refine?–when I met our own beloved Kevin McCormick.  Another step in evolution came from meeting my great grad school friend, Craig Breaden, who had, for lack of a better way of putting it, retro tastes, introducing me to some of the best psychedelic rock of the late 1960s and early 1970s: Jimi Hendrix Experience, Blodwyn Pig, Traffic, Spooky Tooth, and others.

But, back to high school.  My favorite bands in high school were, at least until 1985, Rush, Yes, Genesis, Kansas, Thomas Dolby, ABC, and the Fixx.  I was pretty obsessed with each of these bands, and I played each on constant repeat.  I knew and liked U2 (especially War), but I wouldn’t become really taken with them until I met Kevin.  I can say the same about The Cure.  I really liked them, but I didn’t fall in love with them until Disintegration in 1989.  1985, though, really changed much for me–mostly because I heard Kate Bush, Simple Minds, and Tears for Fears for the first time.  I was utterly blown away by both Hounds of Love and Songs from the Big Chair–each a perfect (utterly perfect) blending of pop and prog.  Man, those are good memories.  I also really liked Simple Minds, but true love for that band didn’t occur until I met Kevin.

Other albums I totally obsessed over during high school: Golden Age of Wireless, The Look of Love, Signals, Grace Under Pressure, Reach the Beach, and 90125.  I was also really into the Police, especially Synchronicity.

Even then, I was most taken with lyrics, analyzing every one of them, always looking for deeper meanings.  For me, 90125 was a comment on the state of the American republic (I’m not saying my interpretations were correct; only deeply held), the Golden Age of Wireless was the putting of Ray Bradbury short stories into music form; Hounds of Love was about Satan’s attempt to dominate the world; Grace Under Pressure was about Reagan’s struggle to win the Cold War; and Songs from the Big Chair was a deep exploration of an individuals psychological strengths and weaknesses.  Yeah, I was probably totally wrong about each of these.

Erik: I love to make playlists with my music collection, and if you scrolled through the music app on my iPhone, you would find a lot of them.  Some are based on musical styles, some are based on lyrical themes, and some are based on time periods. I have one playlist called Nostalgia 79-82 which is dedicated to music I own that came out during my high school years of 1979-1982.  While my tastes were not limited to those years, that playlist nevertheless serves as a great example of what I was listening to at the time.  The list includes a wide variety of music, from AC/DC to Yes, with Black Sabbath, Rush, Van Halen, Triumph, and others in between.  

The first year of that era, 1979, was more consequential in developing my long term musical tastes than any other.  That was the year I discovered Yes, Rush, and Pink Floyd.  Yes was discovered through a concert that left an impression on me that reverberates to this day.  I also stumbled across Rush through the 2112 album (seeing them later that year in concert as well), and had my first listen of Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.  Toward the end of that year, I purchased Pink Floyd’s new release, The Wall.  The net effect of these discoveries was to bifurcate my musical tastes into “prog” and “not prog,” establishing a certain yin and yang to my listening habits.

Prog was the yin, and it quickly became my favorite genre, as I devoured Yes’s back catalog and eagerly purchased Drama (despite the loss of Anderson and Wakeman) upon its release in the summer of 1980.  A similar dynamic repeated with Rush and Pink Floyd, and soon I had Rush albums like A Farewell to Kings, All the World’s a Stage, Hemispheres, and Permanent Waves, while Pink Floyd albums like Ummagumma, Meddle, and Wish You Were Here also made it into my collection.  Before long, I was also getting into Jethro Tull and Emerson, Lake and Palmer, and on occasion, dabbling into some King Crimson and Genesis music, while Kansas became a regular in my musical rotation.  Prog also turned into the gateway drug that led me first to liking classical guitar, and eventually to classical music in general.

The yang was everything else.  I’m an outlier in this group, as I’ve always had a taste for harder rock, occasionally veering into heavy metal, and I’ll always have a sweet spot for loud, dirty, distorted electric guitars.  I also like plenty of blues-based classic rock.  Thus, when I was in a yang mood, you might have caught me listening to AC/DC, Aerosmith, Van Halen, Styx, The Who, and so on.  Like many of my generation, I was already into Led Zeppelin, whose music spanned multiple genres.  Black Sabbath released two new albums with Ronnie James Dio on vocals, both of which received a period of heavy rotation.  Judas Priest had what I consider their first truly heavy album, British Steel, during this time, which blasted out from many a car in my high school parking lot.  And although geographically, Lexington, Kentucky (where I attended high school) is not the deep south, culturally it seemed indistinguishable from Alabama.  As a result, it wasn’t unusual to hear me listening to some twangy-guitar southern rock from Lynard Skynard, Molly Hatchett, The Outlaws, or the Allman Brothers.

Music was changing a lot during my high school years, as punk had taken its shot at prog, while new wave was emerging.  My own tastes were a little slower to change.  A lot of the new wave music that became popular during that era was not as sonically dense as the music from the previous decade.  Because of that, the music often times gave me a similar feeling of eating gourmet food that, while tasty and well presented, left me hungry.  Eventually, I came to like some of it though, and The Police were the first to break through with their Ghost In The Machine album, and particularly the songs Spirits in the Material World and Invisible Sun.

To this very day, my listening bounces between the yin and the yang.  I will go for periods in which I listen to prog and nothing but prog, while I go through other periods where I will listen to other types of music while prog is on the back burner.  The yin music and the yang music both serve as palette cleansers for the other, and that’s one thing that keeps the music sounding fresh, even in the decades that have passed.

Tad: Erik, I have always had a soft spot for hard rock – especially AC/DC, who I thought were hilarious while coming up with terrific riffs. 

I’m going to cut to the chase and list my favorite ten albums that I loved at the time, starting with 1977:

Steely Dan: AJA

Brian Eno: Before and After Science

Pink Floyd: Animals

Yes: Going For the One

Alan Parsons Project: I Robot

Cheap Trick: In Color

Ramones: Leave Home

Electric Light Orchestra: Out of the Blue

Peter Gabriel: Peter Gabriel (Windshield cover)

Talking Heads: ‘77

These came out when I was a high school sophomore, and looking back there was an amazing variety of genres to choose from back then. It’s pretty clear that Rolling Stone and Musician Magazine had a big influence on me; how else would I have known about Eno’s Before and After Science (an album I still adore) or The Ramones? I think I was the only kid in my high school who listened to them and Talking Heads.

For me, 1978 was a transitional year, where I listened to established artists while enjoying some music from some new ones like The Police:

David Bowie: “Heroes”

The Cars: The Cars

Bebop Deluxe: Drastic Plastic

Jethro Tull: Heavy Horses

Todd Rundgren: Hermit of Mink Hollow

Talking Heads: More Songs About Buildings and Food

Police: Outlandos D’Amour

Cheap Trick: Heaven Tonight

Ramones: Rocket To Russia

Rolling Stones: Some Girls

Little Feat: Waiting For Columbus

!979, my senior year, is where I embraced New Wave pretty much to the exclusion of everything else:

Buggles: The Age of Plastic

Elvis Costello: Armed Forces

The B-52s: The B-52s

Supertramp: Breakfast in America

Devo: Duty Now For the Future

Talking Heads: Fear of Music

George Gershwin: Manhattan (Woody Allen’s movie soundtrack)

Roxy Music: Manifesto

Gary Numan: The Pleasure Principle

Police: Regatta De Blanc

Joni Mitchell: Shadows and Light

Fleetwood Mac: Tusk

Fischer-Z: Word Salad

I still love all of these albums! Well, I guess I don’t listen to the B-52s that much any more, but I don’t dislike them. Dropping the needle on Roxy Music’s Manifesto immediately transports me back to that time in my life. 

Brad: Tad, Carl, and Erik, I absolutely love reading through your memories.  Frankly, it’s amazing that even though we’re different ages, we have very similar tastes in music and all came to a similar spot.  One thing that’s absolutely clear is that we all love prog and New Wave–frankly, we love our music to be artful and far from simple pop.

I’ve already told you guys about my radio station experience, but I have to mention two other things–which is so terribly Gen X–I absolutely loved making mixed tapes for my friends.  I would buy the 10 or 20 packs of blank TDKs and give them to anyone and everyone who would listen.  Frankly, it was a kind of love note to each of my friends.  I especially loved making mixed tapes for my girl/female friends.

I would guess that I was pretty known for doing this, and I was pretty good at it, I think.  At least in memory, I was good at it.  It’s been years and years since I’ve done such a thing.  I also made some mixed CDs, but that simply wasn’t as joyful as a mixed tape.  I’m not sure why.

I also made mixed tapes for myself–my “best of” Yes or The Doors or Genesis, stuff that I thought should run together that wasn’t on the original albums.

I have nothing but great memories of high school when it comes to music.

But, the second thing I did in high school was dance like a mad man.  The good Lord knows I was not created to be coordinated or athletic.  I’m as gangly as they come, and I look like a total fool on the dance floor.  But, I never cared.  I told myself to have a good time, and, by God, I had a great time dancing.  I went to every dance possible in high school and college, and my friends and I–when we got together–would have house dances.

Again, I’m so very, very Gen X.

Kevin: Well I’m once again late to the party, but it would appear that our stories are all quite different, which really makes it interesting.

My earliest years were in Fort Worth, Texas and so the influences around me were more in the style of popular country music at the time than anything else. But my parents were from other places and so the music at home was a bit different. My mom had studied piano in college so there was a lot of classical around and my dad was a huge fan of the music of the 50s and 60s. Full disclosure: there was also a lot of 70s schmaltz.

But it was my older brother, Matt, who really shaped my early understanding of rock. He was a pianist himself and so I heard a great deal of Elton John, who I could tell had the cool factor over my country interests and even my Dad’s classic albums. 

We moved to St. Louis when I was eight and I became friends with a classmate named Pat Malacek who had two older brothers with a load of amazing albums at his disposal. He introduced me to Queen who quickly became shot to the top of my list. As a guitarist, I was in awe of the spectacular craft of Brian May and since there was piano too my brother and I could pick out tunes from their songbook. We also listened to the classic rock station KSHE 95 which included all of the great (and some not so great) music of the era: Boston, Foreigner, the Eagles, Zeppelin, Kansas, Genesis, Yes, and the like. We avoided disco like the plague, but it somehow still made it onto our car radio when mom was driving.

For me Queen seemed to have the whole package though. The music was hugely varied and yet somehow held together. Both the songs and albums flowed like art films, sometimes one side at  a time, incredible playing and vocals. It was the jam!

All the while I was studying classical guitar which served me well in learning rock on my own.

And then one day on the ride home from school I heard an extraordinary other-worldly flourish of sound (it wasn’t until a couple of years later that Matt revealed to me that it wasn’t a synth—it was a guitar!) The opening 10 seconds of “The Spirit of Radio” was all it took: I was captivated. Rush usurped Queen (who had begun to drift from what I had liked about them). I bought every album and began using them to teach myself electric guitar. Alex Lifeson was my “absentee” instructor. For a while in high school I would listen to one album a day.  It was my electric homework.

We also moved to San Antonio in 1981 and I encountered MTV for the first time. This opened up my musical world profoundly and the new music out of Europe began to take over my playlist. It would be impossible to list them all, but U2 and The Police were huge influences. Since my brothers and I were starting to play gigs, a lot of music I listened to was connected to the clubs we were playing: Blancmange, R.E.M., Depeche Mode, Psychedelic Furs, Simple Minds and many more.

My brother Colin and I went to see the Furs at the Majestic Theater and the opening act was a band that I knew of, but knew very little about. Talk Talk stole the show. I can’t fully express the impact this moment had on me. They were so present on stage and the music was intense, the melodies delivered with sincere passion, fretless bass, powerful drums, inventive-jazzy key lines. It seemed to bring together my entire musical history in a single sound and yet the guitar was only lightly in the background of the mix. It changed my understanding of rock composition!

In college, Bradley and I met while studying rocks (okay geology class) and our friendship spurred a whole new angle: jazz! Particularly Pat Metheny and the artists of Windham Hill. And of course we connected on so many of the prog bands! Eventually this included regular mix tapes he would send. So much music!  He kindly welcomed me onto his radio show and we laughed a lot and he spun great tunes. And the rest is…history!

Brad: A huge thanks to everyone for participating. All five editors of Spirit of Cecilia. We hope you, gentle reader, have enjoyed this utter blast of nostalgia.

Republic of Letters

The Dark Knight Trilogy and the Architecture of Order

An AI generated summary of an evening conversation with ChatGPT on Chris Nolan’s Batman trilogy.

Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy stands apart from most superhero films because it functions simultaneously as psychological drama, political allegory, and systems-level exploration of order and instability. Beneath the action and spectacle lies a deeper question: how does civilization preserve itself when confronted with corruption, chaos, fear, and institutional decay?

The trilogy’s central conflict is not simply hero versus villain. Instead, each film examines a different form of systemic instability and Batman’s role as a force attempting to restore equilibrium without becoming tyrannical himself.

At the center of this structure is Batman — not merely as a vigilante, but as a stabilizing force operating outside formal institutions while paradoxically protecting their legitimacy. Unlike traditional heroes driven primarily by revenge or personal glory, Nolan’s Batman is motivated by the need to understand and repair structural disorder. Bruce Wayne’s journey in Batman Begins is therefore less a conventional origin story and more an intellectual and psychological search for reality itself.

The death of his parents destroys Bruce’s early assumptions about justice and social order. Gotham appears corrupted at multiple levels: criminals dominate the streets, institutions are compromised, and fear shapes behavior everywhere. Instead of reacting impulsively, Bruce travels, studies criminality, and joins the League of Shadows. This phase of the film is critical because Bruce behaves less like a future superhero and more like a student attempting to understand the architecture of civilization and decay.

Ra’s al Ghul represents the trilogy’s first philosophical challenge. His worldview assumes civilizations inevitably become corrupt and therefore require periodic destruction and renewal. Gotham, in his eyes, has become irredeemable. Bruce rejects this conclusion. Importantly, he does not reject the observation that Gotham is corrupt — he rejects the solution. This distinction defines Batman’s entire philosophy throughout the trilogy. He acknowledges darkness within society but refuses to embrace destruction or absolutism as the answer.

This tension becomes even more explicit in The Dark Knight. The Joker is not primarily interested in money, political control, or territorial conquest. He is obsessed with exposing what he believes to be the true nature of humanity. According to the Joker, moral order is merely performance. Under sufficient pressure, ordinary people abandon ethics, institutions collapse, and civilization reveals itself as fragile theater.

The Joker functions almost like a philosophical stress test placed upon Gotham. The ferry scene perfectly captures this idea. By forcing civilians and prisoners into a mutual destruction dilemma, he attempts to demonstrate that human beings are fundamentally self-preserving and morally weak. Throughout the film, he repeatedly targets systems of trust: law enforcement, public morality, political leadership, and even Batman himself.

Batman’s response is not to deny the Joker’s observations. In many ways, he understands them. Gotham is corrupt. Human beings are imperfect. Fear and self-interest are real forces. Yet Batman believes civilization survives through the preservation of structure despite these flaws. His role becomes that of a stabilizer absorbing chaos before it cascades into institutional collapse.

This is why Batman’s refusal to kill is so important within Nolan’s interpretation. The no-kill rule is not merely sentimental morality; it functions as a structural boundary. If Batman allows himself to become judge, jury, and executioner, he ceases to be a guardian of the system and instead becomes sovereign power outside all restraint. His refusal to cross that line preserves the distinction between corrective intervention and authoritarian domination.

Harvey Dent’s arc further reinforces the trilogy’s concern with institutional fragility. Dent initially represents lawful reform from within the system — Gotham’s hope that legitimate institutions can still function. His eventual corruption demonstrates how even idealistic structures can fracture under sufficient psychological pressure. Batman ultimately absorbs the blame for Dent’s crimes in order to preserve Gotham’s belief in lawful institutions. Whether morally correct or not, the decision reveals Batman’s willingness to subordinate his personal reputation to broader systemic stability.

The Dark Knight Rises expands the trilogy’s focus from individual morality to institutional legitimacy itself. Bane operates at a different structural level from the Joker. The Joker attacks human nature; Bane attacks the foundations of Gotham’s political order. He exposes the hidden compromises underlying the Dent Act and weaponizes public resentment against the city’s elite structures.

Bane’s revolution is built upon delegitimization. Gotham collapses not simply because Bane is physically powerful, but because the city’s institutional confidence fractures. Courts become performative, law enforcement is neutralized, and the public narrative sustaining Gotham’s order disintegrates.

Bruce Wayne’s condition at the beginning of the film mirrors Gotham’s stagnation. In peacetime, Batman loses clarity and purpose. His return initially reflects overconfidence and attachment to an outdated understanding of the threat. Bane defeats him not merely physically but structurally. Bruce is forced to confront the limitations of his own assumptions.

The prison pit sequence symbolizes recalibration rather than simple rebirth. Bruce rediscovers fear, mortality, and purpose. He no longer fights to preserve his identity as Batman, but to restore balance to Gotham itself. This distinction matters because Nolan consistently portrays Batman not as a ruler or conqueror, but as a temporary corrective force designed to stabilize systems under extraordinary stress.

What makes the trilogy conceptually rich is that it operates simultaneously across multiple layers. At the psychological level, it explores trauma, fear, identity, and moral boundaries. At the political level, it examines institutional legitimacy, surveillance, emergency power, and corruption. At the societal level, it studies how narratives, trust, and fear shape collective behavior.

Most importantly, Nolan’s trilogy refuses simplistic conclusions. The films acknowledge that civilization is fragile, institutions are imperfect, and human beings are deeply flawed. Yet they also reject nihilism and absolutism. Batman ultimately represents disciplined constraint: a figure who understands darkness but refuses to surrender to it.

That tension — between chaos and order, truth and stability, fear and responsibility — is what gives the Dark Knight trilogy its enduring conceptual power.

LITERATURE

R H Benson’s Lord of the World: A Tale of the End Times

Robert Hugh Benson’s 1907 novel, Lord of the World, might be the first dystopian novel of the modern era. Robert Hugh was the brother of E. F. Benson, the master ghost story teller and author of the hysterically funny Lucia novels. He was a Roman Catholic priest, and Lord of the World is his depiction of what would happen if the antichrist came to power.

Lord of the World begins in a future England with Fr. Percy Franklin and Fr. Francis meeting with a very old man, Mr. Templeton, to learn from him what life was like in the past. It turns out that the “Individualist Party”, which is basically the Conservative Party, has been reduced to almost nothing by the “Humanist Party” which is basically Marxist. The world is divided into three regions of influence: the Eastern Empire (Asia), the West (Europe and Africa), and America (North and South). Euthanasia is widespread, and polite people don’t talk about any life after death. Of Christianity, only Catholicism remains (and it is confined to Ireland and Rome), because the Protestant denominations succumbed to the ideology of humanism.

To continue reading, click here.

Republic of Letters

The Declaration of Independence: A Radical Experiment in Liberty

Dear Spirit of Cecilia Reader, greetings from southern Michigan.

I just want to let you know that my (Brad’s) new book is out today from Stone House Press: The Declaration of Independence: A Radical Experiment in Liberty.

I’m pretty proud of it.

If you’re interested in it at all, you can order it at Amazon.

Amazingly enough, it’s the no. 1 release in Modern Western Philosophy. Pretty cool!

Republic of Letters

Confessions of an AI Skeptic, Part 5 (of 5)

(Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4)

So far, I’ve discussed the lack of any real intelligence in AI, the fact that it’s a compute hog of the highest order, and as a result, also a power/infrastructure hog and a money hog.  But at least, for the enormous price of all that computer/power/infrastructure, AI gives us accurate information and quality answers on a regular basis, right?  Right??

Um, not so fast.

AI Follies

You’d hope for all the resources AI consumes, it would at least be reliable.  And at times, it can provide some quality answers.  But at other times, the information it returns is just bonkers.  A bad query, one that is too long, or one that generates too much information can end up causing AI to hallucinate like a Grateful Dead fan in Haight-Asbury circa Summer 1967. 

Take for example this recent incident: lawyers submitted a motion that cited nine different cases, with the motion itself being generated by AI.  Problem?  Of the nine cases cited, eight were complete fiction.  They didn’t exist, and were wholly the creation of the AI that prepared the motion.   The lawyers were sanctioned.  And despite this, it’s happened numerous times since then, as other lawyers have failed to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors.

OpenAI has a transcription tool called Whisper which is used in hospitals.  It is known to hallucinate, inserting words or even entire phrases into text that were never actually uttered.  Do you want to take medical advice based on a hallucination-riddled transcript?  I’ll pass.

The Chicago Sun-Times once used AI to generate a summer reading list of 15 books.  We cannot fault anyone for not completing the list, since only 5 of the 15 were actual books, while the rest were pure fabrications.  However, the fabrications were attributed to real authors.  One wonders if they could get real royalty checks from the AI-run accounting department of their publishers.

Go play around with one of the prominent AI chatbots yourself.  Give it a few off-kilter queries and see what it does.  With a little effort, you can make it hallucinate too. 

How worried about your job should you be when AI makes such massive mistakes?  And if you are thinking about replacing workers with AI, should you?  Should you rely on a tool that makes stuff up out of thin air?  You wouldn’t hire a person who does that, so why would you pay for a machine to do the same thing?

Even worse, some people are using AI as therapists, girlfriend/boyfriend, and so on.  Those are terrible, awful, no good very bad uses of AI and NOBODY should do any of those things.  If you think AI is actually conscious and your friend, you couldn’t be more wrong and I urge you to both stop right away and also really look at what’s under the AI hood.  AI is not your therapist, and it’s not your friend.  It’s not even a conscious entity, and if you think otherwise, you are badly mistaken.  Seek help – human help.

But What About All the Neat Stuff I’ve Heard AI Can Do?

When you look at these hallucinations, you wonder why there is all of this hype about how AI is going to take over everything.  Some of it has to do with some other feats that AI has accomplished.  However, one needs to look beyond the surface to figure out why.  Take chess for example – AI has been known to be able to defeat some of the world’s best chess players.  But is that because it actually thinks through the game?  No.  It’s because it uses computational brute force and database access.  Using various mathematical algorithms, the AI can calculate probabilities and also accesses databases that include information about opening and endgame moves.  Meanwhile, the human opponent is limited to what’s inside their head.

But here’s another aspect of the AI-chess nexus.  Chess has predictable, stable rules.   It has a very sturdy and well-defined framework, which suits it well to the types of training that is performed on AI models.  But the real world, the world we live in is messy, not always stable, with the rules changing all the time.  And when edge cases are encountered, they require actual thought – not merely predictions based on massive numbers of matrix multiplications until some convergence is reached.  When the street you drive down unencumbered every day suddenly has road construction, you need to actually think your way through how to get through safely.  AI can be good with those things that have a solid, well-defined and unchanging framework.  But with fluid and changing circumstances that required nuanced thinking, AI falls apart very fast.

So is AI Good for Anything?

Yeah, I’ve been pretty tough on AI.  I hate all the hype from the tech bros, especially snake-oil salesmen like Sam Altman and Dario Amodei (of Anthropic, maker of Claude AI), as these guys have massively oversold AI’s capabilities while spreading irrational fears of the AI jobs apocalypse with everybody ending up out of work.   But that thing we call AI does have some uses, and it’s not going to go away.

I’ve used a few AI tools in my line of work (patents).  And some of them are excellent tools that are very useful.  Are they perfect?  No, not even close.  Would I trust them to fully finish a patent application or a response to the US Patent and Trademark office during the prosecution of a patent application?  No way.  What these tools are great at is augmenting my efforts.  They are wholly inadequate for fully replacing them though.  The tools are particularly useful in sifting through reams of documentation and rapidly accelerating the finding of a metaphorical needle in a haystack.  And sometimes, these tools provide some extra insight into a topic that I hadn’t really thought about. 

I’ve heard of others in various lines of work having similar tools at their disposal, expressing opinions similar to those expressed here.  The commonality of all of these tools is they are not directed to, nor trying to emulate anything approaching general intelligence.  Instead, they are narrowly focused on a particular area of inquiry.  They are focused and limited to certain tasks where they can produce mostly repeatable results.  Some of them use what are called small language models (SLMs), as opposed to the LLMs underlying AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft Copilot, and so forth.

These limited-focus tasks are where I think the current generative AI may become legitimately useful and make its biggest impact.  Even AI chatbots can sometimes be useful for limited inquiries in carrying out technical research.  Problems that can be reduced in some manner to computational mathematics will lend themselves well to the current AI regime.

But revolutionary?  Something that is going to eliminate some huge percentage of jobs, become self-aware, and go Skynet on us?  That’s not happening, particularly not with the current trajectory of AI development and the computer hardware technology upon which it runs.  You can train an AI model with lots of data, amounts that are incomprehensible to most of us.  But you can give it neither wisdom, nor common sense.  You certainly cannot give it emotion.  And therefore, you can’t ever make it truly intelligent.

Wrapping Up

When I started this, I originally intended to write only a single installment about AI.  As I wrote though, I found I had more and more to say about the topic, especially in the onslaught of ridiculous AI hype, both utopian and dystopian.  I still have more to say, but I’ve said enough for now.  And over the time I have been writing these various installments, cracks have begun to appear in the armor of the AI hype machine.    

One of the cracks is the admission by Sam Altman that GPT5 did not result in AGI.  There is more open talk about there being an AI bubble and the financial headwinds the industry is facing.  Michael Burry, the investor made famous by short-selling the U.S. housing market during the bubble that popped in 2008, has made a $1 billion dollar bet (in the form of short selling) that the AI bubble will also pop.  People are waking up.

Those that are not waking up usually base their belief in the eventual omnipotence of AI (for good, evil, or both) in the idea that technology advances linearly, if not exponentially.  But such is not the case.  In mathematical terms, technologies usually advance somewhat logarithmically, i.e., big gains in the early days, followed by diminishing returns in future advances.  Think of other technologies, such as household appliances.  Early on, the mere appearance of appliances such as dishwashers, refrigerators, etc., represented big technological leaps.  But as time has gone on, the rate of improvement in the basic functioning of these machines has slowed to a crawl, so much so that their manufacturers are adding all kinds of other technological bells and whistles to make people think they are improving, even though such improvements are at best incremental (and small increments at that).  You can apply this same idea to many things, such as automobiles, aircraft, smartphones, and so on.

The same trajectory applies to the generative AI that has burst onto the scene in the last several years.  The early improvement in successive models was huge and significant.  But as the release of GPT5 illustrated, such improvements are slowing.   And as discussed in earlier installments, there are hard, physical limits on how far the current generative AI can advance. 

Again, I don’t think AI is simply going to disappear.  It’s here to stay.  Nor do I think AI will be useless, as it will definitely result in some very useful tools.  But to the utopians that think AI will lead to a labor-free future in which you are simply provided sufficient income for merely existing?  Well, I’ve got disappointing news for you.  And to the dystopians who think that AI is going to lead to a bleak, cyberpunk future where most of us eke out an existence while under the rule of corporate overlords?  You can probably breathe a little easier.

For both the utopian and dystopian scenarios, a huge dose of skepticism is warranted.  In fact, skepticism is warranted for most of the area between these two extremes.  For all the amazing things AI seems to do, it isn’t magic and it isn’t truly intelligent, no matter how well it seems to mimic intelligence.  It’s just a tool.  Humans, however, are still irreplaceable.  People who are dazzled by the AI hype forget that at their own peril.  Let’s hope it doesn’t imperil the rest of us.

Music, Books, Poetry, Film