lickhaven

[Bits and pieces of what follows have appeared in this very space previously, but never all together, plus I’ve made quite a few additions.]

Realized something odd last night, and it amazes me that I hadn’t consciously noted it before: No one in the last three generations of my family has played a musical instrument: not my father or mother, either of my brothers, myself or my children.

All of us have loved music of one sort or another. Dad would sing variants of what I think were English music-hall songs from the early 20^th century, such as:

I’ve got

Rings on my fingers,

Bells on my toes,

Elephants to ride upon,

My pretty Irish rose.

So say we’ll get married

And next Patrick’s Day,

Be Mrs. Mumbo-Jumbo Gittiboo Jay –

O’Shay

Mom had a record player. Was it a 78? Probably, though it could have been a really early 33. Just a few records, such as Tchaikovsky (sorry, I’ve never been able to take Tchaikovsky), Ravel’s Bolero, a couple others. I don’t recall her ever singing.

No memory of what brother Vic might have sung, though he liked radio songs of the late ’40s like

 With a knick-knack paddywhack,

Give a dog a bone,

This old man came rolling home.

Brother Rod was a puzzle with music. In his late years he’d be wandering his house at 3 am singing “Danny Boy.” Earlier, because he’d do most anything for his wife, Ginny, he’d drive her to Philly’s Academy of music to hear the Philadelphia Orchestra, but he never went in.

Not sure were he wandered during the performances, but likely it had to do with nature and animals, always his great passion (while he spent his working years with Sun Oil in R&D, which never interested him). He also sang annually in Handel’s “Messiah” at St. Andrew’s, our Powelton Village Episcopal church. He had a good, solid voice, but again, this was just to be with Ginny in the choir; he told me more than once that he had no interest at all in what he was singing.

My daughters, Morgan, Erin and Caitlin, have an appreciation of a wide range of music, but if any of them have played an instrument, I’m not aware of it. No piano or guitar or ukulele lessons, and don’t recall that we ever talked about the possibility of arranging any – they will let me know if my memory is in error.

As for me, though I listened to the radio for up to 12 hours a day in the late ’40s when I wasn’t in school, I never got into pop music, and couldn’t stand the last-gasp big bands like Tommy Dorsey. I did like the odd songs that popped up in comedy routines – and, of course, Spike Jones.

I wasn’t much further into pop in the ’50s, though I listened while doing the family dishes, actively disliking maybe two-thirds of what was being played. So why was I listening? Masochism? To this day, I just don’t know. Peculiar, whatever it was. 

I didn’t fully appreciate music of any kind until my college years and the following ’60s “folk revival” (I still love that fold era today, but hate the term, which sounds like some form of disease). Mom’s few records had made me think I hated classical music altogether until, some time in my soph year of college, I heard Bach’s Brandenburg concerti. I sat there, mouth hanging open thinking, “this is classical music?!”

I started to buy piles of classical 33s, mostly $1 cut-outs at a record shop down on Chestnut St. I also took a wonderful course on the history of Western music, which gave me a great appreciation for 12^th-century polyphonics and Monteverdi.

But back then, and in all the succeeding years, I’ve never learned a damned thing about music theory or terminology. I can discuss quantum mechanics with some semblance of knowledge, but have no working concept of time signatures in music.

In the ’60s, I spent many an evening at Manny Rubin’s Second Fret, a coffee-shop near Rittenhouse Square, where he brought in nearly every major folk and blues performer (and many not-quite-major, such as Mark Spoelstra). One of those times in my life when I’ve felt blessed for being where and when I was.

Sometime in there I decided I should learn to play the guitar… or the banjo, or something. I didn’t have the money for lessons (abetted by my universal fear of embarrassing myself to suffocation through acting the fool), so I tried to learn from those big, floppy manuals by Pete Seeger and the like.

Well, I failed to learn to play the guitar, the banjo, even the recorder. I seem to be missing some vital connection between brain and extremities when it comes to rhythm or repetitive motions. Impetus does not lead to performance.

It’s the same way with me when it comes to dancing and most other physical processes. In my workshop, I can design nifty bits of woodworking but mis-measure at least twice before I get the layout right – if then. (But the absence of half my right thumb and index finger are the result of simple carelessness while shutting down the table saw.)

I don’t think any of this, or all of it taken together, proves a damned thing about me or my family. It’s just another of life’s larruping puzzlements. But waiting 85 years to take note of so obvious a familial trait says something about me that I don’t like. Though at least it gave me a topic for another sideways rumination.