TICK TOCK - Brittlestar’s Weekly Newsletter - Issue #15
Get the vaccine if/when you can. There’s a whole lot of living that we need to catch up on… but not like now. Right now, it’s Sunday morning. Get another coffee. Let’s hang for a bit.
TICK TOCK
No, not that one.
I’m talking about the clock. The original tick tock.
Growing up I just assumed I would be a professional musician. That belief, like many childhood beliefs, existed unburdened by reality, skill or good hair.
But as anyone who writes or plays music will likely tell you, you can’t just turn that passion off. It’s in you and you have to act on it somehow.
When I was 16, myself and the band I was in (two other pals) started to book meetings with major record labels. Nothing much came of them, apart from the realization that apparently creating and selling music was an actual industry at the time (it’s a different game these days).
When I was 18, EMI Records felt we had ‘something’ but it needed to be kneaded and formed. So they sent me to their vocal coach. A woman who was on the same episode of the Ed Sullivan show as The Beatles, wrote a monthly column in a national magazine for musicians and was also the vocal coach to heavy metal singer, Thor. I enjoyed those weird sessions, despite the 2 hour drive there and back, but I felt it had ran its course when I arrived and she had double booked me with a young female singer and then instructed me to take my shirt off. Just me.
I failed to see the science in that plus I look WAY better with a shirt on, so that was my last lesson.
I continued to create music throughout my 20’s but each day made the thought of ACTUALLY doing something in music on a professional level seem further and further out of reach.
When I turned 34, I don’t know what happened.
I woke up one day and decided I needed to make an album. I realized that no one would care about another middle aged dude making an album on his own, so I mustered the courage to weasel some assistance from a musical idol of mine, Stephen Duffy (founder of Duran Duran, The Lilac Time, Tin Tin, etc.).
Then, suddenly things started to move quick.
I bought a computer from Zellers (Target before Target and in Canada) and started to record and send tracks back and forth to Stephen, who was in LA writing, recording and producing a Robbie Williams’ record that probably had a bigger budget than a $600 Acer desktop.
The songs came together quickly… for lots of reasons.
One… I would need to get vocal tracks recorded in-between barrages of Lego pieces hitting the ‘studio’ door thrown by my 2 and 5 year old sons and…
Two… I felt this immense urgency and push. Like I might be dead any minute now… or if not dead then unable to choose to do what I had chosen to do.
So, before I had even finished getting the album ready for the CD manufacturers (remember CDs?), I sent off the songs to a company in LA that produced the Real World series for MTV.
They licensed all 8 songs.
Then I worked on the CD. Then it was printed and ready for sale. Then I organized a deal that saw the album promoted with an album by another new band called The Killers (wonder where they are now). Then I put together an actual band to learn and play the songs I had essentially recorded entirely on my own. Then we booked some shows at clubs I had always wanted to play (Lee’s Palace, Horseshoe, etc.). Then we played a festival and I shared the bill with people like Nelly Furtado, The Tragically Hip, Ron Sexsmith, Burton Cummings, Sloan and many more. Then… then… then…
All the stuff I had been waiting to do my whole life… I just… started doing.
I realized that I had been waiting for some magical permission to start living the life I wanted to live.
Waiting for permission from someone that only I could give myself.
Do I wish I had started earlier than 34? Meh… maybe, but to be honest, I feel it made me much more aware and appreciative of the things I was doing.
I really don’t think it matters what age you are.
You’re alive and able, or you’re not.
Don’t waste that time. That opportunity.
The stuff you’ve always wanted to do?
You best get started.
Tick. Tock.
###
See? That's why I called it 'Waiting'. Gosh, I'm cute as hell.