rock

Discovering Friends

/ Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

It would seem like a natural event. Developing a friendship with someone that attracts your attention. Usual things. “It is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste” A. As usual, these things occur as a chosen event.

Examining friends of my past, I wonder about these things. What was it about Bruce for example that brought us together? Being the only veterans at an after hours beer joint?

It seemed so at the beginning when I offered him a shabby room to ‘crash’ where I lived in the other shabby room. A run down neighborhood on the wrong side of the tracks. A dump really. Bruce drove a really nice Austin Healy and I had my grandfathers old Buick. Ah yes, it was that both of us played guitar! You would think so, I did.

We both had things to teach one another and that was not obvious to either of us. It seems to me he had more to teach me but that isn’t the point at all. Neither of us had a clue about what to do with our lives and how to do it. Wine, women and song had been tried and found wanting.

Laughing a lot with the ‘Park Lanes” he smuggled in from Viet Nam in his stereo. We played music and found jobs with a third rate mobster that knew we had nothing to loose and had made our bones in the military. He spent six months at China Beach recovering from a near miss and I spent six months at hard labor paying for another near miss in Spain. Blown out of the military and we were brothers almost instantly. “you too! I thought I was the only one” B.

We traded the two cars for motorcycles and headed out on the highway, lookin’ for adventure. The song by Steppenwolf fit perfectly. We indeed, were born to be wild. We listened to that record along with Cream and other early metal music. Those songs were the ones that Bruce played while he drove through the ‘viles’ in Vietnam. Top volume on a loudspeaker on the roof of his 6×6. He would stop and show movies as part of the Psyops program while I was across the world in a top secret room getting messages from the CNO about our little war.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Big guns and missiles, or automatic weapons and people that were the unfriendly kind. Take your pick, no choice really.

My columns ‘motorcycle pilgrimage’ have the details but what is more amazing is the arranged coincidences that enabled Bruce and I to meet and listen to one another.

We had adventure, whatever came and that was at the same time that Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper acted in Easy Rider. 1968. Bikes with kick starters and sleeping bags. Our guitars strapped on ‘sissy bars’. Not custom choppers like the movie, just an old Enfield and a BMW.

Death threats, lost highways off of route 66, Angels appearing and a Senator in the desert. Adventure we went on willingly, not the adventures we had in the military. We were in control and that is another great illusion of life.As music itself touches us in the deep parts, timeless music that goes beyond the spoken word or even the words of a song, the arrangement of the eternal music draws us closer to life.

All of our lives are parts in the everlasting orchestra and the conductor has set us for His pleasure in the first chair. Chosen by Him.

Bruce was and is my closest friend. And still is as time streams by so fast. He died years ago and I did not even know he was ill. That happens a lot to me. There is so much I do not know about these things. Why am I the survivor? It would seem many wondrous things have since come about, and I write about the blessings and struggles of life that we all know.

The conductor and author of the grand symphony has the score and we watch and pray as he once again, raises His baton and puts life before us. We indeed, are His instruments of the beauty we get a view of now and then. The love and hatred, losses and treasures. Pain and health all allowed and known on that narrow, beautiful road we all walk. It’s pretty good. Norm

A.& B. C.S. Lewis The problem of Pain

Bruce and his wife Cindy with me at their home in Minneapolis

A Fish Net At a Dixieland Bar

/ Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

It began in high school and the young physics students made friends. I was the teachers pet. I had all the math classes aced Solid, Trig, Quadratics and so on. I would stay after class and tidy up all the Bunsen burners and the testing equipment. One of the students, Don, stayed after with me and we began the friendship process geek to geek. Neither of us were on the any teams in sports or forensics or even knew any cheerleaders. Just a couple of guys interested in electronics.

My teacher, Miss Bertie, had the entire class come over to my house and see my ham radio setup. My rig was in my bedroom and the thrill of having one of the cheerleaders sitting on my bed while I explained and demonstrated the rig was a touchstone that lasted for a while.

Don was there too and he was hooked. I gave him his novice exam because I was licensed to do so and he got on the air too and soon had his general class license. He had a friend at another high school a little south of us and the three of us began to get serious about amateur radio. Especially the part about having cheerleaders sitting enthralled on my bed. One time deal though

The three of us started to be pretty good friends and their parents were pleased with our choices of classmates. I started to hang out with my new friends, Don and Loren and we all hung out at Loren’s place as his dad was a drummer in a Dixieland band that played downtown at Brady’s bar. We were allowed to stand in the back of the room and listen and watch Loren’s dad, Lloyd play with band that had a stage above the bar. Smokey and loud and our first taste of adults at play. We were not anywhere near 21 but we got free cokes and nods of approval.

The band was called the “Lloyd George Quintet” They were good. It was tough on Loren’s dad as he was a hemophiliac and his position as drummer was not a low impact one.

The patrons really liked the Quintet and there were always drinks handed up from the bar from appreciate listeners. A lot of drinks. The music flowed on for hours along with the booze.

We would pick Lloyd up after his gig, load the drums and pour Lloyd in the back seat and take him home. We had a big Plymouth with a bass drum in the back seat and we began ‘fronting’ down west Broadway and acting cool at the Clock drive in. Our ‘band’ was nonexistent but we already had a name ready. “the Fables” that’s what we were, a fabulous fable with ham radio geeks eating fries and burgers with all the looks of admiration we fantasized. My friends formed the band later but I was far away then. Loren was, of course, the drummer.

We had a little club every Friday night on air and would get together at 8 o’clock sharp on the ten meter band on AM (amplitude modulation..voice) and chat. I would lie on my sanctified bed and pull a string hooked up to my send and receive switch and lie down with my mic in my hand. It was about as geeky three guys get. We called our gathering “the fish net” This was what passed for our entertainment in the late fifties of the last century. Pretty swell eh?

The last time we met was when I was on liberty before my next duty station overseas as a radio operator. We watched the infamous Minneapolis tornadoes march across the sky south to north around 1965. My friends were still in college and exempt from the draft. The big Buick convertible of my mothers was rocking as we watched those tornadoes. The heavy Buick began to sway back and forth as we were up on a hill on memorial drive.

It was time to leave the danger zone and I drove home. They avoided serving in the danger zone in the military and stayed in college. And we all moved on. I was saved by God several times afterwards and Would like to share that with them today, but my letters go unanswered.

I am Puzzled. 73’s to you. 88’s to the cheerleader too.

Jack Gator K0JMV

P.S. Praise the Lord for pleasant and humorous memories and the miracles of life we are blessed with!

Sweet Georgia Overdrive Band

/ Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

It’s a real easy thing to do with music, if you play that is. If you play in front of people. A hushed room, listening to every key change, every high tempo from the kick drum. Listening when the whole outfit stops playing and just sings Capella. Most everyone in the band knows their parts and if the sound engineer knows their stuff, the band knows what everyone else is doing at any one time. Applause if you do it right and stay in key. Play off key, just surround it with friendly melody and no one will ever know the mistake. 1,.

The problem begins when you have a ‘gig’ (music world for job to play) and are really not in the mood, tired and just beating yourself up about the gestalt of performance. It’s a huge step to exclusively change from playing every two bit bar within driving range, and change to playing for a worship group or band. After a short while, the change to Holy music from Holly music seems to be harder, much harder. Holy means touching eternity and it’s pretty good!

There is a fallback when you have to play and would rather not. You put your musical skills on the line and play in Georgia Overdrive. Put everything in neutral and just coast. It sounds good but you know it doesn’t sound like anything. Just making the moves. Waiting for a touch from the numinous Lord, waiting to hear ‘those’ notes.

As the joke goes, “it’s OK if you like music” It’s a subtle and yet extremely powerful touch or kiss that thrills musicians. Sometimes you can tell with an ensemble when someone transcends all the sharts and flaps and begins to really play or sing. Rhythm surprises were a favorite fallback for me. I was nicknamed ‘the rhythm monster’ by a square dance group I played with for years. The changed notes or rhythm,they catch attention and start an interest. It can be compared to a flicker of light at sunset in the clouds.

Focus on an unknown algorithm that begins the solving of the connection to the conductor of the music. You can feel Him listening and watching what the Holy music is saying to Him. His delight in the formula found to draw near is palpable.

It’s more than just performing for the Holy one, Jesus. It starts with performance at the outset. Akin to handling a blueprint and ‘playing’ with it. A musical intonation that isn’t too complicated but intriguing. A few fumbled chord changes and the groove is coming into focus. Do your part you hear, it’s just made for you to play.

Use the blueprint to get to the right foundation of the music building and ‘look around’ at the other musical carpenters. They are waiting for the moment too. Suddenly, unexpectedly, a harmonic sounds and two instruments play it together. Improvisation rather than notes on a page. Primitive and not very professional but fun. It’s easier to play jazz if you don’t worry about it. Just play what shows up in your spirit and be delighted when it gets picked up.

Noted gypsy guitar player a generation or so ago, Django Rheinhart was asked what key he wanted to play in. He responded. “Key? What is Key?” Gifted beyond comprehension when he played with Stephan Grapelli on violin. If you can get a vinyl recording of these sessions, hang on to it. It’s worth a bundle. Vinyl, it’s the closest thing to actually being there.

Play well and play with heart and spirit giving you the rhythm and scale of things., It’s pretty good.

Norm / Jack

1. With thanks to Bill Hinkley and Judy Larsen