I’ve heard the song “A Whiter Shade Of Pale” by Procol Harum almost daily recently. They have the radio on in the kitchen at the cafe I frequent, and while many of the usual songs on “today’s top hits” radio are the same hits of the ’60s-’90s they play every day, this one stands out. There’s simply nothing else like it. But more importantly, it reminds me of my late father.
In the ’70s, my old man was a member of a band that played at cultural club dances. They were known as “Lordovi Alive,” which, much like their spoken language, was a mix of Croatian and English. I never did ask him what it meant, but translated, it’s a play on the word “lords”, perhaps meaning lords of music alive, or something along that line. They played a mix of polkas, waltzes, and popular rock and pop of the era — still, arguably, an era of some of the best music produced in modernity. To me, the music of the late ’60s to the mid-’80s is unparalleled in anything you’ll hear today on the top charts anywhere. Capitalism and corporatism, encroaching, divisive and corrosive ideologies, and vapid and ubiquitous politics have steadily eroded much that used to be good about our society and, of course, our expressions in artistry, and especially so in music.
Music is a fundamental element to our existence and affects us on many levels. Much like other forms of media, it is frequently perverted, distorted, and used in malicious manners to do more harm than good. It’s a shame, but that’s just how it is. It’s up to us to decide the kind of exposure we have to it and how much. Beauty is all around us and borne naturally from within, yet a vast majority of popular music today and “post-modern art” is downright empty and dead. This can, however, be remedied, but it’ll require a wholesale shift in the zeitgeist, away from parasitism, manipulation, technocracy, and control, and rising above the sterility and persistent angst of modernity.
Unlike the hyper-autotuned, hyper-processed, surgically produced music of today, songs such as “A White Shade Of Pale” have a character, depth, and timelessness that few would even consider today. At least, not in the mainstream, that vast gaze-stealing energy field of persistent malefic suggestions and mind control messaging.
Going West
Our family moved from Kitchener, Ontario, to the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia, in 1977. I was but a year old and told them it was time for a change! In truth, it was my mother’s family who pioneered the venture out West. My maternal grandparents loved what they found, and, subsequently, my mother essentially forced the issue for her own young family. I don’t know that my father ever forgave her for that. But someone had to take responsibility for making that kind of decision, and she did just that. They figured it out and made it work as best they could, but that was no doubt a difficult transition for him, the effects of which would linger on for years. New city, no friends, no family, no job, and another kid on the way. I’ve written about it in the past, how he “stuck it out” for us kids, though I don’t believe that was the best choice in retrospect.
Music was his passion and had been since childhood. His bandmates were his brothers, closer to him, likely, than his older, stricter, no-nonsense blood brother was. That’s how it should be, really, when you gather with those of like mind and spirit. My father had moved to Canada a decade earlier, in 1967, the same year that this soon-to-be-famous song was released into the world. I can imagine that the repertoire these guys learned no doubt helped them in learning the English language as well.
He kept in touch with those guys for the rest of his life. I had a conversation with his best friend shortly after he had passed, among the many strange and awkward calls I had to make to notify friends and family of what had happened. He, like many, was surprised at how suddenly my dad was gone, as they’d spoken on the phone only a few days earlier and everything seemed fine. I don’t know that I’ll ever appreciate what it’s like to have good and close friends for over 50 years. But I do know what it’s like to have regrets and occasional reminders of just how quickly time passes by.
This is a recording of a live performance of “A Whiter Shade…” from one of their dances in 1976. It was, no doubt, infused with a little (or a lot of) beer and wine. I tried a few years ago to clean up these recordings, which I was grateful to have done a few months before he passed away. He was quite excited to share it with his surviving bandmates back east. The tape was a little degraded and was itself dubbed from reel-to-reel tapes that weren’t in great shape, having lived in some dark, dusty corner for decades.
It reminds me that I, too, have 30-year-old cassettes from jam sessions with a few bands I was in, as well as recordings of song ideas from the early days of learning how to sing along with and produce my own music. Those were some magical times to be sure.
Nobody wants to die with their music still in them, but it’s likely that most of us will do just that. We live in a complex and unfortunately increasingly oppressive, polarizing, isolating culture in the West today. Generations of brainwashed and mind-controlled people are now in key positions across industries, institutions, and government, and they are, in general, psychologically dysfunctional, politically fragile and biased, and morally bankrupt. The resultant consciousness pervades our culture today as apathy and general unrest. We know something is off, but we can’t quite put our fingers on it.
It’s not all bad, of course, and there are still plenty of opportunities and avenues to living well and methods with which to dissociate from malevolent, thieving, encroaching bureaucracy, and other systemic entanglements. It’s not like it was in the 1980s and 1990s and will likely never again be that way before some rather dramatic shifts occur that few of us would be prepared for. But we may not want that either, really. There may be something far better beyond the incessant noise of industry, capital, and nonsensical progressive ideology if only we would take it upon ourselves to simplify, get real, and reconnect with life in a fundamental way.
Regardless, as much as we can tell ourselves that “we’ll get to it” amid the busyness of making and planning and living our day-to-day lives, we run the risk of letting it, whatever it is, get away from us.
We’ll never get it all done, never figure it all out, but that’s not the point. In my view, it behooves us to flesh out and live out those deepest inspirations and truest of aspirations. They don’t come upon us by accident. Many of us have in this modern era been swept up in a consensus mentality and going along to get along with the majority. Unfortunately, this is cowardly and disingenuous, and you know it is.
Don’t waste your time trying to convince anyone why you want to do your thing, though it may help to justify to yourself why you may suddenly be acting out of character, which, in truth, may likely be your true character after all. They’ll know it by the results. They’ll see it in your behavior and be made curious by your persistent smile.
Solvitur ambulando