He ain't heavy, he's my brother

When I was a tween, I would say "I hate music." I'm not sure why. It might have had something to do with realizing in grade school Music class that all I could accomplish was humming the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme down the end of a recorder while pretending to move my fingers over the appropriate holes. I couldn't sing worth a damn and my best friend started playing guitar at about the same time girls were growing breasts. I will never hear Collective Soul's "December" played so frequently again in my life (sorry, Tim). Unless, of course, smooth rock with Christian undertones has a resurgence as a serious panty-wetter.

So I've often wondered how I went from being so sternly against something, to it becoming a huge part of my identity. The first explanation is that I am a stubborn, opinionated SOB (my sign is Capricorn, ladies) who is either really really for, or really really against something. But after thinking about it for a while, I realize I owe it all to my brother Noah (yes yes, of the Ark variety - my parents aren't religious in the least, so I think my brother and I are biblical by-products of my parents' spiritual guilt).

There's a few reasons why I say my brother was the reason, and they come to me like photos in a View-Master; Click, click...

It's 1992. I'm 8, and Noah is 13. It's the summer, and my parents are at work. My brother has just finished giving me his classic beating, complete with the knees-on-shoulders tickle-fest that concluded with him hanging spit balls into my involuntarily open, laughing mouth. As a post-abuse olive branch he pops a Maxell tape into his BOOMBOX. My 8 year old brain was like, "what the fuuuucckk, I neeeeeeedd one of those!" (No, seriously, my brother had me cussing 5 years ahead of my time. When I was 2, I told a toddler in a passing shopping cart she was "a piece of shit.") Anyway, that was the first time I really heard pop music. It was MC Hammer's "U Can't Touch This," and man was he right. I straight b-boy'd that shit. My bro and I had a track pant dance party for the ages. When my parents got home they thought we had gotten into the cola.

It's 1995 and my brother has a massive shag, an over-sized Cookie Monster shirt (it was in back then) and wears bug-eye sunglasses and a chain wallet. He thinks he is Chris Murphy from Sloan. He is taking a break from skate-boarding with his friends in the Church parking lot and must be tired, because he's letting me hang out in his room. He puts on an old CD from a cracked case with a gold and green cover; "L7" printed big at the top. The chorus floods into my brain and I can barely think, because there's no room left. When we pretend that we're deeeadddd, yeah when we pretend that we're deeeaaaddd. It's grunge music, and I'm about 4 years too late, but I'm starting to GET IT.

It's 1997 and I think my brother probably hates me. I got my first stereo for Christmas, and it's better than his. The carousel holds 60 discs and I don't own a single one. Noah is in the middle of high school and has little time for his awkward, know-it-all brother to be hanging around with him and his friends. But then it happens. For reasons I have never discussed with my brother, and of which he probably can't remember anyway, he asks me if I want to come with him to a concert in St. Catharines. My first fucking concert. With my brother. A 20 minute drive away! It was a massive deal. So I strapped on my own tiny chain wallet and baggy jeans and jumped in my brother's white Grand Am; rust creeping out of the paint bubbles on the hood and the upholstery smelling of sweet tobacco. We walked into The Hideaway pub with its cramped stage tucked in the corner, framed by that cheap nautical woodwork customary of the watering holes that dot the roadsides of this country. As I sat up on the back of a chair to get a view over the grown people in the room The Local Rabbits took the stage under Christmas coloured pot lights, all sideburns and wavy hair. From the opening of "Sally Ann's Style Denial" I was awash in the chug of that guitar riff, while the cymbals splashed and a squeaky voice got sentimental over acid washed jeans. Even through the ear plugs my mom had insisted I wear, my ears were on fire. This was my first taste of the full body slam of a sonic wave rushing from an amplifier, and I loved it.  The Rabbits played their funky brand of 70s-inspired FM jazz rock for the better part of an hour, Peter Elkas' Greek mane remaining perfectly coiffed throughout the sweaty, smoke-filled set.

During the intermission I stood by while Noah shot the shit with some guys he skated with; some of them had beards and ear piercings and they talked like they had the world by the balls.  I took the couple of bucks my parents had sent me out the door with and bought a black crew neck tee from the merch table, "Thrush Hermit" written in bold across the front overhanging two pink lightning bolts.  To this day, the coolest piece of clothing I have ever owned.  

Noah whispers in my ear "Here they come, let's push to the front." I feel rad. We slide through the crowd as Ian McGettigan comes chicken-walking out with his bass slung over his shoulder, his head shaved into a crude mohawk with racing stripes notched at his temples. The drums roll in and Joel Plaskett blasts down the end of the mic "From the back of the film! He said shut up or I'll shoot you," his jeans nearly falling off of his gaunt frame. I wouldn't have realized it at the time, but this was one of the last shows Thrush Hermit would play together until their brief reunion tour this past year.



That night, I had witnessed Thrush Hermit perform a tome of Canadiana at a time before you could access new music with no consequences from the blistering black market Napster built. This was the time of the jewel case, CanCon regulations, Sook Yin and Bill Welychka, federally funded Canadian indie labels, paper tickets from record stores, college radio, alternative magazines, and word-of-mouth. You couldn't go surfing into the great beyond to find the latest Wavves download or Girl Talk mash-up. There was something hokey but endearing about having to come across it in your own backyard.  Flipping on MuchMusic and seeing bands like The Kill Joys and Age of Electric getting their share of the obligatory 35% Canadian content rules, when you knew this stuff would have no business on t.v. in the States. Now it takes little investment to coolly observe an emerging music trend from afar by reading an article or two and streaming a song on a blog. Back then you needed to spend some time and some dollars to go out and find what it was you were looking for; but when you did, you really felt you were tapping into a scene. Though it had been burgeoning for the better part of a decade by that point, Thrush Hermit had circled me in to the sounds of Halifax's musical renaissance, even if claims of the "Next Seattle" had long since faded into the ether.

It was that night I fell in love with music. It was that night Noah went from being my older brother to being my best friend. It was that night that led me to scour his cd rack and find the likes of Fugazi, Liquid Swords, Bad Religion, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, Black Flag, In Utero, Weezer's blue, and the Spin Doctors. It was that night that Joel Plaskett was hanging around after the show, his skinny face hidden behind a pair of granny tea shades, and I got to shake his skeleton bone hand. It was that night that brought me here to write this blog. And it's with that, that I come to my next post, where it all began for me with the music that made me love music: the alternative rock of 1990s Nova Scotia.