1982 (23 page)

But I didn’t know all this about my Rush fandom in 1981. And I didn’t know I would become a devoted Rush follower in the midst of my adoration for Bowie and New Wave. I didn’t have a sense of this until one afternoon at Tom Rivington’s house.

Tom Rivington was tall and had longish, straight hair that parted in the middle. He was only a few months older than me, but he was one of those guys who always seemed wiser than the rest of us. Imagine Deepak Chopra when he was twelve years
old. Deepak Chopra is a prolific book-writing spiritual guru who has published more than fifty volumes. Now, imagine him at twelve. He was probably disproportionately wiser than kids who were a few months younger than him, right? He would probably declare things like, “Grape Crush drink … I do not think that is a good idea,” and everyone would agree that Grape Crush was not a good soda-pop idea because young Deepak Chopra said so. Then, after that, no one would drink Grape Crush. Well, Tom Rivington was like Deepak Chopra, except tall and white and with long, straight hair that parted in the middle.

Tom Rivington’s dad, Mr. Rivington, was a Scout leader with our 2nd Thornhill troop and wore a Scout uniform, even though he was an adult. Mr. Rivington wore the shorts of the Scout uniform too. He was a large round man, and his adult Scout shorts needed to be extra-extra-large. Mr. Rivington was a very good man. Everyone knew that the adults who wore Scout uniforms cared the most about scouting. They were also probably the best at using the Coleman stoves on camping trips. My father was the treasurer of our Scout troop for a while, but he only wore suits. My father was a professional engineer. In Iran, professional engineers wore suits, just like my father. On rare occasions, my father would dress more casual and put on a dress shirt with a sweater. But my father would never wear the Scout uniform with the shorts—even if he didn’t require the extra-extra-large size like Tom’s dad. People could probably tell that my dad was not as good with a Coleman stove.

Tom Rivington had a really big JVC home stereo in his bedroom. It took up a whole section of the wall next to his
bed. It was the best stereo of any of the Thornhill kids I knew. It was even better than something Davey Franklin would have had. In the early ’80s, if your stereo was big, it was good. If it was really big, it was even better. Tom Rivington’s JVC stereo featured a number of rectangular metal units stacked on top of each other. Each unit had a series of flashing lights next to the knobs. Sometimes, when Toke or Pete Hickey and I were at Tom Rivington’s house, we would close his bedroom door and turn off his bedside lamp, and we would watch the flashing lights while the music played. We would all be very impressed. And we knew it was an excellent stereo because it was the size of half a fridge. And the speakers came up to our waists.

You see, in 1982 things were better if they were bigger. Now, things are better if they are smaller. For example, in the early ’80s, large cars were considered better than small ones. Everyone agreed this was true, except the Europeans. At least, that’s what my father said. The Europeans liked smaller cars, but no one else did. My father had a very large Buick. When he first got the Buick, he proudly commented on how big it was. “It ees one of the biggest cars! It ees very long! It ees longer than the Cadillac car!”

My father was sure he had a very good car because it was so big. And bigger things were better.

The same was true of muffins and doughnuts. In the ’70s and ’80s, everyone preferred to eat large muffins. And if you got a big doughnut, you were lucky and you were happy. We knew about doughnuts in Canada, because Canada is the country with the highest doughnut consumption rate in the world. That is a fact. Canada also has the most doughnut shops in the world. Another fact. And Canada invented treats
called butter tarts. Fact. They were also large in the 1980s. By large, I don’t just mean popular, but actually significant in size. But even our biggest doughnut chain, Tim Hortons, started making smaller doughnuts called Timbits, and by the 1990s they were all the rage, because they were smaller. Now, coffee shops sell mini-muffins as well, because they are better, because people want smaller things and people will get less fat with smaller things.

I have made a short list (or shortlist) of items that were once considered better if they were bigger but are now considered better if they are smaller:

stereos

cars

computers

phones

doughnuts

As you can see, there were many items that were considered better if they were bigger in 1982. Before everyone had personal computers, the bigger they were, the more impressive they were. The first computers were the size of a bungalow. Those were really good computers. Now, everyone wants a tiny computer that they can put in their pocket.

All this attraction to big was also true when it came to Rush. Rush were bigger than most bands. And the fact that Rush were bigger meant that they were better. It’s not that they had more members than other groups. They didn’t. But they had big amps and big stage shows, and Neil Peart had the biggest drum kit on any stage. Rush had songs that were
longer than other bands’ songs, just like my father’s Buick was longer than most other cars. Rush were only three guys, but they had a BIG sound. Nineteen eighties big. So, when Tom Rivington gave me his large headphones and cued up the music on his giant stereo to the big drum solo in “YYZ,” he knew I would be impressed. And what I heard blew my mind. I mean, it was actually blowing my mind with the volume, the drum riffs, and the impressive sonic array of noises being piped into my ears.

Soon after my experience at Tom Rivington’s house, I became a true Rush fan. I started by buying the new live album at the time,
Exit … Stage Left
. I continued collecting Rush records with
Moving Pictures
(1981) and then
Permanent Waves
(1980) and then
2112
(1976). I worked my way through Rush’s back catalogue the same way I’d done with Bowie, and with the Beatles in Grades 7 and 8, and with the Clash in ’82. I took regular trips to Sam’s or A&A on Yonge Street in downtown Toronto to buy these albums. In the early 1980s, the act of buying music was itself a testament to how much you appreciated and wanted the records. It was no simple task. These days, you might hear a song you like, and so you click a button on your computer and it ends up in your collection. You click this button on your tiny computer, because smaller is better. The item you buy is now so small it’s only a few words on your screen. It’s not even plastic or vinyl or anything. But in 1982, you had to
want
the music badly enough to put in the time.

Let me explain for those of you who weren’t around what it was like to buy music back in the day—back in the ’80s. (I’m qualifying this as “back in the ’80s” because I realize that
“back in the day” can also refer to the 1970s, the 1990s, or the 2000s, depending on whether you’re really old or not really old.) For each Rush album I ended up buying—not to mention my increasingly bulging Bowie back catalogue—I had to make significant plans in advance. First, I would need to earn the money for an album by working at SAVCO Pet Food and Supplies. I would greet people at SAVCO by saying, “Welcome to the largest retail pet food outlet in North America. Can I help you?” That was what I was expected to say. My job at SAVCO was to shovel mounds of dog kibble from twentykilogram bags into two-kilogram bags and then seal them and label them. I did this for hours. Initially. This was before I graduated to the more glamorous role of dog-food sales clerk when I was fifteen. That was a big promotion. Not everyone got elevated to dog-food sales clerk. That really became my job. And I counselled people that if they fed their dog too much of a cereal-based product he could grow up to have a less shiny coat and a dark attitude. But anyway, with the money I earned from shovelling dog food, I would have enough to buy a record album. Singles had fallen out of favour in the 1980s, and it was all about buying the full record. It was all about having the full album experience, man.

Once I earned enough money, I would go “record shopping” with Toke or Murray. This involved actually leaving the house. Nowadays, you might just press that button on your tiny computer at home to get the music you want. You might buy music while you’re actually doing something else. For instance, you might choose to press the button and buy the music while you’re taking a bath. That way, you are buying music and getting clean at the same time. But in the ’80s, we
had to leave the house with specific intent to get an album. We would take a Thornhill Transit bus to Finch subway station and then a thirty-minute subway ride to Dundas station on the Yonge line. Then we would walk to Sam the Record Man and into the magical den of new vinyl and cassettes.

Sam the Record Man was massive. It was three floors of musical bliss in the heart of downtown Toronto. Walking into Sam the Record Man in the early ’80s was like witnessing one of the wonders of the world. It was a drug emporium for a pothead. It was a candy factory for a kid with a sweet tooth. It was filled with every kind of record and cassette from every genre and era you could imagine. For me, it was like Niagara Falls.

Niagara Falls is a tourist site about ninety minutes from Toronto that adults consider very impressive. My parents would take us on a family trip to Niagara Falls each summer, and sometimes, when relatives from other countries like Iran or England visited us, we would take an obligatory trip there. We went to Niagara Falls because the falls were a natural wonder and were really big and had hosted many daredevils who went over them in barrels. But I never totally understood what we were doing at Niagara Falls. My parents and relatives would all look at the falls and say things that suggested they were awestruck.