1982 (24 page)

“Wow. I could just stand and witness this for hours,” my mother would say. “Don’t you love this, honey? It is just so breathtaking.”

“Yeah. It’s good. We saw this last year,” I would reply.

“The water, it ees never stopping! It ees creating energy!” My father was also very impressed with Niagara Falls. Always.
He was an engineer. So my father would explain that the falls were a source of atomic energy. Or something like that.

But I never totally understood the magic of Niagara Falls. It sure was big, but I usually felt like we were just standing and looking at water. That was because we were just standing and looking at water. It’s as if you stood and watched your tap. Now, imagine the tap was really big and no one turned it off. That was Niagara Falls. Was that really interesting to look at after thirty seconds? I never understood it. But Sam the Record Man was wondrous. I could stare at the offerings in Sam the Record Man for hours and hours. I imagined what it would be like to own everything in Sam the Record Man— even those Bowie rarities on vinyl from Europe. I could not get tired of seeing these things. If I’d had lots of money, I would have bought Sam the Record Man before I bought Niagara Falls. For young teens who were into rock music in 1982, Sam the Record Man was our Niagara Falls.

Of course, there was also a purpose to every visit to Sam the Record Man. Once I was inside the glorious emporium, I would need to find, say, the Rush album I was looking for and bring it to the counter. This involved rifling through all kinds of other vinyl records until you identified the one you were seeking. It was probably easier to ask a clerk to help, but that would not be cool. Rifling through vinyl was cool. Then, assuming I found the Rush album I wanted, I would bring it to the counter and pay for it. I would almost always have the exact change counted out in bills and coins, including tax. I knew what I was getting into here. And after I’d paid for the Rush album, the person at the counter would put it in a plastic bag to confirm I was not stealing it as I left the store. Then came the hardest part, another
thirty-minute subway ride and trip on the bus before I could get home and put the record on the stereo. On the subway, we would always peel off the plastic shrink wrap and look at the artwork and read the liner notes. Then at last, after a round trip of a few hours, I got to put the new album on the turntable in my room. It was all a lot of work, but there was nothing more gratifying than the journey to buy a new record, and then actually—finally—getting to spin it.

Why am I giving you this detailed account of purchasing a Rush album? I’m doing so because it really felt like an investment to get music in 1982. Not just an investment of money, but of time and energy. Listening to the music became a reward for all the work you had put in. It’s like we appreciated music more in the 1980s when it wasn’t available to us at the push of a button. And then we would play it on our big stereos with large headphones.

Throughout Grade 9, I solidified my interest in playing drums and becoming good on the basic four-piece drum kit by spending countless hours practising after school in our music room, Room 273. Amongst drummers in our high school, the standard to shoot for was very clearly Neil Peart of Rush. He set the bar high. Learning to replicate every riff by Neil Peart was the goal of any aspiring drummer worth his salt. All the drummers in the music room learned to play the song “Tom Sawyer,” which had been released the previous year. If you wanted to be a real drummer, you learned “Tom Sawyer.”

Everyone was judged by how well they could play “Tom Sawyer.” I had gotten my job playing drums in the Thornhill Community Band because Don Margison had seen me playing “Tom Sawyer” in the music room after school and told his
dad, Mr. Margison, that I was a good drummer. I wasn’t as good a drummer as Don had suggested. But I knew how to play “Tom Sawyer.”

In Grade 9, we had a battle of the bands called Rock Nite at the Thornlea gymnasium. The bimonthly Rock Nite was organized by an intimidating Grade 12 student named Hussein. Hussein was quite gruff. And he wielded a lot of power. He was tall and burly and he wore a leather jacket the way Toke’s brother, Mitch, did. Hussein would select from the best high school bands and, if selected, they got to play at Rock Nite. Almost all of the bands that took the stage at Rock Nite played cover songs. You always knew who the drummers in the audience were at Rock Nite, because they would stand right in front of the stage with their arms folded and stare intently at whatever drummer was playing. The stare would become even more pointed when each band inevitably attempted to play “Tom Sawyer.” I wasn’t good enough to play Rock Nite for most of Grade 9, and I didn’t even think I was good enough to stand in front of the stage with the other drummers with my arms crossed. But I practised “Tom Sawyer” in the music room. Don Margison thought I was good. I aspired to play “Tom Sawyer” by Rush onstage one day.

I was having some trouble in this period reconciling my growing New Wave status with my appreciation for Rush. Rush fans were not very New Wave, even though the band had started to integrate synthesizers and were trying to move in a more progressive, keyboard-based direction. My friend Shael Risman, who was also a drummer and played in our Grade 9 band Urban Transit for a while, saw Rush live at Maple Leaf Gardens in November of 1982. He told us the
next day that a Canadian New Wave band called the Payolas had opened for Rush and had been booed by the Rush fans. Shael said everyone gave the Payolas the finger and started screaming, “Fuck off, Payolas! Rush!” I had liked the Payolas before this. They were New Wave, and I had seen a simulcast of their concert at the Masonic Temple on Citytv. A simulcast meant that you could watch the concert on TV at the same time as it was being played on CHUM FM. That way, you could hear the music in stereo—which was especially good if you had a big stereo.

The Payolas had a song called “Eyes of a Stranger.” It was a bit of a hit, and it would be on the soundtrack for the film
Valley Girl
the next year. That was more of a preppy film. But in ’82, the song was really New Wave. And it featured “eyes” in the title. There were lots of songs about eyes in the early ’80s. I’m not sure why.

I have made a short list of songs about eyes that were released in the beginning of the 1980s:

“Bette Davis Eyes”

“Eyes Without a Face”

“Private Eyes”

“Eyes of a Stranger”

“Eye of the Tiger”

“She Blinded Me with Science”

As you can see, there were many songs about eyes in the early ’80s. But the Payolas’ “Eyes of a Stranger” was definitely one of the best. I had decided I liked the Payolas. But I wondered if I’d have said so if I were there when they opened
for Rush. Shael Risman had been pretty clear that everyone had screamed, “Fuck off, Payolas! Rush!” It didn’t sound like the Rush fans would have appreciated me very much if I’d cheered for the Payolas. There were still clear divisions between rockers and New Wavers in 1982. Rush may have been gravitating towards New Wave, but their fans were not. And New Wavers still didn’t really understand Rush. I was stuck in the middle.

For some of the aforementioned reasons, I had a keen sense that Wendy was not really very impressed with Rush. I had this sense because I had seen Wendy making a face when her brother mentioned Rush once in the hallway at Thornlea. I’d remembered this and made a mental note not to talk about liking Rush in front of Wendy. Wendy was a fan of the Beat, and the Human League, and the Clash. Rush were not cool to her. But it also made sense that Wendy didn’t like Rush because she was a girl. Girls didn’t like Rush. You might think I’m making a generalization. But I’m not. No girls liked Rush. Well, maybe there were some oddball girls who had decided to follow Rush, but for the most part Rush was a guy thing. Just like wrestling in gym class or playing Dungeons & Dragons, Rush was the domain of young men and boys.

Here is a short list of things boys liked in 1982 that were not as appreciated by girls:

Coleco tabletop hockey