1982 (4 page)

I had agreed to come in for an audition after Don Margison told me of his dad’s request. Don was an acquaintance who was an excellent young piano player. He’d seen me playing “Tom Sawyer” by Rush on a drum kit in the music room after school. He thought I was good. He didn’t know that I played “Tom Sawyer” well only because I had practised it over four hundred times, because in 1982 that’s what aspiring drummers did. Don just knew I was a drummer who could play “Tom Sawyer.” And that his dad needed one.

As part of the stringent audition process for the TCB, I met with two of the executive members—a nice bearded man named Jack and Mr. Margison. I was very intimidated at the audition. My father dropped me off, and he was waiting outside while I went in to the high school music room. The bearded man named Jack was also in his fifties, and had a big belly and wore corduroy pants and a flowery shirt underneath a vest. He greeted me by saying, “Hey there, man!” like bearded people talked in the 1960s. I think he might have previously been one of those guys that other musicians call a “jazz cat.” He played
the bass saxophone in the TCB. On the evening they invited me to audition, he took a seat next to Mr. Margison in the music room and I stood in front of them. Mr. Margison sat upright and looked quite stern. Strangely, the audition involved no music performance but rather an “informal chat.” I assumed this was a ruse. I was prepared for a minor interrogation to see if I was the right young man for the job. “So … can you play drum kit well?” bearded Jack asked me in a friendly way to get things rolling.

“Um, yes,” I replied, trying to sound confident. “I mean … I think I can. I mean, of course.”

“Well, that’s very good, man. Right on.” He turned to Mr. Margison and nodded with a satisfied look. “And what about percussion, then? Can you play percussion?”

“Yeah. That too.” I didn’t know exactly what they meant by percussion, but I could handle a tambourine and shakers and I had played bongos. Once, I played bongos on BBC television in England when I was five years old with a bunch of other kids. I’m not sure I knew how to play very well. But since I’d done it on TV, I must have been good enough.

Then it was Mr. Margison’s turn to speak. He cleared his throat first to signal his intervention.

“Well, that’s all very fine. Thank you for coming. But I hope you know this isn’t a rock band, young man. Can you actually read music?”

As he said this, Mr. Margison turned his head sharply towards bearded Jack as if to suggest that this should have been the first question asked. Mr. Margison had worn a look of disappointment on his face since the moment I walked in. I’m not sure what Don had told him, but I wasn’t living up to
expectations. It seemed strange that he needed to clarify that the TCB wasn’t a rock band. I was quite sure Mr. Margison wouldn’t fit in with any rock bands.

“Um … I’m okay at that. Like … reading music, I mean,” I responded.

Bearded Jack could tell I probably couldn’t read music very well, but he didn’t seem to mind. He was nodding along as if nothing about this conversation really mattered much. Mr. Margison was looking distraught.

But before I knew it, Jack had jumped up and was shaking my hand. “Well, okay then, man. Welcome to the band!”

Mr. Margison looked angry. His face was getting red. He had been out-voted by the bearded man named Jack. His balding head turned a shade of deep red that I had not witnessed yet. It was more like burgundy.

With this probing test over, I was in. There were about thirty members of the TCB, including trumpet and French horn players, clarinetists, a tuba-playing woman, and Jack the bass saxophone man. Most of the band members were older men, and many of them were balding and also had beards. The conductor was a kind lady named Amanda. During my first year playing drums in the TCB, we practised the theme from
Superman
, and I played a repeating marching drum roll at the start. This meant I was in the spotlight. I was also in the spotlight because I wasn’t old. And I may have drawn attention because I was the only one with dyed and gelled and semi-spiked hair. I was never sure if Mr. Margison and the older, white, conservative people in the Thornhill Community Band ever really liked me. I was pretty sure they just needed a drummer and I was the only one available. We wore special
blue shirts with a V-neck and white trim in the TCB. I got mine oversized and let it drape over my black New Wave pants. I was intent on being my own man, even though I was scared that most of them hated me. We met twice a week and practised a few songs that we considered our hits.

I have made a short list (or shortlist) of the biggest hits of the Thornhill Community Band in 1982:

theme from
Superman

theme from
Star Wars

“How Deep Is Your Love”

“William Tell Overture” (theme from
The Lone Ranger
)

“New York, New York” (theme from
New York, New York
)

As you can see from this list, the TCB had an affinity for performing themes from famous movies and TV shows. Crowd pleasers. It didn’t seem to make much of a difference that we almost never played for a crowd. The elderly trumpet player named Marvin declared that our
Lone Ranger
theme would “bring the house down!” There was much excitement about this at practice, but I’m not sure that it ever happened. Or that there were many houses we could bring down. We did do a few gigs, including a big Christmas concert at the Thornhill Community Centre. At the Christmas concert, we had some local high school tap dancers perform while we played the theme from
New York, New York
. That was our showstopper. Unfortunately, the community band never really sounded very good. The members were mostly very nice and earnest, but there wasn’t much of what you might call “soul.” Maybe that was fitting for Thornhill.

THORNHILL WAS THE
quintessential suburb. I’ve never lived in any other suburb, but I imagine they all look like Thornhill, with people who act like they did in Thornhill. It was the kind of place where men watch sprinklers on their lawns. Have you ever noticed that men like to watch sprinklers? They do. Or at least, they did. But I think they probably still do.

When suburban men reach a certain age (let’s say, north of thirty-five), they like to stand at the foot of their front lawns and watch their sprinklers distributing water on them. This seems to be a biological need. It may look like a banal exercise, but men take it very seriously. You might expect that these men are involved in another activity while they are watching the lawn—like thinking. But I’m not so sure they are. I think they’re not thinking. Watching the lawn is like a middle-class, suburban form of meditation for men. It becomes more common as they age. Their heads are empty and they are just watching sprinklers. Sometimes men will rub their bellies while they watch their lawns. Perhaps these men are so tired from a busy week that this is their respite. Or maybe these men feel a sense of accomplishment and worth by looking at their lawns. Maybe, in the moments when their heads aren’t empty, they’re thinking, “This is MY lawn! Look what I’ve done. I’ve got myself a lawn with a working sprinkler! I don’t have to think. My belly feels good. I am feeling my belly.” Maybe that’s what suburban men are thinking.

This suburban sprinkler-watching activity divides along gender lines, too. Women have never stared at lawns and watched sprinklers, not in 1982 and not now. Not with the same dreamy look. Not for hours at a time. Women are more proactive and productive. They would start weeding or
planting or they would point out the names of flowers or they would think about how things could look better. But men are different. Men will spend hours watching their sprinklers.

In 1982, on my street and on the streets nearby, you could see dozens of Thornhill men watching their sprinklers on any given Sunday afternoon. Sometimes, the style of sprinkler would mirror the personality of its owner. There was the machine-gun-like, rat-a-tat-tat rapid-fire “pulsating” sprinkler that would sit in the middle of a lawn and aggressively shoot water in all directions. I would later learn that this was also sometimes called the “impulse” sprinkler. It was likely owned and run by the dad of a tough guy. It was often considered the most effective, because it would discharge water in a strong fashion and was close to the ground so it was wind-resistant.

Then there were the “stationary” sprinklers that would just blow some water from a hose onto an area of lawn that needed particular attention. These static sprinklers would generally be left unattended for hours and were regularly featured on the lawns of more passive families. And then there were the vertical-shooting “oscillating” sprinklers that were positioned in the middle of a lawn and gracefully waved a stream of water to the right and then to the left and then back to the right. My father had bought the oscillating kind for our house. He would stand at the end of the front lawn and watch our graceful sprinkler for what seemed like hours. The oscillating sprinkler was very slow. I often wondered if my father would get us one of the machine-gun-type sprinklers. They seemed cooler, and that would make my father tough. And then people would think I was tough. But we never had one of those. I asked him once, but he didn’t seem very impressed with the idea.