Sunday, December 02, 2007 Covington: Born to be wild By Gary Covington Looking In
THAT struck a chord; a front page mini-headline at the head of Wednesday's Sun.Star and no, not the “telly” program about the environment but rather the Canadian rock group Steppenwolf circa 1968.
Musically I was a staid teenager. We lived in a small village a few miles out of town -- there was no youth club, no pub with a jukebox and thus my musical education consisted of what I heard on the family radio or saw on TV's early pop music shows.
I liked the Shadows (Cliff with his pink jacket and pseudo-Elvis gyrating was a bit OTT), The Moody Blues, the Beatles -- still suited and barbered in those days -- the Searchers; a whole host of clean-cut, wholesome and harmless pop people. The wilder elements of rock had never assaulted my ears, the nearest my gramophone got to playing anarchy was the Stone's Street Fighting Man. Until, that is, I met a gentleman by the name of John Baldwin.
By this time I'd changed continents, had signed on the dotted line for three years, and was living and working at a small mining town in central East Africa. My Dansette record player -- taken with me from the UK, a squashy box with a tiny speaker in its lid -- I'd exchanged for one of the first assemble-it-yourself hi-fi kits. It wouldn't get shelf space these days with its modest single-digit amplification but I thought it was magic, the Shadows and the Moodies had never sounded so good.
And then came John. He and I worked in the same bit of mine -- colleagues rather than pals -- a relationship about to change as he suggested bringing over a few records to play on my kit, a box of beer and some smoking materials to jolly things along.
The evening was a riot. A revelation. Not the beer, the rest of the stuff. There were four or five of us. We'd cracked a beer or two, John was manufacturing joints the thickness of his finger, twirling the ends with a twist so the “tobacco” wouldn't fall out, the room was thick with a sweet-smelling fug and I put on the first record. “Turn it up loud," said John.
I'd never heard of Led Zeppelin. Particularly the opening track of Led Zeppelin 2, Whole Lotta Love, with its deafening bass driven riff. How to describe the moment? Farewell Matt Monroe. This was more like it.
The pot session -- my first and last -- was a hoot. The weed was local, certainly not export quality, and pretty rough. It was like trying to smoke a small shrub. The twiggy bits didn't burn -- merely smoldered with an acrid tang. The leafy content, over dry, flared up to nothingness in an instant but it was the seeds, as they caught the heat, cracking small, spiteful snaps right in front of your nose, scattering tiny glowing embers everywhere. Monday mornings it was easy to spot who'd been at the weed over the weekend -- a shirt-front pocked with tiny charred holes.
The pot and beer aside, that evening changed my musical outlook forever. I still liked -- and like -- the Shadows and the Moodies but my horizons expanded; the maniacal Who, the Band, Steppenwolf, Smith, Led Zep naturally and then on again to instrumental geniuses like Vangelis and Jean Michel Jarre and on again to world music and meeting (and dancing to) Commander Ebenezer Obey and his Interreformers, the king of Nigerian JuJu music. Wild indeed.
