wind and wuthering

the autumn is a time of reflection and remembering for me. it is filled with a lot of associations and you'll likely see many of those cropping up over the next few weeks - at least until it gets much colder and the trees are leafless and then that feature of my thinking drifts away.

the autumn of 1976 brought tremendous change into my life. my first time away from home - to attend trent university - and with it the responsibilities and irresponsibility's of being nineteen, living in residence and meeting all kinds and types of people and possibilities. music called to me as it had never done before. we had been very good friends for quite a while, but that autumn we became lovers as i found out about the immense world of music that i couldn’t have, and possibly wouldn’t have known but for a person with whom i was friends for approximately eight months named miles.

miles hailed from port alberni, (a pulp mill based town on the west coast) and brought with him a wealth of musical experience and knowledge such that he literally taught me and brought me to see the connections and layers and colours of the musical world that until then had seemed disconnected or filled with puzzling gaps.

i associate that autumn now with specific music by klaus schulze, tangerine dream, king crimson, robert fripp and brian eno, genesis, gentle giant, and many, many other groups and musicians from all over the world.

at this moment i am listening to a disc entitled “wind and wuthering” that i originally purchased as a vinyl album in 1976. miles and i knew when it was coming out to the day - the music press (especially the new music express magazine) was deliberate and precise in its information - so we boarded a bus for toronto and made our way to a nondescript little finger print covered glass door on bloor street. opening it we looked up a long, dark, skinny flight of stairs each of which creaked as we stepped on it. at the top of the stairs a doorless entry opened into a long formerly white room packed with wooden record cases alphabetized and crammed with vinyl. a couple of grubby windows leaked light into the room, augmented by a handful of bare bulbs screwed into wall outlets that likely would have and should have had sconces were the owners interested and able to afford such a luxury. and there on a wire record rack was the display containing the just-released-that-day “wind and wuthering”.

i still recall the luxurious and wriggly feeling of holding something that had travelled so very far and somehow appeared magically in this nondescript scruffy little shop in toronto. we stood in front of the display looking at the cover for ages it seemed - remember, when you bought vinyl you had a cover that was a square foot in area and a back that was a similar size. in my experiencing, this allowed for more - hmmmmm - well, it compelled you to really look at the cover and experience it as a moment of art or of someone’s thinking. cd’s carrying the same artwork as their vinyl forefathers but being substantially smaller somehow don’t invite that same sort of relationship. the sound is better i think but the sensory relationship is diminished otherwise.

i remember we left the shop, walked through downtown toronto back to the bus terminal and got on the next bus back to peterborough highlighted with that glorious - the most glorious moment in all my travels actually - that glorious moment of leaving the 401 and turning north up the 35/115. it’s almost indescribable the feeling of release . . . . “phew . . . that’s all behind me now” . . . . i’m going home". i’ve had that feeling every single time - hundreds now - since 1976 - when i turn north up that road.

wind and wuthering? well this isn’t a review as much as a moment opened out but i’ll tell you it has a beautiful cover - a tree painted with shades of grey watercolours on the front cover;

that transforms on the back cover into a tree that has been abandoned by a large flock of birds.

i’ll read more into it than was likely intended and tell you that certainly for steven this album represents the flying away of the world that began in 1967 and ended in 1976 around november. not only personally for me, but throughout the western world as the opening of this world to a particular quality of self-knowing, beauty, kindness, love, grace, learning, being and relating came to an end. this was not a bad thing in itself but it was replaced (if you recall) by a period of time where the work of the last ten years fell by the wayside and was trampled under the mantra of “i need . . . . i gotta have” that seems to have lasted until the late eighties.

the tree in my view, contains the many many birds of hope and vision that arrived in the late sixties and early seventies from the eastern hemisphere, the non linear thought, the experimentation of all kinds, the openness and receptivity that then took flight in the mid to late seventies (some might say that it all went to ground and never actually left) and which have now landed again much older, much wiser and much much more purposefully.

the music - well it is romantic, progressive rock, the mellotron that defined the wistfulness of so many band’s use of music in this period is front and centre carrying the colour and between tony bank’s rich palette and careful use of keyboard washes and flourishes, and steve hackett’s detailing over top of bank’s work, the listener is rewarded with an aural tone poem that frankly could sustain itself without phil collin’s lyrics and drumming but to his credit phil’s work on this album - the last genesis album i bought and can honestly say i enjoyed - is musically clever and shows clear influence of his work with jazz rock group brand x whose work appeared magically beside genesis and somehow informed their progress as a group while describing something completely removed from their rubric.

these are the lyrics to one of the more romantic pieces on the album.

Afterglow

Like the dust that settles all around me,
I must find a new home.
The ways and holes that used to give me shelter,
Are all as one to me now.
But I, I would search everywhere
Just to hear your call,
And walk upon stranger roads than this one
In a world I used to know before.
I miss you more.

Than the sun reflecting off my pillow,
Bringing the warmth of new life.
And the sounds that echoes all around me,
I caught a glimpse of in the night.
But now, now I've lost everything,
I give to you my soul.
The meaning of all that I believed before
Escapes me in this world of none, no thing, no one.

And I would search everywhere
Just to hear your call,
And walk upon stranger roads than this one
In a world I used to know before.
For now I've lost everything,
I give to you my soul.
The meaning of all that I believed before
Escapes me in this world of none,
I miss you more.

All lyrics (C) 1976 by Fuse Music Ltd.