So you want to be a professional musician E-Book

Kenn Gordon

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

More a biography than amthing else. I worked for 45 years and learned the hard way thise should helo the budding musician not to fall down the same ever expanding pot ho;es of life as an entertainer

Leseprobe

Kenn Gordon

So you want to be a professional musician

From my birth to my retirement and hopefully my life beyond but no one knows in these days of the pandemic of 2020/2021BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

so you want to be a professional musician

Kenn Gordon

So, You Want to Be A

Professional Musician

By

Kenn Gordon

I dedicate this to all those who have made things work for me over the past 45 years. I further dedicate this to me Mother and Father who encouraged me to be the best that I could be, in everything that I did in life. I dedicate it to my wife’s and all my sons (No! I only had one at a time, wife’s that is) It is tough being a Musicians partner or dependent Finally, to you who have bought my Books, Music and Guitars

Books by Kenn Gordon

Altered Perceptions

Return of Seven.

Dead End

Covid-19 The Alternative Ending

The Yellow Jacket

A History of The House/Clan Gordon

So, You Want to Be a Professional Musician.

The Original Poster Boy History of Chaplin’s Films

Fine dining at home on a budget

9/11 The Firefighters Remembered (Audiobook)

IN THE BEGINNING

Where would you like me to start? The beginning or perhaps it even happened before then. Perhaps it happens, right back in the genetics, you know? Like were your parents or grandparent’s musical in any way? Nope I don't really believe that, although there is no doubt that it helps to come from a family that has a musical background. I think my grandfather on my dad’s side made Violins and my grandmother again on the paternal side of things was musical. She played the Organ in Saint Andrews Roman Catholic Cathedral in Glasgow. I guess that could have helped, however I never really knew them, so that is a dead end, so to speak.

My maternal side did not really offer much from those grandparents, that is not a bad thing, as I would end up with another string to my bow, sort of thing. The good news though was that having been born in 1955, meant that the better part of my formative years was through the 1960’s. They say that if you can remember the 1960’s you were not there! I remember and as the great Max Boyce once said,

“I was there”. The time of Free Love! I was too young to get much in the way of that, during the 60’s. I had to wait until the 1970’s for that (but we will get to that in a later chapter.)

So, let us go back to the beginning and I mean that day, back in March 1955. I was born (yippee), to my mother (that was the normal way back then. It being a long time before test tube babies and an Aldous Huxley’s, ‘Brave New World’. Whilst he forecast a time of a dystopian world, where kids were born in Test Tubes (or even Petri Dishes)) It probably would have been easier, had I been given the musical traits by genetics, rather than having to learn the old-fashioned way.

So, having been created via a much tried and natural method, in the summer of 1954, I had to wait until spring of 1955. It was a good time in Scotland, it was in a happy time, they had rebuilt most its cities, some 10 years after the end of World War II.

So back to my conception as I said this was done in the summer of 1954, which strangely enough was the end of general rationing in the UK. That though did not mean that there were a lot of food, or luxury goods around. There were things happening that my father would have been more interested in than I would ever be. Things like Cricket, (for our American cousins this is not the insect that I am talking about) It is widely associated with England and Australia, where men dress in white and hit a leather clad ball with bats made from willow.

BORN FREE

So, the period surrounding my conception. It would be a safe bet to work backwards from my birth approximately 9 months. So, let’s take us to the end of June 1954. What were the events leading up to and possible contributory factors surrounding that little magical spark that caused my existence? Try asking your 90-year-old parent.

“Dad do you remember what you were doing when I was conceived 64 years ago?”

Right so I must hypothesise and look at the events happening in Scotland, in the one-week period that fits the conceptual time period. The UK Chart number one was ‘Doris Day’ with ‘Secret Love’. Now that would have been a grind on the dance floor and a cracking end of night song. It would have been a nice slow smooch number. So, that could have been one of the defining moments of my life. Apart from that I cannot find anything of great and cultural interest to anyone living in the UK, or for that matter those living outside the UK. We had crap weather that year, lots of rain and it was cold.

The Americans were having an equally bad year but for a diametrically opposed weather pattern. They had a drought and high temperatures. Looking at this there was nothing really to say that I was born musical.

This though was a good year for the Clyde Shipyards they had just finished a couple of big ships The SS Nevasa and The RMS Arcadia. These two ships would have a bearing upon my life later.

So back to my parents and my young life as it had come about. My father at the juncture was working as a Fireman in Alexandria in West Dunbartonshire. My mother was a Nurse. Dad was born into a strict Roman Catholic family and of Irish descent. Mum was a Protestant and Scottish descent. But both were naturalised Scots. Not that any of that really has much of a bearing upon my musical ability. Well not at this point in my life that would come later.

So, there I was in March of 1955, behaving pretty much as all my peers would be doing at the age of 0 – 18 months. This would involve pretty much nothing, but eating, sleeping and shitting and then repeating all of this in a perpetual loop.

I was as normal as most infants can be, which is to say I was probably a nightmare for my parents. As you can gather, I do not remember much of the first couple of years of my life, so some will be supposition, and some will be because of that my siblings have since educated me on.

These were the Rock and Roll post war years. Now I was the number three sibling. Fortunately, I had an older brother, or I would no doubt have been dressed in pinks. No, at this juncture of my post embryonic life, I would have been listening to the dulcet tones of our vacuum cleaner and now my mother had also managed to get a twin tub (What do you mean, you do not know what a twin tub is???)

So, she washed with the washing machine and used a mangle, to wring out most of the water. This was all before, putting it into the spin dryer. Mum like most housewives of the era did all her chores, while listening to ‘The Archers’ yep they really have been going that long!

‘Listen with mother’ (that would be for my older siblings but for me the vacuum and twin-tub still sounded pretty cool, especially compared to ‘The Archers’)

There were other radio shows like the ‘BBC World Service’ and ‘The Shipping Forecast’. All of the above were interspaced with ‘Light Programs’. (this had nothing to do with the illumination of the room you were in at the time, it was how the very straight-laced Government run BBC categorised their programming.) Some Classical music along with Swing and Jazz but Rock and Roll was still frowned upon by the BBC and we were still awaiting the advent of ‘Pirate Radio Stations’ and real music.

So, let us move on by a couple of years and I do mean just a couple of years. I had now stopped dribbling and was pretty much potty trained and able to walk. I had finally escaped from those things, that they called reins. (for the younger folks reading this Reins were tethered at one end to a harness contraption that went over your shoulders and chest, whilst the other end would be attached to either your mother’s wrist or the handle of the Pram.)

The first two years I should point out, were spent between being pushed around in a luxurious Silver Cross Perambulator or for the heathens amongst you a Pram. (Not a buggy but a coach-built thing with big wheels and sprung suspension. Complete with a hurricane proof hood and cover.) This had been used for my previous two siblings and would see a lot more service before it became a ‘Hurley’ (more on that later).

Now for my life between the age of 2 and 4. My parents must have invested in a better radio (Back then it was a piece of highly polished furniture, with a cloth speaker grill surrounded by one luxurious laminated wood or another. All of this encased a series of glowing valves and an elliptical speaker shoving out a massive 5watts. OK that by modern standards is not massive but in the 1950’s it was loud) We were able on occasions, to pick up Radio Luxembourg. This provided me with some real music. This style of music was starting to attach itself to my consciousness and even some dribbled itself into my sub consciousness. It sure as hell beat Mantovani and his Orchestra and even the Hoover or the Twin-Tub.

By now, I had also learned, that you could draw on walls with my ‘Crayola’s’ (these were real wax crayons, that did not wash off the walls, nor could it ever be painted over.) Back then any of us budding would be Banksy’s, could create permanent graphical features to our parent’s homes. This very act would cause many arguments in homes around the world. I mean If you don’t want your 4-year-old child to deface your paint or wallpaper then don’t give them the tools to do so. It’s not the child’s fault! Moving forward to the advent of woodchip paper would be used to cover over my artistic creations. Every child knows you can peal wallpaper back in strips. I guess that must have done my parents head in at the time.

Now that there was real music, starting to reach my ears. I was in my own subconscious becoming ‘tuned in’ to the sound of the ‘Guitar’. This per many Preachers, Priests and even some Politicians, not forgetting the directors of the BBC, was an instrument of the very devil incarnate, which would turn all who listened to it into the spawn of Satan himself.

By now, I also had a baby brother and another sibling being developed in that most human of Petri Dishes, my mother’s poor forlorn womb.

SCHOOL

Back on the 1950’s life was not exactly simple. Around that time, a good dose of double pneumonia, tried to take me permanently out of the game, even before my musical ability had a chance to assault anyone’s ears.

I remember some of my life at this age. I remember the fireplace in the kitchen come lounge, with its open fire and a bit of an oven, come stove part, to its side. I remember we had a chimney fire Yes; my father was still a fireman although now it was at Wick Aerodrome. It was probably of great embarrassment to him at the time, being called to a fire at his own house.

A part that I am glad I do not fully remember, though I have probably deliberately blocked it out. This was me as a 4-year-old, having to wear a pair of knitted shorts and a matching tank top.

My mother did love to knit, and we were in the post war years so, it was not uncommon to see kids in shirts that used to be curtains a day or two previous.

We had rugs, not fitted carpets I even remember a knotted rag rug my mother had made, I am guessing, these were forerunners of those Rug Craft kits. Only they were not a kit and you just used to tear up bits of material and poke them through pieces of hessian sackcloth.

Then came that dreaded moment in every child’s life. SCHOOL!!!! What do I remember about my first day at school? I pissed myself. I cannot remember if that was before or after, I had joined the rest of the kids in our first classroom. I remember the first lesson. We had to learn our Alphabet and our basic numbers. We would copy the letters and or the numbers, from the black board. This was not that much of a lesson, as my mother and older siblings, had already taught me these things. While listening to the BBC Home-Service.

Unlike children now, we were not born with a mobile phone or a Tablet PC cybernetically welded to our android like hands. Children had not yet been born with those super dexterous, multi articulating thumbs. Evolution being what it is, meant that this would take a further fifty years to happen. I was given a slate which was framed in wood, this was to go along with a brand-new stick of white chalk. It was possibly just after this point that I wet myself, as I had just discovered the sound and feel of a chalk screech, on slate. This was then followed by the fingernail drawn down over a slate, which by now was already covered in chalk dust! I know some of you have started to involuntarily shiver at the very thought of the chalk and fingernail thing.

I was sent home early, due to wet pants. Stripped down and into the tin bath, in front of the open fire, sheer luxury of it.

Pears Coal Tar Soap, at least that is my memory of the smell of the soap. Then a slab of toast, cooked in front of the open fire on a Toasting Fork. Rich folks would have had big silver ones, I think ours was made from an old wire coat-hanger, it worked just the same though. Still my link to music had not truly been fostered into my mind. Here we are looking to day two of school. All that was set to change on this my second day in the college of knowledge. Today we had a MUSIC LESSON. (At least that is what the teacher called it.)

Triangle, Chimes, Xylophone, Tambourine, and Wood Mallet. All these varied percussive instruments were banged at the same time, by a variety of 40-50 inept children, without a single clue as to timing or composition. This was all done as the teacher smoked her way through a five pack of Woodbine cigarettes, whilst she read the Daily Record from cover to cover. Presumably, she also had cotton wool stuffed into her ears whilst the cacophony of multi-timbral instruments raged on unabated.

I also remember the Pot Belly Stove, that sat unguarded in the middle of the classroom. Teacher always had her tea pot steaming on top. Nowadays this would have been a major health and safety hazard. Still, it was winter, and I was sat close to it. As such, even if I did know about the Health and Safety Executive, I would not have reported it to them.

So shortly after going to junior school in the Highlands of Scotland (Wick in Caithness) My father decided that he would no longer be a fireman. Dad would go back to the profession, he had initially been involved in, when he had met my mother, nursing.

MY MOTHER

My mother had been a Sister Tutor and a Matron. I let you know that in order that you get an idea about the strength and character of woman that my mother was. She was an ‘Old School’ type of nurse. She would rule the medical ward, with an iron fist, what she said happened. It was kind of like the pack order that dogs or wolf’s have, and it went this way. Matron (my mum) Consultant, Doctors, Senior Nurses, Junior Doctors, Trainee Nurses, Patients and God forbid that group of people known as Visitors, the latter being made up of the patient’s friends and relatives. God might just have had a look in after my mother and just before the consultants. Back then, there were rock solid times for visiting and relatives used to que up outside the wards, chain smoking your way through a pack of Woodbine’s until the doors were opened by some junior nurse or other.

Flowers were an acceptable gift even in the chest ward as were cigarettes! Just not fish and chips or a Doner Kebab. (Oh, how life has changed)

This order was also in our home. Mum, Dad, older siblings, me and then the younger brothers and sisters. Then anyone who was outside our pack. Quite simple really.

I digress, so, my father joined the Royal Air Force and went back to nursing and my mother stayed at home to look after the ever-growing family, which by now had reached 5 children. I was bang in the middle of that lot.

Back then like all mothers of the time, I suppose my mother would prepare meals from scratch. Most houses back in the 1950’s never had a freezer. Back then and only a few had a fridge. So, food was cooked fresh every day.