I have to admit, I had some bizarre hair styles when I was in my teens.
I guess that as a young kid, I was trying to figure myself out and get comfortable with a style that defined who I wanted to be. It probably wasn't until my late 30s or my early 40s that I was truly comfortable with the 'real' me. Now, in my late 50s, I figure that I am who I am: that's not to say that I don't have an open mind for ideas and opinions, but I really don't care to create any new version of myself.
I really don't care much about my appearance, these day: the inside me is more important. Sure, I want to be clean and well-groomed, but I essentially leave my hair alone until it gets long enough that it starts sticking in my ears, and then I get it cut short enough that I don't need to worry about brushing it.
That's how little I care about my hair.
So when I was looking through a photo folder with pictures of me over the decades, I was almost taken aback by a couple of high-school photos. In one, I barely recognized myself; in another, I didn't recognize myself at all.
And maybe, these photos have something to do with why I no longer like plaid.
The first photo (on the left) was taken in 1980. I was 15 and in Grade 9. The other photo was taken the next year. Wow, that hair.
The afro grew until it reached my shoulders. At the end of grade 10, when I was looking through my yearbook, I came across a photo of our high-school band. I was looking for myself, in the back row, among the other trumpet players.
I saw someone I didn't recognize. "Who's that?" I asked a friend who was looking through the yearbook with me. I was pointing to someone who's face was a bit obscured, who had a massive head of long, curly hair. "And why is she wearing my t-shirt?"
It was unmistakably my Led Zeppelin shirt with the artwork from the inside of their fourth album, with an old man, standing on a mountain, holding a lantern and a staff, looking down at a walled town, below.
"That's you," my friend said.
"That's me?"
That summer, I had my hair cut short. I haven't had long hair since.
Oh, let the sun beat down upon my face And stars fill my dream I'm a traveler of both time and space To be where I have been—Led Zeppelin, "Kashmir"
Fourty-seven years, to the day, that this iconic rock tune was released, I still love it. Once it's in my head, it's hard to get out—not that I ever try to dislodge it.
One of the things that I like about Stittsville's Brew Revolution is that they give their suds names that take me back to good times, listening to the music that I grew up with and love to this date. Walkin' On Sunshine (their NEIPA). Vienna (a lager).
And Kashmir, a Norwegian pale ale, made with Cashmere hops.
I suspect that the folks at Brew Revolution use kveik yeast in their pale ale, to give it that Norwegian distinction. There's something in the flavour profile that gives me that impression.
Let's get into it.
Kashmir – Norwegian Pale Ale (4.5% ABV, 20 IBUs) Brew Revolution
Stittsville ON (Ottawa)
Appearance: a clear, deep gold with a foamy white head that leaves a solid cap.
Nose: pear. That's it. Pear.
Palate: melon and lemon-lime citrus, with just the slightest hint of banana, and a flinty, mineral finish that coats the mouth with subsequent sips. It's a clean-drinking, dry ale.
Overall impression: the first time that I tried this Norwegian pale ale, I fell in love with it. It had characteristics that were both familiar and surprising. I reached for it when I wasn't in the mood for an IPA and it really hit the spot. It had a good, light body and lots of flavour. It was dry without being bitter and I could really discern the fruit flavours.
In reviewing Kashmir, I opened my last of four cans and was a little disappointed that my supply was coming to an end. And then I remembered that I could always order more, and I'll be sure to. Easily sessionable, I would drink this on both a cold winter's evening and a hot summer's day.
Beer O'Clock rating:🍺🍺🍺
You can pick up Kashmir Norwegian Pale Ale directly from Brew Revolution or order it online and have it delivered for a nominal fee.
My Shangri-la beneath the summer moon I will return again As the dust that floats high in June We're moving through Kashmir
For the most part, when I form a friendship, I form it for life.
My friends and I may not see each other for a long time. We may not even reach out, through e-mail or phone call, for several years. But when we do get together, we pick up where we left off, as though time has stood still.
Some of my oldest friendships go back to elementary school. There are those who I feel privileged to remain close to, who I feel lucky to call friend, from as far back as the third grade. These are people, who, if they were ever in need, I would drop what I was doing to lend a hand, to offer support.
Recently, a friend of my distant past has returned to my present and, since his return, has occupied a lot of my thoughts. With your indulgence, I thought I would share some of those thoughts.
It was an unlikely friendship: he was two grades ahead of me in school and seemed more mature than those years had lent, and we never hung out together on the school grounds. But we lived a couple of doors away from each other and would spend hours together after school and on weekends, mostly in his basement, where his stereo system played the music that would shape my life.
It was music that brought us together. When I turned 8, my father took me to a record store and let me choose an album for myself. I think he expected me to choose a children's record but I went straight to the New Releases stacks and picked an album that drew my attention.
It was Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy.
When my friend, Keith, learned that I had this album, he pulled out his collection of earlier Led Zeppelin releases. There was no going back: I became a full-fledged Zep Head. Keith and I would play these albums over and over again. I practically wore out the grooves of my copy of Houses of the Holy and had to replace it, years later, when the scratches became a distraction.
Keith introduced me to other music: Alice Cooper, Yes, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, and so many others. To this day, I credit him with helping me form my music appreciation.
Halfway through grade 6, my family and I moved to the Gatineau Hills and I became separated from my friends in Parkwood Hills. In the two and a half years that we lived just north of Chelsea, I saw Keith and my other friends only a handful of times. And by the time that we moved back to Parkwood Hills, when I began grade 9, these friends had formed bonds with other classmates, and I felt alienated from those with whom I used to know so well.
Those who were my age, who were still in classes with me when I returned, eventually rekindled our relationship. And while Keith and I would still remain friends, the age gap, combined with the different circles in which we lived our daily lives, didn't keep us as close as we had been before the move.
One thing that still held us together was our love of music. I remember one afternoon when I invited Keith to my house and we pulled out my album collection, Keith went through every album I had. When he came to my collection of Peter Gabriel records, he exclaimed, "Good choice! This man is God to me!"
To this day, I still refer to Peter Gabriel as God.
Keith was also happy to find my collection of Ultravox albums, pulling out Quartet and urging me to put it on the turntable. I remember feeling honoured to have earned Keith's approval of my entire album collection.
To this day, when I discover a new artist, I often wonder what Keith would think of him or her, or whether this artist or band would reside in his own collection. Even now, his musical opinion is important to me.
Keith and I lost touch after he graduated from high school and went to university, in Toronto. It wouldn't be until several years later that we would be reunited, and it was because of music.
When I was in my second year of university, I moved into an apartment with a fellow student, Peter. He and I had a mutual love of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and every Saturday he and I would sit in front of the television to watch the newest episode, and afterwards we would discuss the show, how it worked into Star Trek cannon and would make predictions about where a particular storyline would go.
Peter also made a great comparison between the U.S.S. Enterprise of the original series and TNG, and Ottawa's old Museum of Nature (previously called the Museum of Man) and the Museum of Civilization, on the Gatineau side of the Ottawa River: the angular original Enterprise and Museum of nature; the curvaceous Enterprise-D and Museum of Civilization. "Where no man has gone before," versus "Where no one has gone before," and Museum of Man versus Museum of Civilization.
Loads more comparisons, but that's another discussion.
Peter also loved my music collection, and I would often arrive at the apartment to find him spinning one of my records. We would spend hours, simply sitting in the living room, in silence, simply enjoying the music.
One day, we started talking about my record collection while I was playing First Base, by Babe Ruth (the band, not the baseball legend), and Peter told me that my musical taste was similar to his best friend's.
"Have you ever heard of the band, Strawbs?" Peter asked.
"Yes," I said, "an old friend loved them but I never got into them. It's probably the only band that he liked and I didn't. His name is Keith."
"Keith?" exclaimed Peter, literally jumping out of his chair. "Keith H—?"
"Yes! How do you..."
"He's my best friend!" Peter immediately picked up the phone and called Keith. When Keith answered the phone, Peter held the receiver close to one of the speakers, then said, "You'll never guess who this album belongs to. I'm sitting with my roommate, listening to his records."
Keith answered correctly. Peter handed the phone to me, and Keith and I chatted as though time had never passed.
A month or so later, Keith returned to Ottawa and came over to Peter's and my apartment for an evening where we played vinyl while catching up. I asked Keith if he wanted me to put on a Led Zeppelin album, to which he responded, "Sure, if you like, though I associate listening to Led Zeppelin with visiting my grandparents: I do it because I feel I have to."
It was the last time that I ever saw my friend. At the end of that school year, Peter moved into an apartment with his girlfriend and my girlfriend—now DW—moved into mine. Peter and I lost touch, and with him, so did Keith and I.
But a few years ago, I received an invitation to connect with Keith through LinkedIn. I accepted the connection and reached out, but I didn't hear back from him. In fact, there was very little activity and almost no information about him from his account profile, so I assumed that he had created his account but never got into the habit of using it.
In truth, I don't really use my LinkedIn account very much, either.
Keith has never left my thoughts. A few years ago, I remembered an accident that I had when I was young, and how Keith had been there to help me. I wrote a blog post about it, remembering how he had remained calm throughout the ordeal, though I was bleeding profusely.
A couple of weeks ago, I received a LinkedIn notification from Keith. He told me that he had been following The Brown Knowser through the automated notifications that I post on that social-media site and that he wanted to reach out to me, providing his e-mail address in the message. I responded immediately, gave him my phone number, and told him to reach out to me any time.
He called about a week later.
The phone call was short, as Keith had another obligation that evening. But we did speak for about a half an hour. I felt like I had blathered on and feared that I'd never hear from him again. But when we spoke to each other, if felt as though time hadn't moved—though, in reality, it had been almost 30 years since we had heard each others' voices.
I look forward to more conversations.
As I said at the start of this post, when I make friends, it's a lifelong commitment.
I like to think that I have good taste in music. I have shared some of it with my friends, and they have liked what I have introduced to them; some have even thanked me. I'm talking about the friends I've recently introduced to artists like Hawksley Workman and Sam Roberts, or to bands like Metric. In high school, I was the first of my friends to be into Led Zeppelin (first of my friends in elementary school, actually) and Peter Gabriel, to which my old friends still groove. My kids have benefited from my music tastes, as they also like these bands and artists. My youngest loves Sarah Slean, and couldn't get enough of her on Canada Day. She is always listening to her music and has two autographed posters in her bedroom. But my eldest daughter has branched out and discovered new music, and both of them listen to a pop-music radio station on a regular basis. That's okay. I feel that I've laid down enough roots and introduced them to music that they will take with them and keep for the rest of their lives. When I was young, growing up in my parents' home, I was subjected to their musical tastes. Some, I didn't care for, like Roger Whittaker and Nana Mouskouri. But they did listen to Cat Stevens, who I still love, Neil Diamond, John Denver, Simon and Garfunkel, and ABBA. While I never had a lasting affinity for Denver, I still sing some of his songs from time to time in the shower or while cleaning the kitchen.
I branched away from most of this music when I discovered Led Zeppelin and became close friends with my older sister's boyfriend, Keith H—, who introduced me to Alice Cooper, B.T.O., Yes, and Strawbs (although that 60s band never stuck with me). While my daughters, for the most part, have listened to the music that I play around the house and have gone to live shows that my wife and I have taken them to, they are not limited to only that music. As I said, they listen to the pop stations and have come to know music that has not been brought into our house any other way. I suppose that as we try to break out on our own, we go in directions that run against the flow of our parents. That is something that our eldest daughter has done recently, and she's taking our youngest with her. My kids are becoming head bangers. I don't use that term in a derogatory way: though my kids didn't understand the reference, I'm sure that it is still used to describe those who listen to heavy metal and hard rock. Lately, my sweet, adorable girls are listening to the band, Three Days Grace. I remember hearing this band a couple of years ago, and I dismissed them out-of-hand because it's simply not to my taste. I like classic rock bands and alternative rock, but I'm not a fan of hard rock. I never listened to Iron Maiden, or Black Sabbath (though one friend always played Ozzie Osbourne's old band when I went over to his house), or any of those other metal/hard-rock bands. To me, it almost all sounds the same. For my wife, every hard-rock band these days sounds like Nickelback. I think that's harsh. Over the weekend, as we were driving around town, my eldest child handed me her MP3 player and asked me to connect it to our car, so she could listen to her favourite rock band. Being open-minded, I consented. To their credit, Three Days Grace does not sound like Nickelback. While they have those classic hard-rock guitar riffs and heavy base, there is some talented guitar playing. The lyrics of many songs were thoughtful. I listened to her music without judgement or without the urge to turn it off (something my parents would have done after five seconds in a similar situation, when I was a young teen). When the album finished, my daughter asked me what I thought of the music. I told her that it wasn't bad, but it wasn't to my taste. I wouldn't stop her from listening, I wouldn't mock her, I wouldn't put her new-found band down. But I look at my sweet daughter, I just can't picture her as a metal head. I've seen her in her room, reading a Percy Jackson adventure, listening to the instrumentals of Sarah Slean's Land and Sea orchestral songs. It's as though she's become another person. Which is probably how my folks felt when I went from singing along with Sweet Caroline to cranking up the Immigrant Song. Eventually, we all branch out on our own. I'm just glad they haven't embraced country music.
