My first band, Alchemy – from the blackest coal, may golden melodies rise! – was desperately earnest and hardworking, a schizophrenic democracy of divergent musical styles and a level of bombast that overshot our youthful chops. Our originals emulated the variety of genres that our cover songs did: folk, folk/rock, pop/folk, rock, country rock, reggae, punk, metal, soul, rap, folk/rap, country/metal, any style we could play clumsy homage to. We did both Dire Straits’ “Sultans of Swing” and The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” Extended versions. Our originals had names such as “These Are Your 20s” and “Ten Miles Out of Paris,” all delivered with an early U2 sincerity.
We had little sense of what it meant to actually make a living playing music. We were driven by the teenaged rock star fantasy, fueled by a burgeoning music video culture, Live Aid, and nights down at the Glenmore reservoir blasting the Springsteen live box set in my bandmate Andrew’s car. Talent, ambition and desire would be rewarded with fame, girls and money. It’s totally gonna happen, man.
For us, George Harrison was the benchmark. He was 21 when the Beatles really hit it big. We had until we were 21. We’d make it by then. The “it” we would make was a never defined, imaginary finish line of some kind after which we’d find all the glorious trappings of rock and roll fame and thousands of people who were as deeply affected by our music as Andrew was by Springsteen, Paul by Bob Marley, Sean by Yes, and me by Cat Stevens (shut up).
We rarely got paid for our work, highlighting the bills of several Earth Day benefits, and when we did get paid, all the money went back into the band, into gear or recording. We had the work ethic of our immigrant parents, rehearsing three or four nights a week in Andrew’s basement while his parents tried to drown us out by cranking Matlock upstairs.
Alchemy would get the odd nibble, some outside encouragement to keep on playing that we would amplify in importance so the dream could be extended a little longer. Our good friend and fan Tony changed his last name from the difficult Ehrenreich to the authoritative Foss and became our manager. He made up business cards. A handful of groupies came to rehearsals and all of our shows. Some were girls. The local A & M rep sent our demo to the Toronto office, and the guy there said he liked my voice. He said to send more. But the strains of reality outdrawing expectation became too much. Our youngest member turned 21. Alchemy disbanded.
In my teens, while waiting for the band to take off (“take off” being the beautifully vague signpost of success right before “making it”), I got a lot of jobs through the Hire A Student office. Landscaping, stuffing envelopes, making sandwiches at Olympic Village, officiating community soccer games: I was not discerning. I also worked for a temp agency that paid $6 an hour, doing night shifts in industrial parks.
I unloaded Hugo Boss suits from long trucks. We’d form a chain of six guys and pass the suits as quickly as possible. There was a macho air to the passing, like it was a competitive relay event, and the other temp and I were in the deepest end of the truck, starting off the chain, pouring sweat and trying to out-hustle each other. We’d take breaks in a cold white room with United Way posters on the walls, drinking pop and smoking, nobody talking.
Elsewhere, I packed pharmaceuticals into various sized parcels for mail out. I worked next to a Québécois ex-biker turned born-again Christian named Fang (he had switched names with his German Shepherd, Étienne) who quoted scripture while we packed. He liked mentioning that there was a safe in the building containing a bag of medicinal-use cocaine worth $500,000 on the street. “There was a time I would have been tempted,” he’d laugh, and he’d say it again on the next shift.
I once worked from midnight to 10 a.m. with a middle-aged guy next to a machine called the “extruder.” It was a giant green, steel beast. We fed it bags of small plastic pellets, and 20 minutes later it would spit out industrial-strength plastic wrap that we had to make sure got onto the spools evenly. We’d prop open the door of the plant and smoke cigarettes while keeping an eye on the machine. I’d eat the meatloaf sandwiches and drink the juice boxes my mom packed for dinner. My workmate kept repeating how insulting it was that the temp agency only paid me $6 an hour while he made four times as much. “Criminal,” he’d say.
There’s nothing like the knowledge you’re getting totally ripped off to prompt you to seek refuge in the sleepy corridors of higher education. I spent four years at University of Calgary getting an English degree. Those are murky times. A bar called The Den had the cheapest jugs of beer in the city. But even cheap beer adds up, so I worked at The Renoir, “Calgary’s Premier Retirement Address.” I wore a peach tie and cummerbund and served the residents lunch and dinner as if they were dining in a fancy restaurant every day. Perks included free gourmet food and getting invited to the rooms of the elderly occupants for war stories. “When my girlfriend and I had to move our first cadaver, we laughed!” Mrs. Swanson told me. “We laughed and laughed! We didn’t know how else to handle it. It was so strange. Then, later, it wasn’t strange anymore.”
Going to university was an incredibly valuable experience. I learned that I should never again waste my time and energy doing something I wasn’t interested in, because I’d likely do a half-assed job. Degree in hand, my best buddy Paul (friend since the crib, drummer in Alchemy) and I decided over a bottle of red that we needed to go to Europe for a year. I’d bring a guitar, he’d bring his bongos, we’d work and busk our way around. No itinerary, no plan.
Busking in Europe was the first time I made a meaningful connection between making music and making a living. When you busk, people only drop money if they like the show or if they pity you. I pity some musicians: the armless, legless or blind; any child who looks like their parents put them up to it or is dressed in a woolen traditional costume; any opera singer who is clearly classically trained and has been abandoned by their once government-funded opera centre. But two healthy, jovial Canadian boys with beer cans and donair wrappers littered around them – I’d like to think the pity drops were the exception. People seemed to enjoy it, our fast-paced “buskerized” versions of “Country Roads” and “Chelsea Hotel.” We did Spirit of the West and Barenaked Ladies, bringing Canadian music to the streets of Europe, and started injecting originals into the mix.
Category: Career Track, Entrepreneurship, Profiles, Work
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