Songbook #16: When I'm Up
When I'm up I can't get down
Can't get down, can't get level
Great Big Sea (in this case, the live Road Rage version)
When I'm Up (I Can't Get Down)
Given that I have several hundred CDs, attend dozens of live concerts every year and do a radio show most every Sunday, it probably comes as a surprise that at no point in my pre-college life did I have a stereo in my own room. The closest I got was an alarm clock with a cassette deck which I got in sixth grade or so, and I rarely used the radio or cassette on that. It did have a great alarm clock on it, which I would probably still be using if it hadn't been stolen from my room in the fraternity house during a break-in. I don't recall using a Walkman and the trusty Discman that's been on my desk at work for the last ten years didn't come along until college.
For most of my childhood there was exactly one stereo in use in my family's house, which was kept in the upstairs living room off the dining room. When I was little the one stereo was the Pioneer stereo that my father had received as a high school graduation gift back in 1969. It had a receiver, a turntable and two speakers, and had traveled with him to college and every subsequent stop along the way. Somewhere around 1988 or so this stereo was supplanted by a brand new shiny stereo. It had two big speakers, a receiver, a turntable, a dual cassette deck for dubbing, and most excitingly a new-fangled CD player with a 5-disc changer. This was audio gearhead heaven. I don't know why my parents felt the need for a new stereo. They almost never bought music back then, and aside from some classical CDs they didn't for several years after it arrived, so I assume it was so they could dub their respectably large vinyl collection. Whatever the reason was, Dad's old stereo was promptly relegated to the computer room, where it saw only sporadic use.
The end result of having a single stereo in the primary area of the living room was that we listened to a lot of music together as a family, often over dinner. A possible side effect was that I never really had a phase where I hated the music my parents listened to. Oh sure, I liked some bands better than others, but if my mother wanted to listen to something while she made dinner my choices were to listen to it or to go outside. I usually listened, which probably explains my strange enthusiasm with The Moody Blues among others.
I also never went through a phase where I liked music that my parents hated. For example, both metal and rap first entered mainstream consciousness when I was in junior high, but I never really got into either of them. I rarely borrowed music from my friends. In fact, the only music I can recall borrowing from a friend is a few Weird Al tapes, and my parents like him enough that they've gone to see him in concert. Of course, these are the same parents who turned me on to Tom Lehrer...
I got my own Pioneer stereo as a high school graduation gift, but when I left for college my music collection consisted of perhaps a dozen CDs that I'd received as gifts and another 20 or so cassettes, mostly dubbed from vinyl or from CDs that my family owned; the entire collection fit in a shoebox. Remember that I didn't buy a CD until I was a freshman in college, when I snagged both Appetite for Destruction and Big Ones; a disturbing percentage of the music in that shoebox consisted of Broadway showtunes.
So what, exactly, does all this have to do with Great Big Sea and their excellent live album Road Rage and the song When I'm Up? Well, I got into Great Big Sea toward the end of college, and I bought that album on the same day I bought my copy of Rattle & Hum, which was just after I'd moved back home after college for a planned four month stay. College had turned me into an obsessed new music junkie and I played those newly acquired albums nearly constantly on the communal stereo. I'd like to take this moment to officially apologize to my mother, who I think was getting more than a little sick of listening to Great Big Sea at least once a day for those four months.
When I'm Up is a fantastic song, but I could have picked a couple different songs from Road Rage for this post. Right up until the time I started writing I thought I'd go with Boston & St. Johns. Consequence Free was a strong candidate and even Donkey Riding and Captain Wedderburn came to mind. Even aside from these highlights pretty much every track on Road Rage is worth listening to. The album is also weird in that it's the only live album I've ever bought that was unequivocally better than the band's live performances. I've seen Great Big Sea once with the original lineup (at the Fine Line in the Twin Cities) and again once Murray of Moxy Früvous took over bass duties (at the Odeon in Cleveland), and frankly they barely cleared the bar of 'mediocre' both times. I can only assume that the Road Rage disc is heavily edited, or that they do much better performances in Canada or something. When you add in that the qualitative range of their studio albums goes from terrible all the way up to average, I have never bothered to see them again. But man, Road Rage is just awesome. It blows me away even now, and I still listen to it frequently.
The fancy stereo my parents got is still in their living room, although parts of it don't work anymore and it probably hasn't been turned on more than a handful of time since my mother got a cheap boombox for the kitchen. I think that Dad's Pioneer stereo is still in the computer room; the last I checked it was still in working order some forty years after his parents gave it to him. My own Pioneer stereo died after five years of college (apparently quality control has gone down at Pioneer since 1969), and when I ultimately replaced it, it was with a cheap boombox for my kitchen.
Tracklist
#1 - Welcome to the Jungle
#2 - Runnin' Blue
#3 - Cryin'
#4 - Mr. Jones
#5 - Blinded by the Light
#6 - Piano Man
#7 - Romeo & Juliet
#8 - Ecstasy
#9 - Seasons of Love
#10 - Red Sweater!
#11 - Insomniac
#12 - It Had to Be You
#13 - Cabaret
#14 - Psycho Killer
#15 - All Along the Watchtower
#16 - When I'm Up
Can't get down, can't get level
Great Big Sea (in this case, the live Road Rage version)
When I'm Up (I Can't Get Down)
Given that I have several hundred CDs, attend dozens of live concerts every year and do a radio show most every Sunday, it probably comes as a surprise that at no point in my pre-college life did I have a stereo in my own room. The closest I got was an alarm clock with a cassette deck which I got in sixth grade or so, and I rarely used the radio or cassette on that. It did have a great alarm clock on it, which I would probably still be using if it hadn't been stolen from my room in the fraternity house during a break-in. I don't recall using a Walkman and the trusty Discman that's been on my desk at work for the last ten years didn't come along until college.
For most of my childhood there was exactly one stereo in use in my family's house, which was kept in the upstairs living room off the dining room. When I was little the one stereo was the Pioneer stereo that my father had received as a high school graduation gift back in 1969. It had a receiver, a turntable and two speakers, and had traveled with him to college and every subsequent stop along the way. Somewhere around 1988 or so this stereo was supplanted by a brand new shiny stereo. It had two big speakers, a receiver, a turntable, a dual cassette deck for dubbing, and most excitingly a new-fangled CD player with a 5-disc changer. This was audio gearhead heaven. I don't know why my parents felt the need for a new stereo. They almost never bought music back then, and aside from some classical CDs they didn't for several years after it arrived, so I assume it was so they could dub their respectably large vinyl collection. Whatever the reason was, Dad's old stereo was promptly relegated to the computer room, where it saw only sporadic use.
The end result of having a single stereo in the primary area of the living room was that we listened to a lot of music together as a family, often over dinner. A possible side effect was that I never really had a phase where I hated the music my parents listened to. Oh sure, I liked some bands better than others, but if my mother wanted to listen to something while she made dinner my choices were to listen to it or to go outside. I usually listened, which probably explains my strange enthusiasm with The Moody Blues among others.
I also never went through a phase where I liked music that my parents hated. For example, both metal and rap first entered mainstream consciousness when I was in junior high, but I never really got into either of them. I rarely borrowed music from my friends. In fact, the only music I can recall borrowing from a friend is a few Weird Al tapes, and my parents like him enough that they've gone to see him in concert. Of course, these are the same parents who turned me on to Tom Lehrer...
I got my own Pioneer stereo as a high school graduation gift, but when I left for college my music collection consisted of perhaps a dozen CDs that I'd received as gifts and another 20 or so cassettes, mostly dubbed from vinyl or from CDs that my family owned; the entire collection fit in a shoebox. Remember that I didn't buy a CD until I was a freshman in college, when I snagged both Appetite for Destruction and Big Ones; a disturbing percentage of the music in that shoebox consisted of Broadway showtunes.
So what, exactly, does all this have to do with Great Big Sea and their excellent live album Road Rage and the song When I'm Up? Well, I got into Great Big Sea toward the end of college, and I bought that album on the same day I bought my copy of Rattle & Hum, which was just after I'd moved back home after college for a planned four month stay. College had turned me into an obsessed new music junkie and I played those newly acquired albums nearly constantly on the communal stereo. I'd like to take this moment to officially apologize to my mother, who I think was getting more than a little sick of listening to Great Big Sea at least once a day for those four months.
When I'm Up is a fantastic song, but I could have picked a couple different songs from Road Rage for this post. Right up until the time I started writing I thought I'd go with Boston & St. Johns. Consequence Free was a strong candidate and even Donkey Riding and Captain Wedderburn came to mind. Even aside from these highlights pretty much every track on Road Rage is worth listening to. The album is also weird in that it's the only live album I've ever bought that was unequivocally better than the band's live performances. I've seen Great Big Sea once with the original lineup (at the Fine Line in the Twin Cities) and again once Murray of Moxy Früvous took over bass duties (at the Odeon in Cleveland), and frankly they barely cleared the bar of 'mediocre' both times. I can only assume that the Road Rage disc is heavily edited, or that they do much better performances in Canada or something. When you add in that the qualitative range of their studio albums goes from terrible all the way up to average, I have never bothered to see them again. But man, Road Rage is just awesome. It blows me away even now, and I still listen to it frequently.
The fancy stereo my parents got is still in their living room, although parts of it don't work anymore and it probably hasn't been turned on more than a handful of time since my mother got a cheap boombox for the kitchen. I think that Dad's Pioneer stereo is still in the computer room; the last I checked it was still in working order some forty years after his parents gave it to him. My own Pioneer stereo died after five years of college (apparently quality control has gone down at Pioneer since 1969), and when I ultimately replaced it, it was with a cheap boombox for my kitchen.
Tracklist
#1 - Welcome to the Jungle
#2 - Runnin' Blue
#3 - Cryin'
#4 - Mr. Jones
#5 - Blinded by the Light
#6 - Piano Man
#7 - Romeo & Juliet
#8 - Ecstasy
#9 - Seasons of Love
#10 - Red Sweater!
#11 - Insomniac
#12 - It Had to Be You
#13 - Cabaret
#14 - Psycho Killer
#15 - All Along the Watchtower
#16 - When I'm Up