1. Was there ever a song that invited more rhythmic tapping on school desks and car dashboards than Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida", as many of us used our fingers, pencils, or the palm of our hands to hammer out its famous drum solo?
I thought about the ubiquity of this drum solo this afternoon as I listened to "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" while I worked out at the Fitness Center in Smelterville. What drummer in what garage band in about 1968-70 didn't take on Ron Bushy's drum solo to advance their skills?
That said, as I listened to the album, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, today, I realized that its lasting impact on my enjoyment of music had almost nothing to do with the drum solo.
From the get-go, it was Doug Ingle's organ playing that enchanted me on this album. Ingle's dad was a church organist. Even as a teenager, I could hear the church organ influence in Ingle's organ parts. Moreover, I remember that somehow listening to Iron Butterfly always called up the music played on the tv program, The Munsters.
I'm realizing as I go back to these albums of my teenage years that they all helped me be receptive to different kinds of music as I got older.
Thanks to Iron Butterfly, I was receptive later on to the compositions of J. S. Bach, starting with, but not limited to, Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. I suppose the feel of sacred music I could hear in Doug Ingle's organ parts and the fact that Bach's compositions were often for sacred settings might have been the contact point between the music of a psychedelic rock band and a Baroque composer -- I don't really know -- but I'm grateful that Iron Butterfly was more than just a trippy band to me.
Iron Butterfly was my gateway into the wonders of listening to J. S. Bach.
2. When I work out at the Fitness Center, I enter a bubble. I go into a world all of my own where I exercise, listen to music, and pay attention to the associations the music triggers in my mind.
It's a continuation of the way much of my music listening over the last fifty-five years or so has been private.
Yes, I've listened to plenty of music, and thoroughly enjoyed it, with friends in all kinds of settings.
But, I also have a long history of music listening that I kept to myself, never talked about, that I enjoyed in private.
It began in my upstairs bedroom with the George Gershwin album I've written about before.
Today, I called up the Symphony Hall channel on my Sirius/XM app and suddenly I was back in the North Idaho College library. My habit there -- and I continued this practice in the Douglass Room at the U of Oregon Library -- was to check out headphones and check out a classical album featuring an individual instrument -- say, the bassoon or the oboe or the clarinet or the harp -- and familiarize myself not only with the possibilities of these instruments, but with composers like Handel, Bach, Vivaldi, and others.
Yes, at the time, while at North Idaho College, I got fired up listening to Uriah Heep, the Allman Brothers, Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, The Moody Blues, Free, and any number of other bands -- and I shared my excitement with friends whether at the Steinhaus, the Student Union Building, at the Cockroach Castle, or in the trailer John S. and I rented.
But, I never did bust into the Kopper Keg in Kellogg, pitcher of Lucky Lager in hand, and enthuse to my friends at the buddy bar about the great Harp Concerto by George Handel I'd listened to that week.
Nope.
That was a private pleasure. (Owed, oddly enough, in part, to Iron Butterfly.)
And it was different. Being different was good in private, not so good socially.
3. When our niece Zoe gave me a jar of World Market Porcini Mushroom Rissoto mix for Christmas, I thought, WOW! This looks really good. I brought it home and made the big mistake of putting it away because once it was out of sight, it was also out of my mind.
Today, thinking I'd make a pasta dinner, I was looking in our kitchen for any packages of pasta that might be upstairs and Glory Hallelujah!, I spied the jar of Porcini Mushroom Risotto mix.
Perfect.
Preparing the risotto was very simple and Debbie and I were both nearly giddy with how great it tasted.
We had some leftover chicken from last night and a little broccoli and these leftovers paired perfectly with this very delicious Porcini Mushroom Risotto.
If we want to purchase this mix ourselves, we'll either have to go to Spokane or order it through World Market online and my guess is that one day we'll do just that.
Thank you, Zoe!
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