Sunday 22 December 2013

Share dot CKUA dot com

My favorite radio station, CKUA, has a campaign to adopt an album or a song with funds going to support capital projects. We've physically gifted a number of albums/78s in the past and made a major donation this spring to the endowment fund, so IF I had the money, here's my three favorite albums.


Simon and Garfunkel's Sounds of Silence. Fall 1966 grade 7 music. Mrs. Kirkpatrick said we were going to listen to music and then "do projects". I don't remember the projects but I still remember the power of "hello darkness my old friend". Until then, I'd never really thought about music-we had no record player and the radio was perpetually tuned to talk. After a brief flirtation with top 40 pop, I came firmly back to folk and roots.


Chris de Burgh's Spanish Train Spring 1980 sitting around a friend's house talking about the new technology (CDs) and listening to great music you didn't find on the local station. Shortly after, we discovered the CKUA transmitter and the rest is history. We bought our friend's five year old state of the art stereo system so he could upgrade. Which we still have, including turntable and a lifetime supply of needles.


Loreena Mckennitt's All Soul's Night from The Visit. Summer 1991. For three summers we sublet a house in Victoria while Cal attended grad school. We treated ourselves to Friday out at the little fish and chips place down the street. Like all neighborhood pubs, we got to know the owners and the staff as we introduced our children to the joys of live music. Between sets the owner put on her favorite CDs. My daughter used All Soul's Night for her grade three public speaking poem while her older brother used Tom Waits I Don't Want to Grow Up. And our three year old decided to be Bart (as in Simpson) for the summer.

And if I had to pick one song that send shivers through me, it would be the version of Lament for a Warrior that Andy Donnelly first played on 19 April 2002, two days after four Edmonton soldiers were killed in Afghanistan.  And for a similar reason, Redgum's I was only 19 which I first heard on a bus between Alice Springs and Uluru in 2009.