Growing up in the flatlands posed several challenges to the development of the mind as a teenager and young adult; the main one, of course, being isolation and the suffering that ensues as a result. The biggest fear one had within our group was lack of exposure to what was OUT THERE.
Sure, Regina had a nationally funded art gallery, one of the oldest symphonies in the country always putting on free concerts throughout the year, a world-renowned jazz society bringing in the hep cats and sultry torchies and who could forget that NANA MOUSKOURI came here EVERY year for a week's worth of performances since the 70's?
But as Ol' Blue Eyes Frankie Baby once said... "I want to put tunes out there for the young people to dig, so for me to do that I have to know what the young people want to dig..." And there was the dilemna. We knew we wanted to listen to something else, something so completely different from everything the city's AM and FM stations had to offer us, that and Nana wasn't really known for being too groovy...
So, being isolated from a metropolis that could offer what we needed, mainly a college radio station, we had to rely on two sources of salvation, three individuals that were not mere mortals. No, these people were our BEACONS of audio awareness, they had the knowledge of the different worlds of music that lay somewhere out there, away from where we were. And through these individuals, we faithful and devoted members of the congregation of hungry listeners and audiophiles travelled to vastly underexplored sonic regions that quickly became familiar territory, and in some cases, home.
As mentioned, being isolated prevented us from hearing the world without travel. But we relied on the world travelling to us, as reflected in the old adage..."If the mountain doesn't come to Mohammed, then Mohammed goes to the mountain..." And Mohammed DID come to the mountain, or at least to the dwellers of the mountain...the really flat mountain...
And his name was Brent Bambury, and he travelled to us via radiowave aboard Brave New Waves. The radio show he hosted FOREVER on CBC that came on at midnight was our burning bush. Brent unknowingly SAVED all of us by providing the obscure, the underground, the screechings from other parts of the world, the arcane, the bizarre, the fantastically strange and even the downright weird. He would play albums of noise...just noise...I can't even begin to describe some of the oddities he played, from time to time. I recall an industrial band from Germany that started in the early 80's that played only power tools ON abandoned factories and steel mills...yeah, that's right...they recording themselves grinding and hammering and drilling...well, buildings. I'm sure they played the odd piece of metal that was laying around, but these cats were playing STRUCTURES...with power tools. I remember sitting around with friends listening, as we all eventually came to the conclusion that we had no idea what the hell it was we had just heard, nor were we sure whether we liked it or not.
But it was DIFFERENT. And we knew we liked that. And we liked it a lot...
Due to Waves, we got introduced to the bands and genres that eventually ended up defining our generation and that sadly but inevitably became the NEW BIG THING. Counter-culture became the dominant culture and pathetically coughed up that term we all still loathe...ALTERNATIVE. What once was a vague all-encompassing term is now a dust collector in most records shops, a clearly defined genre of music that most people don't even know that much about still. EVERYTHING became alternative if it was unknown, which didn't make sense to us but satisified the naive and ignorant. But we weren't listening to ALTERNATIVE, we were listening to Brave New Waves.
The best thing about the show was that aside from the intro, which was different every night, the only thing you knew that was coming up was the artist he was featuring in that evening's profile. And THAT WAS IT. We never had a CLUE as to what he would be playing for us, and that's what made the show fantastic. FM radio with no format? No playlist? Well, there was one but only Brent had it and he wasn't saying shit; that would wreck the surprise of 15 minutes of uninterrupted digital cacophony blaring out of our speakers followed by Balinese natives banging hollow logs with sticks followed by Star Trek audio samples being played backwards while someone drove over various orchestra instruments with a snowplow that had a radio tuned to nothing but static.
Weird? You bet your ass. I had never been scared before by music on a radio...well, except for Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells" but anyone who has ever seen "The Exorcist" suffers from that same condition and it only gets played like once a year, usually at Christmas for some strange reason and ONLY on CLASSIC radio stations...so, that's good.
Brent gave us the world the way he heard it; in equal portions of debauchery, violence, polyrhythmic chaos, electronic creepiness, folksy, bizarrely bizarre, subtle and soothing, aggressive torture...basically, sonic bliss. We faithfully tuned into Waves EVERY NIGHT except for the weekend.
That show was "Night Lines" with David Wisdom as our tour guide and he was just as deliciously odd as Brent was and in some ways, hard to believe but true, weirder. But Brave New Waves was OURS. Only the cool kids were tuning in. And by being cool, we actually weren't all that cool. We were not the jocks or the social elite. We were the social misifits, the army boots wearing, trenchcoat sheathed oddities that drank coffee and read Kerouac and Nietzche. Not to be cool, GOD NO, but because we had stumbled on the stuff that was there but wasn't readily available or being thrown out to the masses. We had searched for something different and we found it. And Brent catered to us all willingly. He sated our voracious appetites and by doing so, created a socially conscious and very well-aware body of listeners that would turn their backs on Top 40 radio and those unwilling to explore forever.
Music snobs? Yep. Music Nazis? You betcha. People that have yet to settle for the typical, average, formulaic offerings of mediocre labels pushing even more mediocre acts. Yep. We are nomads, in pursuit of that new sound...not knowing who is going to create it or where it is going to originate from but all the same knowing it's just around the corner. And we all owe that to Brent. So, don't blame us for getting all huffy and cynical when it comes to discussing or listening to musical acts...hold Waves accountable, if you want to point your finger. It will be more than happy to take the blame. So, blame Waves. We all do...and that's why we love Brent and Patti and David so and hold Brave New Waves and Night Lines so close to our hearts.
The show is still on. Fair damsel Patti Schmidt is our tour guide. She took over the reins of that snorting, bucking, high-kicking ferocious beast of a show from Brent back in '95 and she has yet to plot a course in travelling the musical universe, just boldly going wherever and sharing her findings with us. Just as it should be...the way they taught us to listen right from the get-go.
