From naught to 7.0

BC PIRES

ALL MY LIFE, music.

The Beatles sang Hey Jude in 1968 and the ten-year-old me cried with joy in the back seat of my father’s car: Na-na-na NANA-NA-NA Judy-Judy-Judy-Jude-Jude…

Who could make music like that outside a church?

The first time I heard Keith Richards’s stunning opening chords that made a guitar sound like a brass section in (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, I was converted to rock ’n’ roll for life. I was nine.

The first time I heard Carlos Santana’s Samba Pa Ti, I wrapped my arms around myself in a corner (that old fake dancing-with-a-chick pose) so no one in the house party would see a hardback 15-year-old cry like a baby because a man was playing a guitar.

At 16, hearing Jimi Hendrix’s Third Stone from the Sun, I understood life had meaning in truth, even if the church’s was a hoax, and Led Zeppelin made me think there might be a back Stairway to Heaven for lost souls. At 19, the first time I heard War, I couldn’t believe in Jah – but I believed in Bob Marley and the Wailers.

Let me tell you about the first time I heard Calypso Music.

In 1987, I was 29 years old, smoking three packs of cigarettes a day, working as a barrister, drinking like a fish.

Spektakula had a tent at Queen’s Hall and I had a first-row seat when the second half started in almost total darkness. EXIT signs alone as David was about to enter.

In that dark, almost complete silence, those magical opening bars rang out razor sharp and crystal clear:

Deedle-deedle, deedle-deedle/ Deedle-deedle, deedle-deedle.

That magical cuica in-between. And then those big big big drums! And the thumping bass!

And the crashing barre chords as the brass fanfare trumpeted the arrival of King David, lit by a single spot, arm raised, index finger pointing to the heavens, as he sang out:

Can you hear a distant drum/ Bouncing on the laughter of a melody/ (Yeah-eh, yeah-eh) And does the rhythm tell you come, come, come, come/ Does your spirit do a dance to this symphony/ (Yeah-eh, yeah-eh)/ Does it tell you that your heart is afire/ Does it tell you that your pain is a liar/ Does it wash away all your unlovely/ Well, are you ready for a brand new discovery? Calypso/ Calypso Music (Yeah-eh, yeah-eh).

Brand new discovery, indeed. Listen: I had the amazing good luck to hear Calypso Music performed live the very first time I heard it.

And David had written every line to me. He sang, “From the time the first bamboo cut/ And we drag it down – from up! – in the St Ann’s Hills,” I realised he had to pass my house!

My life had changed forever.

The next year, I would stop smoking, the first great liberation of my life, and stop practising law, the second, and go to work as a reporter at the Express, the most important professional step I’ve ever taken. I didn’t so much find as make my place. After a lifetime of reading, on Ash Friday, 1988, I wrote the first Thank God It’s Friday column, the only thing that’s kept me somewhere in the vicinity of sane for the last 35 years.

And I’m not deluding myself or tricking you when I say Calypso Music was key to my transformation.

Up to 1987, asked to name my favourite song, I’d be unable to choose from the songs above, plus Let It Be, Dream On, What’s Going On, Start Me Up, Serpentine Fire, Bohemian Rhapsody, Bassman, Purple Rain, With or Without You, Wild Horses, I Want to Take You Higher…That ended the moment I heard Calypso Music.

I wrote, in 1988, that I would lead the movement to have Calypso Music declared our national anthem (with apologies to my wife’s grandfather, who wrote the one we’ve used since 1962 – although I hadn’t met her yet).

David Rudder settled my favourite song
forever when I was 29. I’ll be 65 soon and it still has no competition.

David will be 70 tomorrow and celebrates his birthday with his last big show, perhaps ever, David Rudder 7.0 at Sound Forge tomorrow night. (He recently announced his diagnosis with Parkinson’s disease.)

The show is sold out. So make sure you get your tickets for pay per view.

God and David alone know what he’ll give us tomorrow night. But we all know it’ll be magical.

BC Pires is a lyrics man who say high mas to save himself from madness