Well - here's my story!
I have people to thank too - two friends, thirty years apart - Gillian and Alison. And my story starts with "Canadian RR Trilogy" too. Just remember that I'm in the UK - things are different here. And my friend Gillian (where is she now?) when we were about thirteen years old somewhere around 1975 - she's very excited that she's found something new, and she explains this song to me in great detail in school - and later, when I'm a "captive audience" (literally!) - she practically ties me to a chair in her bedroom until I listen to this one album from start to finish - on reflection it must have been "Gord's Gold", though I don't really remember now, it was a compilation, anyway. I just remember being completely carried away. I was never so happy at being forced to listen to anything! I then buy everything that's available in the UK on vynil.
Jump now to 1981, and I'm at university. I've just come across "The Best Of" at my local record shop (in the middle of a "New Romantic" craze) and bought it on cassette. I have a couple of hours coach ride every weekend back and fore from my home, and this is the only cassette I play on my "new-fangled" Walkman! And my friend Christine and I - we just love this, and play it all the time ... and it means so much to us ... so much that I quote from "IYCRMM" when I sign her copy of my first published short story ...
Jump again - to just over a year ago (yes, I know that's more than twenty years!) Here I am, happily following my life, and the years have gone by, and now I've gone from short stories to novels and I've listened to so much music ... and then I meet this oh-so-wonderful woman on a message board (in Wales (yes, in "Welsh Wales", John!) - and we speak to each other in Welsh, as it happens!), and we start talking off line, and she asks "which music means the most to you? What makes you tingle?" And she sends me a collection of her tracks. And I start to think - think back over everything I have ever loved, everything that has ever meant anything to me, and for the first time in twenty years I think about Gord - and think "I have to include something by him on my CD" but I don't have anything on CD and can't even find my old cassette now! - so I go to my local Borders and find only one CD - IYCRMM. That's (more than) enough, and I send it to her, and she loves it, and ... I find I'm falling in love all over again.
And then I do a Web search - and realise what I've been missing! And then I find you all. And ... how can I miss twenty years?!? I just don't believe this, don't believe that this is possible!
But here in the UK - you have to realise that there is zero publicity, nothing since IYCRMM - he just disappeared here ... and until I went on line ... The Internet is what has made all this possible - where was I to get any recordings in the UK in the 80's and 9O's? How was I even to know that anything new had been released?
And Alison (I know she's lurking here, even if she doesn't post!) - if you hadn't asked me about the songs that had most influenced me I would never have found Gord all over again - and I thank you so much for this!!!! And since then I've had a "crash course" in everything that's happened between 1982 and now - amazing, isn't it? Just completely mad.
Well - that's my story, anyway! And (as you must all know by now) my "Harmony" arrived last week - I've come a long way in a very long, and also a very short, time! And Alison - "I saw two minds in the world set free ..."
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