During a recent family reunion at my childhood home in suburban Minneapolis, my ancestry crowded the kitchen like wooden nesting dolls while I loaded the dishwasher, everyone vibrating on high after an industrial-strength session of Midwestern visiting. Fueled by cake and coffee and Richard Davis’ lyrical bass-playing, which opens Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks” and dwells in my cytoplasm whenever I hear it, I was about to shush the chatter and request a bit of deference for the 78 revolving on my parents’ Technics turntable when my aunt Mary Beth dropped the needle on an autobiographical B-side that upended the basic principles of my self-understanding.
“Tristan, do you remember when we saw Prince step out of his purple limo at Jerry’s Foods?”
I dropped a dish.
“No! Pray tell, M.B.”
Ever resourceful, Mary Beth was a dedicated evening shopper, a strategy she adopted not only to avoid the crowds, but as an after-dinner escape from her maternal duties at home. Through some twist of circumstance on this summer evening in 1987 she’d assumed care-taking responsibilities for 5-year-old me, an evening-shopping enthusiast in my own right — not only did the great refrigerated aisles at Jerry’s provide a welcome reprieve from Minnesota’s summertime humidity, but a shopping outing teemed with opportunities to obtain a new toy, which I might surreptitiously tuck beneath the bags of frozen peas or hide among the cans of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup. At the very least, I’d cadge a treat off the impulse rack at the checkout stand.
With the prospect of treats and toys looming large, I’d somehow erased from my consciousness the spectacle that my aunt recently described to me.
“There were two bodyguards on either side of his purple Cadillac limousine and one of them opened the door and out stepped Prince,” she continued as I pressed her for details about Minnesota’s favorite son. “He was beautiful.”
Having since mined my memory bank for any traces of this encounter with one of my musical heroes, I can’t help but appreciate how prominently music figures into the narrative I’ve constructed to make sense of my personal history. Although our degrees of musical appreciation vary, we all incorporate these meticulously arranged frequencies into the core of our identities. From national anthems and fight songs to grade-school music lessons (I remain traumatized by the dissonance of two-dozen fourth graders playing their recorders) music is baked into our DNA.
Last year, three of my favorite films were the music documentaries “Get Back,” “The Velvet Underground” and “Summer of Soul,” all three of which probed and saluted culture-shaping musical epochs, helping us better understand and define three forks in the same mainstream melodious current. I watched as the Beatles performed feats of musical genius, trapezing from one hit to another without a safety net as they composed “Let it Be” in what felt like real time. I tunneled toward Earth’s inner core to learn why Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground eschewed commercial success in favor of pure art. And I lifted my jaw off the floor in incredulity as Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson illuminated the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, which brought together an ensemble of mind-bending musical icons that the nation had forgotten, just like I’d forgotten about Prince.
While the Beacon’s annual “Music Issue” doesn’t aspire to quite such great heights, we hope these stories add a few notes to the soundtracks of your lives.
Enjoy listening.