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One of the many very nifty things about studying music at university – possibly the very niftiest thing – was being exposed to so much unfamiliar music. I mean, I arrived at the doorstep to my higher education astoundingly ignorant of probably somewhere very close to 100% of all music, so hearing new music at school was basically a daily constant.
A nifty aspect of the particular university I attended was the extremely wide breadth of music that was being paid attention too. I think most people imagining the situation would picture us listening to people like Bach and Mozart and the like and while we did, at Carleton U. (the first university in North America to offer credited courses on blues music, soul music, and country & western among other pop styles) we listened to a whole lot of contemporary music too, and not just people like R. Murray Schafer and Philip Glass. And that’s how I first heard of Meryn Cadell. It was her (now his) surprising nearly-hit song The Sweater that was played in class one day, a spoken-word monologue about a girl describing her infatuation with a boy’s sweater and it’s “subtle goat-like smell”. The song hit me in the same spot that Lyle Lovett’s Here I Am hit me one night years earlier as I laid on the shag carpet watching Johnny Carson, a broadcast that lifted my head right out of my crooked arm.
And though The Sweater didn’t hit me nearly as hard as Here I Am did, it was hard enough to convince me to buy a ticket to see Cadell perform in the theatre of the National Arts Centre on July 28th, 1993, though at less than $6 a ticket I suppose I didn’t need a whole lot of convincing. I can picture her on the stage but my memory doesn’t recall whether she had a band with her or if she was just singing/talking along to backing tracks. I remember the show being a bit of a letdown but only because I had already heard her (it’s often hard for an act’s live show to live up to their recording and vice versa). I mean, if this had been the first time I heard that “subtle goat-like smell” quasi-punchline I think I would have swooned from my cushy seat that same way my heart leapt to my throat when Lyle Lovett saidsang “make it a cheeseburger…”
But in this case I knew the line was coming and the loss of effect was emotionally devastating.
Thanks a lot Carleton U.
Todd Man Out 