By Jim Hagarty
2008
Last week, the goalie for the Toronto Maple Leafs set a bit of record when he failed to stop a puck that had been fired by a defenceman from the other team all the way down the ice from the New Jersey Devils’ end during a Leafs powerplay. Within minutes, before the game had even ended, video of the goal began playing on the popular YouTube on the Internet and it’s been a hot item for surfers ever since.
I haven’t been a big YouTube fan so far because for the first long while it was around, I had no idea what it was, and then having somewhat figured it out, discovered that it doesn’t work that well unless you have super high speed Internet, which I don’t have yet. I’ll get around to getting that the day before some other amazing new technology is introduced that will take me another five years to try, the day before its expiry date, of course. Keeping up to advances in the digital age is like trying to remember the dates of your siblings’ birthdays. By the time you recall the day, you’re well on your way to their next birthday so you may as well wait for next year, except for the fact that the same thing happens then as well.
Each Wednesday night, when the newspaper I work for is finally “put to bed”, I go home to my own bed and reward myself with a feast of TV shows, sometimes well into the early morning. One recent night, I happened across a special PBS program, broadcasting the 1983 reunion concert by the Everly Brothers (the “Elderly Brothers”, as someone has cruelly dubbed them). I sound too much like my parents, I know, but this was popular music at its best. Harmonies so good, no one since has been able to come close to singing together so well, not even the Beatles who admitted to trying hard to sound just like their heroes, at least in their early days.
I taped the concert and it’s been playing almost non-stop since that night. I think it’s significant that the pre-teen members of the household are now going around humming and singing these 50-year-old classics.
In any case, last Friday night, I took to the Internet when the house was finally quiet to learn more about Don and Phil, who I thankfully saw in concert at a once-great roadhouse near Toronto. Within a short time, I’d read biographies of them both, and learned about how their harmonies grew out of the relatively small region in the southern U.S. from where their family (their parents were professional entertainers) came from. The Everly Brothers performed together almost before they hit grade school and eventually got so sick of each other that Phil busted up his guitar during a concert in the ’70s and walked off the stage.
From those bios, I ended up on YouTube and wiled away the next few hours jumping from one video to another, seeing some amazing things. A young Bob Dylan doing an Everly Brothers hit. Same with the Beatles. Art Garfunkel and James Taylor singing Phil and Don’s Cryin’ in the Rain. There were dozens and dozens of videos by garage bands doing fantastic tributes to the “Elderlys” to Don and Phil themselves on stage with Simon and Garfunkel and, sadly, looking a bit over the hill. But still sounding great.
Another few clicks and I had the lyrics to every hit song the brothers had.
I don’t know whether all this instant access is a good or bad thing. The Maple Leafs’ goalie might wish his flub wasn’t out there for everyone in the world to see for the rest of time. But I do know that it really amazes me.
What a long way from that 45 RPM copy of Bye Bye Love playing on our old Seabreeze record player in the early ’60s, when the brothers weren’t so elderly.
And neither was I.
