Where Old School Meets Attitude

The bands that my parents couldn’t handle…

When I was a sensitive, impressionable eight-year-old lad trying to make sense of Grade three mathematics at primary school, my mother, Elli Kleimann, made a momentous financial decision.

Among the many complaints that she had about my father, Eric, was “Dare is no vay that he can manage money” (said in her strong southern Silesian accent). As a result, she put into place a plan to return to the workforce part-time, using her skills as a registered nurse to achieve this. The extra funds, which she would manage like a Reserve Bank Governor, would pay for Mark’s and his sister’s College education as well as finance holidays in Germany.

Not long after this, she secured a position at an old-age home two kilometres from our home, working the afternoon shift three days a week.

As Eric, who worked shift work as a train driver for the Victorian Railways (Melbourne, Australia) was rarely home after school hours, it was decided that young Mark and his even younger sister would be looked after (baby-sat) by the friendly family who lived next door to us.

Soon afterward, the babysitting contract was signed by all the parties concerned and we were on our way to after-school care neighbour-style.

It wasn’t long before my sister and I were introduced to a magnificent eye-opening piece of furniture that they had in their living room — the colour television…

“Idiot Music”

This family contained four children, three girls, and a boy, with the younger two girls being around my age.

When my sister and I arrived at their home after a hard day at primary school, we would be greeted at their large gate by their very active black poodle, Sooty, who would cover our legs and hands with licks as we made our way towards their back door.

Once inside, the mother, in her strong North German accent, would greet us with “Hullow! How vas Shkool?”. We would then make our way to the living room, to indulge in ’70s after-school classics like Gilligan’s Island, Lost in Space (the original) and of course, Get Smart, which may or may not have been inspired by James Bond…

Then came that magical day.

We stumbled into their living room, to see this in bright, vivid colour on their TV:

Yes, it was Led Zeppelin, in all their glory. Our eyes were opened.

Before this moment, we had been living in a musical dictatorship, with Elli the Supreme Leader. The dial on our twin-knobbed ’60s radio in the kitchen had been fastened to the extreme Classical diet of the station 3AR.

We were unaware that other stations existed, and our musical knowledge was limited to whatever was permitted to pass through Elli’s Orwellian Ministry of Music: Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, Beethoven’s 5th Symphony and, on a good day, the German patriotic piece “”Westerwaldlied”.

We were keen on exploring our new find, and in November of that year, an amazing program aired on Melbourne’s ABC TV. It was a smorgasbord of modern musical talent by the name of Countdown, helmed by this charismatic yet rather nervous chap:

Yes, soon we were falling under the spell of Ian “Molly” Meldrum, who introduced a growing young audience to the talents of John Paul Young, the glam rockers Hush, and of course, these guys:

It wasn’t long before the bone-grinding riffs of AC DC were gracing the confines of the Kleimann living room. Elli found her eardrums and conservative values under assault from tunes like “Jailbreak”, “It’s a Long Way to the Top” and the one she struggled with: “Highway to Hell”.

(A fun fact about “It’s a Long Way to the Top”- the clip was filmed on a flat-bed truck going down Swanston Street in my home city of Melbourne — and Bon Scott — the lead singer — plays bagpipes on it…)

Eventually, Elli let us know her opinion of this harsh, brash new brand of music. One afternoon when we were watching the latest glam rockers strut the stage, she dismissed the entire genre as “idiot music”, as “with their long hair, they look like idiots”.

That did not deter us, though.

When they were out of earshot, the dial of the Kleimann ’60s radio in the kitchen was mysteriously tuned to the rock and roll station 3XY, with its fast-talking DJs and continuous grinding rock, interspersed with melodic ballads, such as Alice Cooper’s “Only Women Bleed”.

These tunes greeted her when she turned the radio on first thing in the morning…

However, she was unmoved, and the Classical Hour continued to provide a backdrop to the Kleimann family's Sunday post-Church luncheon.

Mark’s Musical Apprenticeship

The next year, a pleasant family consisting of five girls moved in next door (on the opposite side to our babysitting neighbours), and it wasn’t long before they brought music to their newly-completed extra room at the rear of their weatherboard house.

My bedroom faced this room, and on humid summer nights, I found tunes by The Beatles, Paul McCartney and Wings, David Bowie, and The Rolling Stones rolling into my open windows. One day I spotted the mother of this family in front of her home and thanked her for the music. She smiled and informed me that the stereo system that it was played on had only one working speaker — they planned to have it fixed.

I remember wondering what it would sound like if both speakers were active…

Cracks were appearing in Elli’s Classical defense, though. One spring Saturday, I caught her humming a tune by this Swedish Eurovision-winning quartet:

She had indeed fallen under the spell of this talented supergroup. I found myself wondering where she had heard the song — there was no way that 3AR would have it on their playlist…

Not long afterward I convinced her to purchase their iconic album “Arrival”, as my pocket money budget was not large enough to accommodate it. It was the only album we both liked.

Eric’s Music

About this time, I explored Eric’s extensive collection of singles and albums. They contained singles from late 1950s artists that I did not know, like Freddy (not Freddy Mercury) and Harry Belafonte, as well as the mellow James Last. There were also film soundtracks, like My Fair Lady and Fiddler on the Roof.

I discovered an album containing jolly German beer-drinking songs — this must have been hidden away from Elli. Strangely, it seemed that his musical exploration seemed to stop in 1965, the year I was born — a coincidence, maybe?

During the 1970s his musical taste had drifted to the bland offerings on radio station 3AK — an assortment of “Musak” or “elevator music”.

He didn’t object to AC DC, though, unless it was too loud…

Mark’s Musical Statement

Elli continued to tolerate, rather than like, my sister’s and my musical taste. She came up with interesting descriptions of iconic bands, saying that the Rolling Stones’ tunes were “Hotten-totten music”, which I later interpreted as being like that from an African tribe.

Once when we were on our way to a College production that I was to play flute for, I put the soundtrack to the movie “Grease” on the car stereo. The first song was “Grease is the Word” performed by Frankie Valli. Elli had been listening to a medical discussion on ABC Radio that afternoon. It had focussed on the influence of rock beats on heart rhythms and had resulted in her becoming concerned about her two young children’s hearts becoming impacted by this destructive music. The song was halfway through its introduction when she remarked “It’s that anti-body beat”. Soon afterward, the car stereo’s volume rapidly decreased, becoming less-health-impacting background noise…

Not long after that, I came under the influence of a band that comprised of a demon, a star-crossed lover, a spaceman, and a cat:

It was 1979, and the band, Kiss, was just about to become the biggest act to visit Australia since the Beatles.

One of my friends had bought himself a “three in one” stereo, and proceeded to build his Kiss collection, starting with their first album. Another friend shared this fascination, and we then had regular get-togethers at his place to indulge in their iconic tunes.

Elli wasn’t phased by their confronting appearance, at first. When I bought “Destroyer”, perhaps their greatest album, I was drawn to the song “Great Expectations”, which contained a section of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata №8 in C minor, Op. 13. I soon found Elli humming this section.

This changed a few months later, when the Pastor of our Church, in the middle of his sermon, made the horrific statement: “ I hope that none of you are going to that Kiss concert.” This led to Elli’s great Kleimann Kiss Ticket Buyback, an action that deprived my sister and me of attending one iconic concert. This has stumped many of my College friends and their parents to this day.

However, each action has an equal reaction…

I have described this chapter here:

In Conclusion

Although Elli’s and my musical tastes were polar opposites, I am thankful that she did insist that I play an instrument. I started flute lessons in Year 7 and did gradings until Grade 6.

This later led to me branching out to play alto saxophone.

I still play flute for my town’s Concert Band.

I will finish with a word from Kiss’s Gene Simmons, in their song “Shout it Out Loud”, in which he says not to let them tell you that the music is too noisy — they are too old to understand…

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