I am standing in the dining room of my house in Michigan City, Indiana...

The dining room in our house in Michigan City, Indiana was always a bit of a mystery to me. It was the place least visited by my family, since we were more of a breakfast room eating entity. The formal setting of the large oaken table, fancy sideboards and Waterford crystal was reserved for holidays, company, and an occasional area for Christmas present overflow. It was also the room that contained the house's sole secret element - a metal pedal situated directly in the middle of the floor.

This magical device, kind of a counter lever shaped like a shamrock, was a hidden means of summing servants. It was a throwback to the days when a bus company magnate had owned the home. It was conveniently positioned where the 'head' of the table would be seated. When you pushed on it, an electronic pulse was sent to a bell just off the butler's pantry (yes, there was one of those as well). Apparently inaudible to guests, though I could always hear it loud and clear, it was a classy, incognito way for the hoi polloi to attract their help without disrupting the atmosphere of dinner.

While I was fascinated by this the surreptitious signaler, I was even more intrigued by my parents' Magnavox stereo. For some reason, the dining room was the place where the compact turntable and speaker setup was kept. It was also the place where my Mom felt the urge to listen to her music. At random points during the day, she'd break out of the box, flip a few catches and position the parts. Like a scene out of some 50s teen rock and roll film, my mother would load up the center spindle with an assortment of discs, twist the 'play' knob, and go about her business. As she vacuumed or cooked, disciplined her kids or sat and smoked, the Establishment side of the 60s came crawling out of the speakers.

Don't get the wrong idea: my parents had horrid taste in music - suburban and lifeless. They loved those Jackie Gleason recordings that later turned out to be nothing more than muzak with the Great One's talent-based trademark slapped all over them. Percy Faith and his Orchestra made my young skin crawl with their sloppy, syrupy schmaltz. Coming from Tennessee and Alabama, my mother also enjoyed her country, but it was always geared toward the Eddie Arnold, not the Merle Haggard variety. The only sounds I could tolerate from my parents perspective were the Christmas albums they enjoyed. To this day, I can't hear Nat King Cole or Glen Campbell without being instantly whisked away to snow covered lawns, the scent of pine trees and dozens of dazzling yuletide lights.

There was one group, however, that somehow found a way into my spoiled subconscious. I myself was just starting to discover popular music, having been given a portable radio by a family friend the preceding birthday. My nights were taken up with endless covert listening sessions, volume turned down to unperceivable levels and the AM dial tuned to the ever-present Chicago icon WLS. It was there that I first heard the Beatles, the Monkees, the Jefferson Airplane, the Lovin' Spoonful and The Rolling Stones. In between the patter and the playlists, the entire 60s was being spelled out for me - the changing times, the cultural shifts, the social and political presences.

Of course, I couldn't see it. Granted, I was incredibly young, probably around seven at the time (1968), but I was still inundated with amazing music on a daily basis. None of it connected, however, until I heard my mother playing this one song. For some reason, the combination of drama and the languid drone of big brass instruments fired my imagination. As never before I was swept away on a slipstream of amazingly melancholy trumpet. As I moved closer to the stereo, I could see the album sleeve and the name of the band. I picked up the cover and looked for the title.

I stood there transfixed for the entire two minutes and thirty-five seconds. When it ended, I reached for the machine. That was when she reacted. My mother walked over and gently grabbed my arm, taking the sleeve from my other hand. She placed her fingers on my shoulder and knelt down to meet my eye. "No Billy," she chided, "this is Mommy and Daddy's". Then she stopped for a moment. She cocked her head to the side and then asked, "Do you like it?"

I didn't know how to answer. I had yet to connect 'like' with longing, or desire with decision. I looked at the sleeve again and smiled. She took that as a sign. "It's called The Lonely Bull", she offered, looking over the cover art, "and it's by this man here (pointing to the picture on the cover)...Herb Alpert and his Tijuana Brass".

I often believe certain memories are destined. They don't take time to settle in and find a home. Instead, they instantly burrow into your brain and set up shop. They locate the proper permanent site, one that won't ever be destroyed by that constant cerebral urban renewal known as aging, and create their own everlasting monument. That is what most music that 'takes me back' has done. It's built an eternal flame in my head that never ever dies. It merely burns brighter and more beautiful. That's what happened with Herb Alpert and The Lonely Bull. Even today, when I hear the classic opening strains, the call of the toreador, and the roar of the recorded crowd, small little glints start firing off in the corner of my eyes. I can feel the old foundation creaking, the long dormant home of this remembrance moaning under the weight of time. But the feeling is still there, as fresh as the day it first constructed its confines.

The Lonely Bull is really a very simple song, nothing more elaborate than a lyrical hook followed by an equally effective break. Horns play the plaintive melody as a trembling guitar gives the measures a sly spaghetti western feel. There is no real sense of urgency or danger in the song, though it clearly wants to mimic the ambience of a bullfight's beginnings. Indeed, the element of the track that always stood out to me was the implied pomp, the notion of a procession leading to some manner of unimaginable celebration. It was the first time I could remember being lifted out of the music and into something more ethereal. The tones painted pictures in my head, the added effect of the audience roar completing the insular illusion. I was completely lost, unable to move beyond the spot I was standing on. I could see the turntable, and the record moving around it, but that image was ancillary to what I was experiencing. On this day, the music took me to a land far, far away. It was a place I would visit often over the next three decades.

It also introduced me to the wonders of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. To me they remain the seminal 60s act. Nothing more than a mariachi flavored instrumental act fronted by a musician/businessman (who was the "A" in A&M Records), Herb and the gang somehow managed to capture the cosmopolitan cool of the decade, the Playboy After Dark ideal of sophisticated swagger and jet set joy. Yet they didn't employ feedback or jangling 12-string guitars. Their songs were carefully crafted and yet sounded completely casual and unfussy.

From the Mexican Shuffle with its Clark's Teaberry Gum tie-in (every kid had to have a pack) to the game shows that relied on Tijuana Taxi, Spanish Flea and Whipped Cream to provide the brassy bravado these otherwise tame entertainments lacked, the Tijuana Brass became the perfect backdrop for an era. They were fun. They were hip. They were a fiesta in a merry musical format. Like popping open a piņata and finding the prize inside, their songs sold something extraordinary in a rather commonplace package. Still, to this day, when I hear a Herb style trumpet tripping over a guitar line, or accenting an electronic ballad (as in Soft Cell's sensational Torch) I am instantly transported back to that moment in the dining room. It is the exact instant when music suddenly started to "matter" to me.

I eventually "inherited" that stereo, my parents giving me it's bulky magic - along with a stack of Tijuana Brass albums - when I was nine. Maybe my Mom was just sick and tired of me asking to hear my favorite songs over and over again. Perhaps it was the newfound technology of the 8-Track tape that inspired the change (my parents loved this odd cube cassette ideal, putting a player in practically every available space in the Gibron world, including the car). Or it could be that, by 1970, my parents had simply fallen out of favor with the Nuevo-novelty idea of a Latin-tinged brass band. Whatever the case, I suddenly had my own room filled with the sounds of insane insects and funky Mexican jalopies. Yet it was always the somber moan of The Lonely Bull that captured and recaptured my imagination, immediately sending me back to a still standing domain that housed my first experience of actually "hearing" music.

Copyright 2005 by Bill Gibron