At age 5 with my first record player, a Fisher-Price Change-A-Record Music Box Record Player
Editor’s Note: This is the first installment in a multipart series celebrating the 10th anniversary of The Stratton Setlist.
I never planned to be a music journalist, but I’ve been unknowingly training for it my whole life.
My parents and older brother, Steve, served as my coaches, offering me different educational resources along the way—ranging from albums, TV shows, and magazines to concerts and festivals.
Those resources helped shape my love of music, a desire to acquire more music knowledge, an obsession with live music and physical media, and an uncanny ability to remember all kinds of music facts and trivia. It was that lifetime of training that quietly prepared me to eventually seek a profession that combined my passion for music with writing.
Now, nearly 45 years later and a decade into running my own music blog, here’s how it all started.
Discipline’s Chris Herin, Mathew Kennedy, Henry Parmenter, and Matthew Parmenter. Photo – Bryant Stuckey
Discipline understands the struggles of navigating the online world.
The prog-rock band weighs the permanency of having a digital footprint with the instant gratification of using new technology on “Breadcrumbs.”
“In my mind, the origin of it was also this notion that when we look at ourselves, we change during our lifetimes,” said Matthew Parmenter, Discipline’s frontman and multi-instrumentalist, about the title track from Breadcrumbs.
“And here we are in this age where so much of what we do is captured, and now, how do we each get to have that luxury that I had as a person growing up, which is to make mistakes and to learn a little from them and to change as we grow. How do we do that when everything we do or utter is recorded forever online?”
Discipline explores that thought as Parmenter sings, “Should we have known / Might we have chosen for ourselves / Now it’s the platform decides / What survives archives our lives.”
“I fear that it leads us to having to become like extreme versions of ourselves, because once you say it, you gotta live up to it,” said Parmenter, who’s based in Metro Detroit. “You can’t let it go. You can’t wake up the next day and say, ‘I probably shouldn’t have said that.’ It’s gone, it’s there. So these were some of the thoughts that generated that particular song.”
In addition to the title track, Parmenter and his Discipline bandmates—guitarist Chris Herin, bassist Mathew Kennedy, and drummer Henry Parmenter—shine on their latest album, Breadcrumbs.
Parmenter’s haunting vocals and philosophical lyrics, along with the band’s spellbinding instrumentation, take listeners on a contemplative journey across five tracks.
To learn more, I spoke with Parmenter about his background, the band, and the album.
For Widetrack’s Ron Tippin, a new type of “mirror” reveals our hidden truths in a vast technological world.
That “mirror” doesn’t reflect our human faces, but instead displays our evolving digital personas on social media and the Interweb through multiple computer, tablet and phone screens. In a sense, we’re residing in a parallel world while interacting with one another in a dream-like state.
“The idea of The Unwakening is how we immerse ourselves in this digital landscape, and it just makes all our worst tendencies come out, and we just wallow in it. All of our wisdom just goes out the window and so does our better nature,” said Ron Tippin, Widetrack’s vocalist, guitarist and drummer.
Ron Tippin explores this haunting concept throughout Widetrack’s new otherworldly 12-track, alt-prog album, The Unwakening, which dropped yesterday. As part of a Waterford father-son duo with 16-year-old bassist-guitarist Zach Tippin, he travels through a dozen digital tales to uncover the conflicting dualities of our personal and online identities.
“I look at a show like ‘Black Mirror,’ and I’ve read the reviews, and people say, ‘Oh, I get it, digital media is bad.’ Well, it’s not that simple. It’s a fantastically great tool, it can connect us in ways it never could, and it’s the stuff of my childhood imagination,” said Ron Tippin, who released the album to coincide with his son’s 16th birthday.
Together, father and son plunge headfirst into a ‘Black Mirror-esque’ realm filled with an angry online influencer who trolls social media, online forums and discussion threads to create a polarizing digital culture. Each haunting track on The Unwakening chronicles the influencer’s rapid rise to power and eventual decline in a fickle virtual universe.
Neil Peart performs with Rush at a 2010 Rogers Bayfest in Sarnia, Ontario.
Editor’s Note – Brian Stratton reflects on his lifelong love of Rush and Neil Peart’s untimely passing.
By Brian Stratton
From the point of ignition To the final drive
The point of the journey
Is not to arrive
Anything can happen
– Prime Mover
I never got to meet Neil Peart, though I did see him many times. Nonetheless, I feel like I know him through his lyrics, and consider him a companion of sorts. It was his lyrics that first appealed to me when my brother played some Rush music for me. The science fiction and fantasy themes were ripe for my young imagination. Over time, I grew to appreciate other themes in his lyrics, about human nature, loss, triumph and all the events that make a life worth living.
As most people know, Peart enjoyed journeying on his motorcycle between tour dates, or on his own time. It gave him time to explore, think and write about life. In fact, I feel that the overriding theme of all his lyrics, whether fantastic or realistic, is about one’s journey through life. Indeed, “anything can happen” in life and often does.
On that note, here are some moments where Peart’s lyrics, Rush’s music and my life all intersected.
Rush’s Alex Lifeson at Rogers Bayfest in 2010
Drawn like moths, we drift into the city
– Subdivisions
I’ve always been drawn to Detroit. For me, it was the big city where my dad worked at Channel 4 and anytime I got to go there when I was growing up was exciting. Probably none more so than the time in 1990 when my family attended Channel 4’s holiday party and then went to Trappers Alley in Greek Town to do some shopping. While wandering around the many levels of the mall, I found a Harmony House store, and in it Rush’s “Caress of Steel” CD. At the time, I was reading Tolkien’s “Fellowship of the Ring,” so it was no surprise that I was attracted to the cover art with the necromancer on it.
When it was time to go home, we found that our car had been stolen. More tragically for my teenage self, my copy of “Fellowship of the Ring” was in the car at the time. At least I had “Caress of Steel,” with its songs about wizards and mythical fountains, to console me. However, all ended well, and our car was found a few weeks later, complete with my book! Not one to hold a grudge, I still love Detroit and look forward to going there to this day.
When we are young
Wandering the face of the earth
– Dreamline
Sometimes it’s the small stops on a larger journey that make the trip complete. At the end of summer in 1991, we were on a family trip to Colorado to visit my brother during his first year at the Air Force Academy. It was my first time out west, and I finally got to see mountains! It was awe-inspiring and profoundly moving for me.
Now, the trip happened to coincide with the release of “Roll the Bones.” This was the first new album that the band had put out since I became a fan, so getting it was a big deal for me. My parents said we could stop and get the CD on the way home from the airport. I remember landing back in Michigan and how vividly green everything was in comparison to the reds and browns of Colorado. A quick stop to Harmony House (again!) in Novi was the perfecting ending to a great vacation.
The Stratton Setlist 