Three Keyboards and a Wayback Machine

Last night Kathy & I headed out for pizza and a rock concert…at a high school, but a rock concert nonetheless. Spiraling was playing a benefit for the Metuchen High School music program and Feed the Children. Spiraling plays an aggressive synth-rock, with frontman Tom Brislin playing three keyboards, sometimes all in the same song (and despite having only two hands, seemingly all at once).

As impressed as I am with Brislin—and I have been ever since I first saw him play at one of Glenn Burtnik’s Xmas Xtravaganzas, years ago—tonight drummer Paul Wells grabbed my attention. Watching him pound away during “Transmitter,” I got a sense of how truly complex the rhythms are behind these songs.

The band played a few songs from their upcoming album during the set – “Victory Kiss” and “Choices” were two of the names I caught, plus lots of songs from their first two albums. We have Transmitter, and I recognized “Girl on Top (of the Piano),” “This is the Road,” Lightning Twice” and “The Connection,” from that album, as well as “Ah, Sugar,” “Texas is the Reason” and “A Face for Radio” from Challenging Stage, which I really oughta pick up one of these days.

But then their encore came. And it only took a moment to recognize it: A-Ha’s “Take On Me.” And there we are, sitting in the auditorium, watching a bunch of high school kids dance to this song, that I have a hard time believing they even know. But I catch sight of a couple of girls singing along, and the same thought flashes through my head that I later find out flashed through Kathy’s: We were that age when this song first came out.

Thanks, Sherman – I didn’t realize the Wayback could go to 1984.

Rob