As a child, I was not afraid of whatever eldritch phantasms might be hiding in the shadows beneath my moonlit bed. They were swiftly vanquished by merely shining a flashlight in their fanged and hairy faces. What did frighten me, however, was the wild-eyed, forked bearded, and rictus grinning countenance of the clearly demented musician featured on the 1960s-era record album sleeve of 'Thirteen Favorite Melodies For The Glockenspiel.'
No doubt he was merely trying and failing to express enthusiasm for the hitherto unknown tonal qualities of this rather boring and rudimentary instrument, but he looked more like a cruel dungeon master intent on torturing his victims with a bloodcurdling clink-clank rendition of She'll Be Coming Round The Mountain. Or perhaps an evil warlock summoning his demon legions by pounding out a profane version of Greensleeves backwards. No matter the spine-chilling image conjured, clearly this glockenspiel maestro's face was a warning to the curious: herein was a vinyl equivalent of Pandora's Box and listening to its contents would unleash aural terror upon the world.
Alongside an equally ancient and macabre copy of The Young Person's Guide To The Orchestra housed in a crumbling cardboard slip-case, Thirteen Favorite Melodies For The Glockenspiel took pride of place in my junior school's record collection. It was as if the educational authorities actively wished to dissuade students from developing an interest in music, like stocking their libraries with nothing but musty, leather-bound editions of lengthy Victorian novels to discourage reading.
Consequently, I have always viewed the process of institutional education as a dark, satanic mill grinding impressionable minds into philistine dust. Imagine a glockenspiel mallet hammering a human eardrum forever, if you enjoy Orwellian paraphrase, as I certainly do. The ineradicable memory is almost enough to drive me to purchase a CD of Pink Floyd's The Wall. Almost, but my subsequent nightmares are not that desperately bad, thank God.
