The music that rocked John Fingland's world

This story is part of a web series called Music that Matters with CBC Yukon's Airplay host Dave White. Dave sits down with Yukoners to talk about five pieces of music that inspire them. 

John Fingland is passionate about music, and always has been.

He's travelled all over the world to see his favourite acts, and a lot of those trips have been to see the legendary jam band The Grateful Dead, which also meant we thought this feature would be packed with Dead songs.

"The thing about the Dead is that the influence they have on me is their long, long jams," he said. "So if you had asked me to pick three hour-long jams that had affected my life it would have been way easier."

Fingland's first choice was Yellow Ledbetter, the song Pearl Jam usually plays to end their shows. Fingland said the song was supposed to be on the band's debut record, Ten, but the lyrics weren't finished. Even now, many of the lines are incomplete.

"No one really knows what the words are, we all sing along, so we all mumble together. I just love it."

Fingland's second selection is Leonard Cohen's Chelsea Hotel #2.

"It has so many of the things that I love about music, and it's only in the last year that I found out it was about Janis Joplin ... that whole thing about Janis fixing her hair and saying 'well, never mind, we're ugly but we always have the music,' it really spoke to me as a kid."

"My third pick is Bob Dylan," Fingland said.

"You could pick a million Bob Dylan songs but the one I picked is When The Ship Comes In ... when you're younger and full of great values and ideals about how society should be run, it's one of those songs that gives you hope.

"It's about how the good will win, despite all the obstacles in your path."

Fingland's fourth choice came from David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust phase, Rock and Roll Suicide.

"In the winter of 1982 when we first moved back to the Yukon from Ottawa, I was all about new wave and the 80s and all the big changes that were happening in music.

"I landed in Whitehorse, which was just a sea of lumberjack jackets and AC/DC and the Scorpions."

"I could have picked any song from Ziggy Stardust," he continued. "Rock and Roll Suicide, the closing song, really spoke to me, where he's just screaming at the end 'You're not alone! You're not alone!' From a little house in Riverdale all the way across to England, it really made a difference to get through those dark winters."

Fingland said he wasn't a fan of The Beatles when he was younger, but that changed when John Lennon died and he saw how deeply his death affected people around the world. That led to him digging into Lennon's music.

"When I first heard Imagine, that's when I realized you didn't have to write just trite pop songs, you could write music that could really change the world ... you could say so much with music."