I wasn’t a particularly fussy baby, or so I’m told. My mother says that I was an easygoing roommate who didn’t make trouble: a good boy, who made a lot of racket at night.
My mother decided to comfort me with a radio in my crib. This worked - sort of. I did respond very well to music, but not the music she initially preferred… I only calmed totally down when one of the country music stations was on. Laden with sleep deprivation, she looked me right in the tiny eye and fairly pleaded for pop if not R&B, but the twang of the steel guitar was the only sonic soothing I’d accept, so she took the win.
Even today my affinity towards bluegrass somewhat challenges my immediate family… I bought a mandolin a few years back and every now and then start chopping away on it with amateur glee. I love music of all kinds, but I don’t perform music as a career. I used to, as a kid, in amusement parks and nursing homes and church and San Francisco… mostly standards and original novelty songs.
But for a brief and awesome moment, I did get to be in the lead singer of a southern rock band, which was a surprise to everyone. Including the band.
Early 90’s San Francisco was lush with music and venues to enjoy it. This was pre-internet and before cell phones, so homemade Xeroxed flyers were stapled and taped everywhere to announce local shows. Most often you’d just show up at a venue and listen to whoever was there, discovering favorites as you went along.
This five piece group was incredibly popular. Then the singer suddenly left, and they were looking for a possible replacement. So somebody told me about it and I “auditioned”.
Ok: the guy before me was… cool, I mean he was tall and had the look of a rock star and the hair of a rock star, while I had just graduated from a cappella harmonies of Cole Porter classics and comedy acoustic guitar sets. But I put together a song on my 4 track cassette recorder - I didn’t know what to sing, so I chose “I Think I Love You” by the Partridge Family.
(I’ll just let that settle.)
Not only that, but I sang it a cappella with overdubs in 5 different styles, including gospel, for some reason.
They called me in out of curiosity and perhaps a deep sense of pity, but when they played an actual rock song I didn’t do too bad, and I learned very quickly, and they needed a singer for a show right away and I was oh-so-enthusiastic.
We rehearsed 3 times a week. For the first 3 months they were polite, but seemed to always wince a bit when I showed up, like I brought everyone a sliver of the brain freeze you get from drinking an Icee too fast. Then something wonderful happened.
My girlfriend dumped me.
That night happened to be not only a rehearsal, but a songwriting night, when everyone tossed around ideas and new riffs. I came in cursing like a sailor with a chum bucket full of heartbreak and frustration.
I started singing, but my voice was different, as was my attitude. I wasn’t performing, just growling in honest expression.
90 minutes later there was a song, that everybody liked, and I’d helped.
“What happened to you?” the lead guitarist asked. His tone was cautious, as if he thought he might break the spell I was under if he spooked me.
I briefly told them of my situation: she had initially warned me that if she found a man assertive, she grew to resent him, but if she could in any way dominate him, he disgusted her. I apparently had told her that would be fine. It didn’t work out.
“I’m gonna hire her to break up with you every week.” he responded.
From then on, I was in the band.
They played just this last weekend, over 4000 miles away - a 33 year reunion? There was no way I could make it, and they didn’t really need me there because their original singer was back, cooler than ever.
I did love that experience. I wasn’t performing, I didn’t have to be polite or entertaining, just honest. It took a while to learn how to do that because I was raised on TV variety shows where the smiles were wide and the jokes all knee slappers. I never paid attention to or actively cultivated rock and roll emotions before that, because where would I have processed or shared them? It didn’t change the fact that if bad things happened, you just had to take ‘em and keep on going… the difference was that on that stage, you didn’t have to be happy about it. #meaningfulsigh.
My most favorite memories are hard to describe, but I remember the night we were invited to play a show for a deaf audience because we had been awarded (quite by accident), the loudest band in San Francisco at the time (an actual scientist verified it). That time we for no reason started playing “That’s The Way of The World” by Earth, Wind and Fire and went crowdsurfing. Recording in a real studio with an actual engineer for the first time and hearing what my voice sounded like channeled through money. Playing either the Roxy or the Whisky a Go Go in L.A. and singing while hanging upside down from the ceiling.
But mostly I loved rehearsals; right afterwards we’d eat budget spaghetti or curry and watch PBS shows. Being in this group didn’t make me cool, but I was a part of it - my utility made me cool adjacent, which was good enough for me, because I had the opportunity to tell thousands of strangers about questionable life decisions I’d made in a musical style I was heir to, but not exactly expected in.
And now there is Shaboozey, an African American country rock star with no asterix generating barely a raised eyebrow. I’m proud to be part of the prehistoric past of this future.
https://on.soundcloud.com/MCHveJEvUmyuyc989
Saints Be Praised.