I am enjoying tripping down memory lane, so here are a few
more.
In honor of Record Store Day, I must mention trips to Tower
Records with Mike—not that we did it that much, but he had always heard some
thing new that he was checking out, and he really knew a lot about music. I
have seen him play drums, guitar, banjo, and piano, including an absolutely
beautiful piece that he composed, and that I really hope he did something with.
So really, it is memories of Mike. Other good memories are…
Mom banging her cane up and down to “Howling for You” by the
Black Keys: It was after her second knee surgery, and the recovery was going a
lot better than the it did for the first one. Maria had her iPod in the docking
station, and that came on, and Mom started going down the hall, rocking out to
the music. Because her cane had this metal ring that was kind of loose, basically
she became the percussion. She doesn’t use her cane anymore (sometimes I think
she should), so even though she may still rock out on occasion, it will never
be like that again.
Riding out to Sherwood to Hunting High and Low by a-ha: As
long as we are going with family memories, this happened all the time. We had
friends there, and Mom and Julie and Maria and I would pile into the Colt to go
see them. I had recorded my vinyl copy of the album onto a cassette, and it was
always in the tape deck, and we would sing along the whole way. I bet we still
all have the entire album memorized.
Group sing to “Bohemian Rhapsody” (in the style of Queen) at
Voicebox: A group of us for work had gone for happy hour. Voicebox has private
karaoke rooms. I suspected this would be fun, so I insisted that we do this
number, and all sing along, and it was awesome. Everyone was singing and
passing the mic around, and not only was there air guitar, there was air piano.
The only person who did not get really into it was Scott. Poor kid was not only
too young for Queen—he was even too young for Wayne’s World.
Choreographing dance numbers for ward talent shows: I
choreographed numbers for ET twice: one with her husband for “The Music of the
Night”, and one with Mollie to “’Cause I’m a Blonde” by Julie Brown. Then there
was one with my sisters and some friends for “Ice Ice Baby”. We did use
humorous elements in all of them, but there were some cool things too, and they
were crowd-pleasers, and it was just kind of fun.
Now, attending jam sessions does not exactly make the list,
just because while I find them interesting and always learn something new, as
the one who is just observing and not jamming, I tend to feel a bit awkward and
useless. Sometime I should try one where there are groupies or girlfriends and
try to blend in. I am confident that someone handing me a tambourine would only
make things worse.
Here’s the one I have never told anyone: One night I had
just attended a dance performance, and I had some waiting time alone at the
train station. There was wind, and a flagpole with some rope and hooks, that
was being blown in such a manner that the clanging of the hook and the scraping
of the rope was making a pretty steady rhythm. Bum-bum-bum, bumm-bumm-bumm. So
I did the only logical thing and started dancing.
Springfest Battle of the Bands: Springfest was put on by the
dorms, and I volunteered to help with the Battle of the Bands. I got to help a
lot. There was a lot to do, and I think we were basically a committee of five.
A lot of the pre-work was cool. I made some awesome posters, we screened demo
tapes of different bands, and we went to Duke’s to procure equipment.
Duke had a bar in Springfield, but he also rented equipment
for music events. If you were a musician in the area back then, you knew about
him. I don’t know if he’s still around, but he was great—super helpful and
cool.
The day of the event itself was busy—I don’t think I
participated in any of the other Springfest events—but it was a good kind of
busy, working with the bands, helping with setup, getting ballots to and from
the judges, and eventually the take-down, which was not awful because suddenly
there were quite a few people helping.
The great thing was that after it was over it was not really
over, because there were a bunch of musicians in the area and they all had
their instruments, so we were just sitting in the grass and there was random
music and dancing going on.
It’s weird how some things are still so clear years later.
Like one of the bands, Skunk, that did not even make it in, but I still
remember their demo tape, and their logo of a skunk formed by the word.
Looking back there is a sort of wistfulness to it, knowing
some of the things that would come later. One of the guys on the committee, who
was so helpful and engaged, would later get into drugs and kind of burn out,
and I don’t know if he ever came out of that. One of the bands, Something She
Said (I still have their tape), broke up shortly after. I had been friends with
John, and later on I ended up working with Kurt (at Intel of all places), and
he blamed his ego and really wished I could have put him in touch with John (I
would have liked that too), but everyone had lost touch, and as far as I can
tell neither of them are on Facebook now, and neither is Andrew Diamond of
Movement (super-cute—he reminded me of Simon Lebon, they incorporated Mozart’s
Eine Kleine Nachtmusic into one of their songs, and also very appreciative of
my help), If Facebook had already been around, things would have been
different, but most people weren’t even using e-mail yet back then.
So looking back there are things that are kind of sad, but
that day was golden. We had orchestrated a good time for people, and it
certainly would not have been possible without the bands, but this bunch of
non-musicians had still been a part of making it happen, and it felt really
satisfying.
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