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I had always liked to sing, but the only songs I really knew
were Christmas carols. I never listened to the radio (it
had never even occurred to me that it was there for the listening)
until that fateful day I met Tammy in the second grade. I
ran home to tell my mother that I had met a girl with the
nicest smile, who always ordered lunch # 3, which was always
peanut butter and jelly. (Lunch #1 and #2 were always hot
lunch, and no one I knew dared to order lunch #3.) She introduced
me to the radio station WCAU-FM whose rotation consisted
of Cyndi Lauper's song, "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," and
Michael Jackson's, "Billie Jean." Eventually, they
added Wham's! "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go," which
was my personal favorite, but I think everyone knows what
a sucker I am for George Michael.
Radio became a focal point in our friendship. Every New Year,
we'd sidle around my boom box and chart the top 100 songs of
the year. Often these pointless countdowns would last to the
wee hours of the morning, but we'd stay up till the very end,
scribbling each song in our countdown notebook, which was riddled
with our ridiculous stick figure drawings of all the teachers
we hated at school.
Visions of rock-stardom (or singer-songwriter-dom, as the case
may be) didn't materialize until, at the age of 13, I realized
I wanted to be like Paul Simon. For four consecutive summers,
I had been a camper at Camp Treetops, which was outside of Lake
Placid if you must know, and had been singing Those Camp Songs.
You know them, the super-minor-key, Jewishly* haunting, "Dona
Dona," the melodic, "Morning Has Broken," and
the twangy "Take Me Home, Country Roads," all those
camp standards. Well one summer, a counselor whom I thought resembled
David Lee Roth, picked up the guitar and started playing "The
Boxer," by Simon Garfunkel and had us sing along. It was
as if I had heard music for the first time. I know that sounds
so cheesy, but I distinctly remember it as a turning point in
my musical education. Up to that point, I had been listening
to the Top 40 stuff on the radio, Debbie Gibson, Atlantic Starr,
Taylor Dane, and had wondered if this was all there possibly
was. I craved something different; I wanted something that spoke
to my emotions and intellect. And there it was, coming out of
the fake David Lee Roth's guitar and mouth. So the minute I got
back home I decided I wanted to learn to play the guitar. My
mom ended up buying me one (black, like the one Paul Simon had
at the Concert in Central Park) but I couldn't really play it.
Tammy had started learning how to play, however, so for a while
I was content to spend weekend nights with her making up harmonies
and making her figure out different songs.
When she started taking guitar lessons with this man named Jim
Kelly at our local music store, my mother prompted me to immediately
follow suit. With some hesitation, I did, and ended up studying
classical guitar with him for the next four years. Between classical
repertoire and brief stints at the National
Guitar Workshop in
New Milford, CT, Tammy and I continued arranging songs and working
out harmonies on our favorite tunes. By high school and then
college, it was clear to both of us where our hearts lay. We
wanted to be musicians, and we wanted to be a duo. (We were pissed
that the Indigo Girls beat us to it, but secretly we loved them.)
The path certainly hasn't been clear-cut and my parents were
pretty adamantly against my pursuit, but the magic and desire
remains. Therapy helps. Sometimes it is buried deep within me
to the point where I wonder if it exists at all, but then I'll
see Jonatha Brooke in concert or something and that wave of THAT's-What-I-Want
pushes me back on my course.
Guess that's all I have to say on the matter.
--Doris
*I
feel I can say this because Tammy is Jewish.
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