So ‘performing’ wasn’t my thing – but man, I just loved music. Those nights I’d sit down next to my Dad and listen to Rhapsody in Blue, The Wave, Misty – wow, I wanted to be just like him. He was so talented. He was the kind of guy that could sit down at a piano anywhere – ‘oh play something for us, Dan!’ – and Dad would. And he was such a natural – he could have done it professionally but insisted he didn’t like performing. I think he did – it sure looked like it anyway. We could be out to dinner somewhere and if there was a vacant piano, Dad would eventually find his way to it, and provide us all with a song or two – or more. I was so proud of him – strangers were applauding him and pleading for more. It was very cool to be his daughter.
So I continued on with my weekly piano lessons with Mrs. Gorkachevsky. I have no doubt she was perpetually disgusted with me. One would presume it was because I never practiced enough, but I later suspected it was because I wasn’t Russian. Except for me, all of her students were from Russia. My family found this out at our first of her recitals, which she demanded I participate in. Barely over the Lennon & McCartney trauma, I didn’t think I could hack another bout of horrific stagefright. She insisted, saying that performing in front of people “is veddy, veddy good for you!” I went first and then each student that followed seemed to play a little better than the one before, so it didn’t take long for me to realize that the American was the worst of her students. Her final kid was playing freaking Flight Of The Bumblebee! Are you kidding me? Get me out of here … yet another humiliating piano performance. This would be my first and last piano recital.
Those Russian kids were all suspiciously good – I guess they must have practiced. Good for them. Her training techniques were rigid: I remember her swatting at my hands because I wasn’t keeping them in the proper position and that thick Russian accent of hers was so hard to understand. All those scales, those exercises, her boring classical music… Bach, Brahms, Beethoven – a real bummer for a kid like me. I hung in there with her with hopes of her discovering American music and teaching me to play Rhapsody in Blue one day.
By the time I reached Junior High, I needed to be in any band possible as long as I was with other kids who played music. Unfortunately they didn’t use pianists in Junior High school. I needed a Plan B because I just had to be in the band. The buzz was there was a need for French Horns. I didn’t even know what a French Horn was, but I had an ‘in’ since I could read music–and there were no other takers. The only hurdle holding me back after procuring a French Horn was actually learning how to play one.
I couldn’t get over how beautiful the French Horn sounded on record – and for the first couple of months, the noises coming out of my particular horn were not even remotely similar. I struggled and strained with it, desperate to achieve any sound other than the zoo sounds blaring out the end of that thing. Maybe since it was a school loaner, I had gotten a lemon. So for awhile, I just blamed it on that. I finally admitted that I had to take French Horn lessons. Great – more lessons. The band director brilliantly suggested I practice with just the mouthpiece – so all of our ears got a break for a bit. Once I got the whole mouthpiece aperture thing down, I just buckled down and practiced. Fortunately, since the French Horn could have such a pleasant sound, my parents were not too annoyed with all the practicing, especially after I got over the ‘wow this thing sounds like an elephant’ phase.
I eventually parlayed my two years of French Horn in Junior High into a good position in the High School Orchestra AND Marching Band! It was cool to be in the Band (I got to go to all the football games, man) but it wasn’t until many years later that I learned I was a geek.
Ahh, the marching band uniform… mine had pinstriped goofus-pants and brass buttoned topcoats in the school colors of red and grey. We all looked like a bunch of Nutcrackers. My uniform had a perpetual dry cleaned stank smell. I dreaded putting it on because I’d get the itches – not sure if it was because the scratchy fabric that seemed to have wood chips in it or it was icky from a million dry cleanings. Topped off with a dreadfully gigantic hat; a three foot tall thing of black fuzz that had a feathered plume sticking out the top, complete with a visor and chinstrap—(wow), and it was never on straight. But the finishing touch of the uniform was the shoes. These were not girl shoes. These were for a dude’s foot. Black lace ups, wide, clunky and ugly. It didn’t help that I wore a women’s size 9 shoe as a Freshman. Ridiculous. And I wonder why I never had a boyfriend in high school.
But I was in the Band and I thought that was pretty darned cool. I got to hang out with all the different musicians of the school – including choir. I secretly desired to sing with them but just didn’t have the nerve. Blowing a horn around a bunch of other Nutcracker-horn-blower geeks was easy and fun –and I fit right in. Singing, on the other hand, meant you were on your own – and I wasn’t reliving any more Grimsford Elementary days. I eventually ended up in the First Chair in the French Horn section (there were only two of us), and I will never forget my days in the band.
theclubsinger 