Mamarama (2 of 2 free samples)

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COPYRIGHT
Mamarama by Evelyn McDonnell. Copyright 2007 by Evelyn McDonnell.
All Rights Reserved. Sharing not permitted.

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1 (CONT"D)

Pop music is Peter Pan, the Pied Piper. It's Ponce de Leon's fountain of youth bottled and sold worldwide or spritzed into the air for free. Hear a song you loved as a child three decades later, and you're young again. Connect with a current hit, even as a middle aged geezer, and you've tapped into the secret society of youth culture.

I bought into the dream factory big time, and it still levies a tithe on my soul. I've just always loved music. Dancing on a coffee table at my parents' cocktail parties, I would entertain the guests by singing all the parts on the Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar soundtracks. The Beatles--all four of them; why choose?--were among my earliest adolescent crushes. Punk rock saved my bored, zit-faced teenage life and taught me to screech, "Oh bondage, up yours." Funk taught me to dance, hip-hop showed me the news, and electronica transported me. Along the way, I decided to write about it all.

Some people are born musicians. I was born a listener. My first concert memories are of Dave Brubeck playing the slinky chords of "Take 5" by the Lake Michigan shore every year at Milwaukee's outdoor beer bacchanal, Summerfest. My family's table would be full of empty cups and fried-food containers, and my parents would be in front of the stage swing dancing. At night's end, Brett and I would pile into the back of the station wagon and sleep on the hour-and-a-half ride home down a quiet highway. Getting a DUI wasn't a suburban bête noire in those days, and I always felt safe in our Chevy cocoon, watching the star-filled country sky out the back window.

Occasionally, Dad would take out one of his classical records and ensconce himself in our living room, where he would sink deep into the strings. Usually, this was late at night, and he would be in some kind of mood. Sometimes, we'd have to ask him to put the headphones on, but even so, he would shout along to some rousing section, causing the rest of us to giggle. Brett adopted similar habits when he hit adolescence, but his headphone affairs were with the Doors, Bruce Springsteen, and the Clash.

Suburban bohemians, my parents actively fostered a song-filled house. Christmas brought new musical gifts: One year, it was two acoustic guitars in black cases with big red ribbons; another, it was a stereo; a third, Dad enlisted us kids' assistance in preparing a surprise for Mom. We covered a giant piece of brown paper with grade-school graffiti, then draped the improvised wrapping over a standup piano next to the Christmas tree. Mom feigned disbelief when she pulled off the homemade wrapping, but I can't imagine what else she thought it hid.

She never did learn to play, but Brett and I did. Always good students (perhaps because our parents were teachers), we learned how to sit properly at piano recitals, hold our hands just right, and make it through a piece of music without hitting too many wrong keys. We also tried our hands at guitar and viola. When I was around seven, I begged Mom and Dad to get me a drum kit like the one our neighbor Jon had, but that's where they drew the line. (Instead, I wound up spending years dating, living with, marrying, and raising drummers.) I think Brett and I both, separately, reluctantly, and inevitably, came to the conclusion that our rock-star ambitions would have to find other channels. Dreams, ideas, and love for music we had in spades, but the fact was, we lacked talent.

Mom had it though: She used to sing show tunes as she washed dishes or vacuumed the house, or just when she was happy. I loved to sing too but never had Mom's pipes, so I learned to keep my self-serenades discreet. Mostly, I sang out the car window. We spent our summer vacations pulling a trailer across America--probably the best education I ever got. I'd sit in the back seat on those long drives and toss my songs into the prairies, mountains, suburbs, and deserts.

Our trailer was our stagecoach and traveling classroom. We were pioneers, far from our roots, tight-knit, often tight-lipped. It was the era when the big-city AM stations carried music miles into the hinterlands and played the hits, and the hits were good. There were no cassettes, CDs, or satellite radio yet, and certainly no iPods into which we each plugged in separately. There was just the car radio, binding us all together with deliciously sugary pop and irresistible, saccharine ballads.

Brett was my best friend, sounding board, and think tank--when I could pull him out of his books. I remember having to coax him to play stuffed animals in the back seat; then he would only join if I let him be the rock star. He'd pick one plush toy to animate, while I'd man a cast of ten. Blacky, his Scotty (earned by sending in proofs of purchase from Scott tissue papers), was an Elvis in his depressive stage. While my tigers, koalas, cougars, and monkeys were arguing over recording contracts and tour plans, Blacky would be howling the saddest hound-dog song you ever heard. Once, he threw down his mike, stormed out of the studio, and disappeared into the night, shouting, "I don't want your money! No one understands me!"

I looked up at my red-faced brother with his hair in his eyes. Okay.

Brett and I shared 45s and LPs. He was at least as obsessed with music as I was, and since he was older, I learned about bands from him. He checked records out of the library: Joni Mitchell, Led Zeppelin, Cream. The first one bored me, and the second one scared me, but Wheels of Fire, I dug. When our ages were still in the single digits, I owned more 45s than he, but once we hit the doubles, his LP collection outpaced mine. I wasn't focused enough; I was buying clothes, jewelry, posters. Brett saved his allowance and lawn-mowing money every week, went to the local record store/head shop, and bought the latest releases he'd read about in Rolling Stone or the Milwaukee Journal: Elvis Costello, the Jam, Robert Johnson.

We were an intellectual family: well read, highly opinionated, and overly fond of puns. Mom and Dad discussed almost everything with us--politics, movies, music, current events, books, economics, psychology, sociology, history. We toured national parks and monuments, watched spewing geysers and Civil War reenactments. I vividly remember my parents' grimness when we visited Madison shortly after campus bombings there. They wanted Brett and me to see the dangers of extremism, how ideologues could tear apart the country, even in such a smart, lovely town as Madison. Like the times, Mom and Dad were leaving conservative shadows behind them. Democrats, Deweyians, Unitarians, they were also ahead of their time.

I remember once an older couple pulled alongside our brown Chevy station wagon, with our canoe on top, dog inside, and trailer behind. The woman rolled down her window and shouted, "You're so beautiful! The American dream!" Mom laughed so hard she started to cry.

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