musical careers

 In our waning days of Old Gage Park they set us down in the auditorium and passed out test booklets.  But this was no brainbusting SAT to sweat through in hopes of getting into some snazzy college which would lead to a snazzy job which would lead to a snazzy house in a snazzy neighborhood.  This was a test to show us what our inclinations were.  I remember it very well on every page were three pictures: a guy ironing clothes, a guy driving a steamroller, and a guy rolling out pizza dough and you picked out the activity that most appealed to you.  This was the case with every page.

And I always picked out the guy strumming the guitar or banging on a piano or blowing into a horn.  It just seemed magical somehow, you just plucked, or banged, or blew and out came sweet sweet music.  So cool, so much what I wanted to do.  When the results were tabulated my optimal career would be as a musician.  

But I had no talent whatsoever.  In our Kindergarten band some kids were given big thick sticks to bang together while the more talented had thin tapered sticks.  I banged my thick sticks as hard as I could hoping to be promoted to the thin stick crowd, but instead my sticks were taken away and I was told to just sit there and smile.  Likewise when it came to singing I was told to just move my mouth. 

They had these salesmen coming through the neighborhoods in those days selling musical instruments.  If your kid did not take up an instrument at this formative age, they might well never develop their hidden musical talent and their grown-up years would be well unmusical, likely forlorn, and it would all be your fault.  Much better for everybody for the kid to be spending an hour of those carefree summer hours stuck in a sweaty room making ungodly noises.  I foolishly chose the piano accordion, which not only did you have to plunk keys, you had buttons to push on the other side and you had to squeeze the damn thing in and out all the while.  That thing where you plunked and pushed and squeezed and out came sweet sweet music was not happening for me.  After a couple years my lack of talent got me out of it, when the teacher declared me hopeless.

The Bliss Fest does not seem that rock and roll to me.  Jazz is pretty arty but not very rambunctious, world is pretty poppy but also folky.  And so what if they had other kinds of music, it's not like they forbade folk music.  Couldn't you live and let live?  Tell the story again, as I have noticed folks aren't listening near as closely when you are talking about yourself as when you are talking about them.

Did you have like a set at Bliss?  Did you write other songs that never made it to Hold Back the Dawn.  Do you ever find yourself picking up the old guitar and serenading the creatures of the freehold?