The Baboon Congress

Singer in a Rock and Roll Band

83 Comments

Regular readers of the Trail Baboon comments will know that distinct personalities are welcome (yours included, if you’ve never offered a comment). Today’s guest blog came as a single, massive block of text, which I have broken up a bit but otherwise left untouched.
It was written by the one and only tim.

the blog has helped me to remember a lot of my past history and keep it in perspective as to the role it played in getting to where i am today.

after doing my time with the nuns in catholic i was turned loose on the public schools in 7th grade and found out you could disappear and take center stage at the same time. when you want to be on you’re on, when you want to melt into the woodwork you can.

i made it through the middle school years and had a bit of a hard time because i was there when the country was in transition and a long haired hippy who was still interested in sports was new and the coaches in the program had rules like no hair over the collar that were starting to appear stupid but the coaches were not the ones who were noticing that. so it was frustrating to be able to kick butt in wrestling but not be allowed to go on match day because of the long hair rules.

football was no fun for a guy who could play but was delegated to the 2nd squad because jack armstrong with the whistle around his neck was such a twerp, baseball was fun, baseball, track tennis theater have always been different from football hockey and the other macho sports.

so the phone call that came the summer between 9th and 10 grade from joe, bob and bruce telling me that they would like to do a tryout for their band as the lead singer. i said yes, and after the tryout they couldn’t believe that i could sing every song no matter if it were cream, jethro tull, joe cocker, the beatles, the stones each and every one sounding just bob dylan ( i had been spending a lot of time in my room with a stack of lp’s the new nashville skyline rag on the top of the stack). well… the band was life changing for me, i got to be in front of people and do my schtick on the microphone and we had a great time doing rock for 3 sets and acoustic during the breaks.

so i was talking to joe years later and asked how that came to happen, i didn’t know these guys from adam and they asked me to come be the front man for the band. joe said they all realized they were not capable of being front man and that i had the long hair, was in concert choir and was certainly going to be an improvement over the last front man who was an organ player with a leslie (an expensive speaker) and an attitude that was taking the fun out of the group.

we had a blast. lasted for 2 years til they went off to college and then i became a living room performer who had ambitions to do something musical but was making money at a sales gig that was paying good enough to distract me from the calling.

today i look back and realize that the band was the turning point for me. my confidence , my enjoyment in being in front of people, my ability to do the best me i can be even if i’m not all there came about during those years. i have modified, refined and tweaked all of the stuff it took to get to today but this is where my taking the path where the roads separated began.

can you name an event or marker that was a turning point for you?

83 thoughts on “Singer in a Rock and Roll Band”

  1. Very nice tim. I also love this blog as it gives me (& everyone else) a really safe-feeling place to explore my life and the aspects of that life that are important.

    I have actually had a couple of ephiphanies in my life, but I’ll just stick with one today, as it’s somewhat related to BiRs topic from yesterday.

    I always excelled at school – A’s and Honors all the way through. But I was never proud of these accomplishments – it wasn’t cool to be smart. Didn’t stay in college when my parents were paying for it (rats!) and eventually ended up putting myself through school as an adult. In a communications class, I wrote a paper on the differences between the meeting style of a male co-worker and a female co-workers. The teacher called me and asked if she could use my paper as an example to the class of how to write a paper. I said yes, but when I showed up for class that night, she had copied the paper completely, even leaving my name on the top. I hadn’t considered this – assuming it would be anonymous when she shared it. I was actually mortified and spent a couple of weeks upset and worrying that my classmates would now think differently of me. And through this worrying, I finally realized that I had spent my life being more or less ashamed of how smart I am. And more importantly was finally able to let go of that shame… nothing wrong with being smart!

    Thanks again tim (everytime I spell tim lower case, my fingers automatically add an “e” on the end) – very nice topic!

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    2. being smart is one of my favorite things about you sherrilee. it was not hard for our smart girls to survive at the nunnery but they were not viewed as super cool. the smartness was its own entity. they generally hung with other samrt people but as you said the difference in presentation betwen boys and girls at that time was noiticable and it was not confined to school presentations. grease and luverne and shirley were pretty good examples of the split, so us boys were so busy being cool and screwing around that it never occured to us to pay attention to the girls on the other side of the playground and or the classroom. i do remember the chosen girls and the reasons they were the object of desire was usually something real quirky. its tough enough being kid, having to deal with all those other kids just complicates things doesn’t it?

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      1. i think that in the early part of the 20th century (and before) one good place for smart women to develop was in a convent. (however weird that may sound).
        this will be another interesting discussion today – thanks, tim
        a gracious good morning to You All.

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  2. wow – thanks tim – you really know yourself and thanks for sharing. i think often it is just some small action that spurs something in you. nice.
    VS – beautiful description of your evolution and acceptance of your gifts also!
    i lived 26 years in other people’s opinions of how my life should be. go to school but only for something to “fall back on” and your main occupation will be homemaker. got married at 21 and was divorced and floundering at age 23. then at 26, i met Steve. at first i was very uncomfortable in having the power to decide for myself what my life would be; now i think he thinks he created a monster 🙂 he didn’t “give” me the power to determine where my life will go – i always had it. what he gave me was the knowledge that i had the power. sappy. sorry. 🙂

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    3. you have the power to create the life you choose and you choose goats??? what were you thinking? what a fun path. you are lucky to realize that it is what you decide. that is my biggest challange with my kids, letting them know they need to be aware that they are deciding. not to decide is to decide is a haunting phrase someone gave me once. you cna sit in front of the tv with vidiot brain until you are dead and no one but you will any the wiser, or….

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      1. i chose goats for retirement, tim. although there are times when i wish i had thought of them when i was younger. but my first career choice was my Mom’s decision. when i left that career and went back to school (at almost 30 y.0.) to do something i wanted to do, my Mom never really forgave me. she did, however, come around to liking Steve – and in the following years preferred him to me. “that Steve, he is so kind and good to me!” “what am i Mom, chopped liver?” “well, you HAVE to care for me, he doesn’t” does “German” explain that? didn’t want me to get a big head. 🙂

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      2. It is very common for the very old and infirm of mind to relate better to a child-in-law, such as my mother and several people I pastored. Not sure why. Any theories?

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      3. Clyde – i really think it has something to do with not wanting a swelled-headed “child.” can’t tell you how many people have told me, since Mom died, that she would brag on me – about what a good job i was doing and about how she had grown to like me as a person. i knew that. but it would have been good to hear it from her. was it Jacque who said she just once wanted to hear her Mom admit that she needed Jacque as much as J needed her?
        i’m sure my Mom didn’t hear anything good from her Mother (or Dad for that matter) either – cultural??

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  3. What a great story, tim (and, yes, Sherrilee, I have to delete that final “e” too!). I had a similar experience.

    As I was finishing my first published book (on pheasant hunting), I became uncomfortable with the degree to which I was aiming the book at a general (and not very sophisticated) audience. There was little in the book that was lofty or artistic, just a lot of practical advice about hunting pheasants. I had always found it easy to be more clever and stylish than the average outdoor writer, but that isn’t saying much. I suspected I could have written something original and artistic, but the ms I sent off was pretty pedestrian.

    By the time the publisher sent me a box of ten printed books (“author’s copies”), I was so disgusted I couldn’t bear the sight of the book. I stuck the box in a closet and didn’t open it for a year.

    Then I read a review of the book by the most distinguished and literate of outdoor writers. This fellow loved my book and considered it well-written. I finally read my own book and was enormously relieved it wasn’t as bad as I remembered.

    I began a correspondence with the book reviewer (Steve) and his girlfriend (Betsy). Each letter got more ambitious and experimental than the one before, and I realized at some point that I was using this correspondence as a sort of laboratory to practice writing at a vastly higher level than I had been doing for my magazine. I would spend two or three weeks creating and polishing the letters, trying to make them literature. Meanwhile, the letters got increasingly intimate and affectionate.

    The correspondence lasted about two years, and in that time it was just about the most exciting part of my life. Those wonderful letters were ended abruptly when Betsy died of brain cancer a week before I planned to travel to New Mexico to meet her and Steve.

    The correspondence changed me forever. I learned by writing Steve and Betsy that I had been cheating on whatever small writing talent I possessed. I began making my articles and books more ambitious and elegant than the writing I had done for six years as a professional journalist. Sometimes it takes a little discipline and effort to be the person you were meant to be.

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    2. i am surprised that you can dumb down your writing intentionally. the pheasant hunters i know are more likely louis lamore fans than shakespeare but they would still appreciate a well spun phrase about walking the railraod track or capping a field. do you have a writing correspondant today or is the blog the welcome recipient of the musical typings that roll off you fingertips?

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      1. Thanks, tim. It might be less a matter of “dumbing down” than of not trying hard enough to create something of enduring value. I finally wrote the pheasant book I always wanted to.

        I have several correspondences going at the moment.

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      3. You cannot be a technical writer, as a book on pheasant hunting is (technical” here does not refer to technology), and not dummy it down. You have to assume close to the dumbest reader–TW Rule #1.

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      4. Clyde: you are probably right. My cowardice was in setting out to write a merely technical book in the first place. If I had had faith in my writing, I would have started by creating a book that conveyed technical information while being original and entertaining. It took me ten years to find that courage.

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      5. Doesn’t matter how long does it? You found it! Well done
        Edison found 10000 ways not to make a lightbulb but is remembered for that other one, the one that worked

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  4. just so you folks “down south” can feel smug and warm – it’s minus 24 real temp up here in Blackhoof. think i’ll put brandy in the goat water this morning. or, maybe just brandy in my coffee……

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    3. i must be going through male menopause or something. i cant feel the cold. unless like yestreday i was trying to jump start a car int he driveway and it took a while for me to deciede to wait until it warmed up on firday but my fingers had that frostbite burn after being out there 20 or 30 inutes with no gloves. if i come out at night into a 20 mph wind. i feel it otherwise, it feels like a god crisp minnesota february day the way it ought to. i love the blood thickened part of the year. happens every year this time. i live how good 40 feels come march and april.

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    4. Jagermeister was always the anti-freeze of choice when I was in Buffalo-at least it made the tummy feel like it was warm.

      I enjoyed the sun beating through the car window yesterday, knowing full well it was bitter cold on the other side of the glass!

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  6. Good morning to all,

    I guess there were a whole series of things that have changed my life and more to come. Maybe I am still looking and all those life changing things have left me wondering, even at this late age, if I ever will find myself. I’ve had the good luck to have a lot interesting experiences in my life including the protests of the sixies, marriage and family life, my own parents, work in alternative agriculture, great music, and some good reading. Where I go with all this in the years to come is still a big question.

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    2. its kind of nice ill bet not to be all tied to one life vocation. it allows the opportunity to consider all the rest. the rest is so far reaching that it is unimaginable to get to it all so pick a corner and start like eating an elephant, one bite at a time.

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  7. I’ll probably be quiet today… no reflection on this great group…. just a little swamped here in my cubelet.

    Everybody have a FABULOUS day.

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  8. Part A of the discovery came the day Mrs. Burns signed my best friend up for an acting class because she thought L. might enjoy it, and it might help with her shyness…well, then, my best friend was always at play practice at the park. No one to play Barbies with (our Barbies worked at NASA and mine dated Parker Stevenson), no one to ride bikes with. What was I to do? I signed on, too. The first role in my brief and not-so-illustrious career on the stage was Peter in “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.” I got the role because I was tall. We had one boy in the cast, and he played Aslan. That time on the stage got me to England at 15 (when I was Eeyore, for those of you who remember that guest blog), but more importantly, got me through junior high relatively unscathed. I was not part of the Popular Crowd at school, so having a supportive group of friends outside of that milieu was huge, friends who liked me for who I was (amazing, really, given our ages), and a safe place to suss out where my talents might lie and who I might become…

    That led me to Part B of the discovery when I auditioned for a show in high school – “Of Mice and Men.” There is one female role, a role I am not remotely suited for (Curly’s wife). I was not cast (shocker). I was, however, recruited for stage crew. Picked up a hammer and paintbrush and never looked back. That taught me a lot about learning new skills, adapting existing skills, and that even though my father was not to be trusted with a tool any more complicated than a pencil, I was more like my brother than I thought when it came to tools and building things. I learned to trust my talents and interests for what they were and not what I wanted them to be.

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      1. I thanked Mrs. Burns once for starting the ball rolling that got me to where I am now – she hadn’t realized, I don’t think, how much a decision she made for her daughter had affected who I was in a positive way.

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      2. i dodn;t realize mrs burns was the kids mom . i thought that a teacher signed you up. come to think of it how would that work? glad it had such a wonderful result.

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      3. The theater program my friend and I started in was at a local park – started as an after school sort-of class called “Acting Up.” That morphed over time into a children’s community theater that performed mostly at parks and schools (when I was Helena, we performed on the old band shell at Lake Harriet…and it was hot hot hot on the stage that day).

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  9. I can think of a lot of turning points in my life, but a very satisfying one occurred when I was in junior high school. I started to play the clarinet when I was in Grade 5, and I didn’t really like to practice and was a pedestrian member of of the third clarinet section until I was in Grade 7, when my band director mentioned he needed a bass clarinet player, and was anyone interested. For some reason it appealed to me and I said I would give it a try. I loved playing the bass clarinet from the minute I started, and was quite good on it. It gave me a lot of musical confidence, and my band director decided I was somebody he could rely on the try new things. He got me started playing the bass guitar, which meant I could be in the senior high jazz ensemble as an eighth grader, which also opened a lot of musical opportunities. I kept playing the bass clarinet all through college at Concordia, even though I wasn’t a music major. I don’t play any more, since I don’t own a bass clarinet and they are too expensive to buy, but my life has been infinitely enriched by that offer from Mr. Shelstad when I was 12.

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    1. for what its worth they are on ebay for 3 or 4 hundred bucks. 800 but=ys a good one. that is a cool story and never mind what it did for you look how you have passed it on and are influencing the friends of your daughters too. the trips across the tundra with vivaldi chirping away on the speakers is something they will remember forever. good for you to give the bass clarinet a try. it is a very distinctive instrament. my 4th grader gets to pick an instramnet next year for school. piano doesn’t count so we have looked at trumpet, trmobone cello drums and she stated her choice would be flute. she just picked up a plastic recorder and cant put it down. so i showed her a clarinet and saxaphone this morning to let her know that those instraments make the cool recorder kind of sounds too. we will see.

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      1. It’s so exciting when they chose their instruments. The flute is a good instrument to start out with, as they can transition to oboe or saxaphone later on. My daughter was determined to play the French horn and the violin. It is interesting to think about why certain instruments appeal to some people and not others. I love the sound of brass instruments but I am iritated by the buzzing sensation on my lips.

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  10. My epiphany was to learn I was not smart. I was the picked-on nerd in small northern MN school system. Never had to study and was never really challenged. So took a scholarship to the U of Chi, where real smart people go. Had no study or school WORK skills. Met this overwhelming new world of the the arts in a class I had. Went to Chi Art Inst. To Chi Symphony Orchestra, toured great buildings, etc. Discovered the French Impressionists, Brahms, e.e. cummings, Tacitus, etc. etc. etc. Was simply too much at once along with a family and a personal relationship issue and eventually had to drop out. But what a bunch of lessons, mostly that I was not very smart and that I had not been well taught in school, especially not pushed hard. So I went to U of M, where I did work and study like a non-genius and I became a teacher who pushed kids, an error of a different sort with a different story.

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    1. That’s quite a story of a personal odyssey, Clyde. Of course, people who are not smart just don’t get to be overwhelmed by great minds from the past because they are too dull to “get” that the best minds from history were wonderful and continue to be a model for us. The fact you felt humble speaks well for your intellect. Sometimes the first great discovery we must make is to become aware of how little we really know.

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    2. clyde, i had teachers that were so accustomed to dealing with average joes that they never tried to find out if there was more in there. i suspect that the same or something similar was there for you. we would take the iowa tests and the truth would pop out and i had one teacher who called me in and actually said, “tim i didn’t know you were smart. your test scores show that you have a 12th grade level in almost all of you classes and your in 5th grade. you have been fooling me” talk about a backhanded comment. ah that catholic school education. once you discovered art and ee and thought it was like hellen keller discvering water and away you went i suspect. its not that we aren’t smart, its that we donb’t diescover how to use it.
      a guy goes to the doctor and the doctor says we are going to need to do a brain transplant.
      oh jeeze says the guy. that sounds scary and expensive. yes says the doctor and if you dont care the medical program you are on will give you a womans brain instead of a mans.
      why? said the bewildered patient
      womens brains are cheaper by quite a bit, here we go, its 50,000 for a mans brain and only 20 ,000 for a womans.
      “why is that?” asked the patient,
      the reply was “because a womans brain is used.”

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      1. tim . . . that’s a very good story. I had a similar experience. In high school I got Cs in languages, science and math; and Bs in history and English. I thought of myself as thoroughly average, if that. When our scores on the National Merit Scholarship program came in, I was ordered to report to the office of my counselor. “Oh, man,” I thought, “this is a conversation I don’t want to have.”

        He told me I had scored in the top percentile of all students taking the test in the nation. I was just staggered. And I knew I had managed to do that well in spite of a tepid effort in my classes. I wanted to be happy, but it was also scary to think that I should expect so much more of myself.

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      3. If I were able to stay as focused and on task in others of my life I’d be the most successful guy since ” the social network ” dude

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      1. They had–have–a program called the Small Schools Talent Search Program. They find students from rural Midwest schools to throw in the mix with all the kids from very good and prestigious schools and from which you have to have high intelligence to get in. Many make it but all but a few are at the bottom end of the intelligence range in the college. I was in the bottom 10%. The fact that the U of Chi gives you money says little. Everyone there that I ever met had a scholarship from the U of Chi, which is very rich.

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      2. ok i get it. full ride ? either way it opened the doors and they should be congratulated for that. that had to be the premise of the program.

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  11. Morning–

    It’s student success Day here at the college and the theme this year is “Drive for Success”.

    Neat stories here today everyone… it’s always interesting to read about how people come to their place in life…
    I have mentioned before about my Dad handing me the electric motor without a plug and telling me to “…just stick the wires into an outlet and see if it works…” and that’s pretty much what turned me onto electricity. Oh, and I remember blowing some fuses later on and figuring out ‘Ooohhh…. don’t tie those two wires together…’

    But one of the main things was another theater guy… I was the new kid; young and stupid, but eager… and he was very patient with me — and probably needed the help too. And I remember him always saying ‘If there’s time to do it once, there’s time to do it right cause there’s never time to go back and fix it’… and that has probably been the biggest infuence on my life… for good or bad. Mostly good, but sometimes I get hung up on trying to be prepared to do it right that I waste more time than it would if I just started working on it!
    Another favorite story of that same guy; He’s stressed out probably over some show, and he’s running at 150% and it’s pretty intense. I’m sort of cruising through something… just strolling you know? And I tell him ‘Man, you gotta relax, it’ll be OK’… and he says “Ben! I’m 35 years old! I’m trying not to have a F’ing heart Attack!” And I thought ‘Whoa…’
    A few years later, I’m helping out on a HS show. Their sound system has gone down, I’m trying to find them a new amp, I have to go home and do chores yet and milk cows and get back for a rehearsal and this dang HS kid says, ‘yeah Man, it’ll be OK… just relax.’… and my head explodes and I said ‘YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND! I’m trying not to have a F’ing Heart attack here!!’

    … yep…..

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  12. My Dad was the first in his family to go to college. By the time he retired he had been the head engineer on the design of several very large electric power plants. I just bounced around doing a number of different things to make a living, but my Dad never gave me any trouble about my less than glorious career.

    I can remember my Dad saying when I was a boy that I should just try to do a good job at whatever I did even if it was only ditch diging. Some people might tell you something like that and not really mean it. I think my Dad was trying to give his best advice. I would have liked to have been more sucessful, like my Dad. I think my Dad wanted me to know that doing a good job was more important than being a big success.

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    1. My dad was good, too, at differentiating between being a Big Success and leading a good, successful life. While they may go hand-in-hand, they don’t need to – you can be successful without Being Successful, and only one of those will lead to contentment.

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  13. (married to BiR)
    Math always came easy to me, I always got As. In my senior h.s. year I won the math contest out of 200 contestants. Then I got to college. One month into a college calculus course, I came to this realization: I am very good at math; I am better than many; but also there are many better than me. My realization is (like Popeye) I yam what I yam. And that’s OK.

    P.S. I’m the triple heart bypass patient, who is improving day by day. Thanks for all the good wishes and caring you’ve sent here.

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    1. Wow! Great to hear from you, Michael! Recovery from a triple bypass is not for the meek or faint of heart! I hope you continue to improve.

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    3. Is this what it takes to get you to join our little group Michael?geez it doesn’t have to be such a drama stick your head in any time. Anyone who realizes iy what iyam is welcome any time. Speedy recovery on ya

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  14. When I was 30 and had finally settled into an apartment in S. Minneapolis (with Rose Hassing and her brother Michael for roommates), the 3 of us took a little folk dancing course we saw advertised in a community paper, a group of maybe 10 people on Sunday afternoons. I liked it, the strange music, the rhythms, I could do it easily. After the course ended I went with the teacher to where she danced, the University Folk Dancers who were meeting then (1978) under the bright lights of the Armory gym on University Ave, 75-100 people on any given Tuesday eve. I was in awe. I came for the teaching every week I possibly could, found that you could learn some dances during request time by just following along behind the line, then jumping onto the end of the queue when you got it.

    Before I found it, I’d thought I was clumsy. I was lousy at all the sports I tried in h.s. and college Phy Ed, didn’t like to run or jog… But I had found the one physical thing I’m just naturally good at, ended up taking every workshop I could get my hands on, and eventually teaching. Get me dancing and I’ll go ‘way beyond sweating, just don’t ever want to quit. Made a huge difference in how I percieve my physical self, and I’m so grateful I found it.

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  15. Wouldn’t it be a drag if you found out you were done, no more chances,but until then keep looking for that spark, maybe from a morning blog group reminding us we can start today with the next epiphany, what would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?

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  17. Two more years and I can take early retirement. I know I’ll miss it, especially the kids, but then I can start my second career! What to do… what to do… This town could really use a good ice cream shop. Is Izzy’s a franchise? Or a donut shop. Cake donuts. Donna’s Donuts. Or I could turn my yard into wildflowers and sell potpourri and daisy chains. Or not.

    Hey Guest Bloggers – I’ve had the best time reading your entries. Outstanding. Every one of you!

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  18. Vignette of the Day: after a drive up the coast from Santa Cruz, our son was driving our car back into San Francisco area traffic at early twilight. My wife asked him, “Do you know how to turn on your lights on this car?” My son answered, “I don’t know. Do you know how to be passive-aggressive?”

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