Hide and Seek

When I was a wee lad (back when dinosaurs roamed the fertile land that is now known as North America) I wanted to learn to play the drums. Although I played baseball, football, and basketball throughout elementary school, I was a scrawny little dude when I finally got to junior high and couldn’t make the sports teams at school. I was pretty nerdy-looking and found myself on the outside of the rapidly-developing cliques that make up the Cool Crowd as 12 and 13 year-old kids begin to learn the dynamics of social stratification.

Like most kids that age, I gravitated towards others who I perceived to be “like me” – kids who doodled in their notebooks and on bookcovers made from brown paper grocery bags, kids whose mothers bought their clothes at Sears, shirts buttoned all the way to the top, stiff blue jeans with two inches of the cuffs rolled up, and black Keds. We ate ham sandwiches on white bread, slurped Campbell’s tomato soup from Thermoses, and drank lukewarm milk from tiny cartons bought with the ten cents we were given for lunch every day.

The bullies avoided us for the most part because we gingerly tiptoed across the tightrope around the precipice of weirdness. We were normal kids who were not as cool as the In Crowd, but we were not social outcasts, either. We were just trying to find where we fit and avoid drawing too much attention to ourselves, lest we be knocked back into place. The “tallest nail” theory in action.

I was in the seventh grade at James Madison High School in Houston, Texas, the very same school that University of Texas quarterback and soon-to-be NFL legend Vince Young would attend some thirty years later. Back in those days, the student body at was divided into two main crowds – the Surfers and the Kickers (as in “shitkickers”, a derogatory name for cowboys).

My favorite song in the fall of my first semester was a little ditty called Wipe Out by the Surfaris. The song centered on a drum riff that my buddies and I would try endlessly to copy – we pounded on our notebooks, on lunch tables in the cafeteria, on the metal sides of our desks in class. I became fairly adept at it and decided that I was going to make my mark at Madison as the best drummer in the entire school.

The only problem was that the band teacher wouldn’t let me into the band.

He first made me take choir. Choir?? WTF?? Isn’t that where the Churchies hang out? I’m a Surfer, dammit, an aspiring drummer! I can play Wipe Out better than any Freshie in the whole school! When Mr. Robbins told me that I had to learn to read music first, I swallowed my pride and did my duty. The following semester I was rewarded with a promotion into the orchestra class. I was going to play the drums!

Not so fast little dude – we’re short a cello player, so – TA-DA! – I learned to play cello.

That series of events was one of the best things that ever happened to me. It taught me that there is no such thing as instant gratification. In order to construct a building that will stand the test of time, that will endure for centuries, the architect must first lay a solid foundation. There is learning, and study, and planning, and prep work, and practice. All of these things must be in place before we are ready to walk out into the bright lights that shine on the stage of success. There are no shortcuts - dues must be paid before we are to reap the rewards of our lives.


I finally achieved my goal. By my senior year I was All-State in UIL Stage Band in Texas, first chair drummer in stage band and marching band at Madison, and played in several rock bands. We were playing Chicago and Blood, Sweat, and Tears, and I was hooked on jazz-rock and brass. My little garage bands played Led Zepplin and Deep Purple and Trapeze and Wishbone Ash, and I was loving every minute of it.

Which brings me to the point of today’s installment.

As a musician, there are times when I discover music that catches me totally by surprise and blows me completely off my feet. It is an added benefit when I can relate to the artist on a personal level, when there is “something” there that grabs me by the short hairs and will not let go. This does not happen often these days, maybe once every five years or so, but it happened to me a few weeks back.

I was poking around on my daughter’s MySpace site and clicked on one of her buddies’ links. When his page loaded I heard the opening bars of a song that hooked me and wouldn’t let go. I wrote down the artist’s name, and a week later did a Google search to find out more.

Her name is Imogen Heap, a young British artist that spent a year composing a masterful work called Speak for Yourself. I went to her MySpace and listened to three clips from the album - Hide and Seek, Goodnight and Go (the song that hooked me initially), and Headlock. I was able to locate the only copy of her CD in my area at Fry’s, and I cannot stop listening to it. Every cut is wonderful, full of textured nuance and musical brilliance, composed and performed by one person, Imogen herself.

I suppose one the reasons I am so enthralled with Immy is her backstory. She has always been a “little odd” – not an outcast, but not in the Cool Crowd either. She found herself through her creative side, and expresses herself through her craft, traits that I identify with to this day.

Tired of the perception in the industry that she was “just the girl singer” for a band called Frou-Frou, she was determined to create her own music, independent of the big labels. Risky business, that – the roadside is littered with idealistic failed artists. She could not find anyone put up the money to create this album, so she did it herself by selling her flat in London to raise the capital to buy the equipment she needed to build a studio to perform and record her music.

The music speaks for itself – you will like it or you won’t. After all, that’s why they make chocolate and vanilla. But for me, I have connected with a kindred soul that speaks to me in so very many ways.

I am going to write to Immy and send her samples of my work, because I would like to produce a music video for her next album. That’s my goal, and I will make it happen.

Filmy