Average Jane Sings the Oldies

I'm not quite sure how this happened, but suddenly I'm learning a list of songs to sing with my husband's band at our upcoming party.

I was sitting at my desk on Sunday evening as the band discussed their song list. They haven't been together very long and the band could still use one or two more members, so they were trying to decide which songs were even possible. Someone brought up "Highway Star" by Deep Purple and I seem to remember saying, absent-mindedly, "I can sing that song."

After that, every time I'd come upstairs in the course of my office cleanup project, someone in the band would throw out another song title and say, "Can you sing that?"

Pretty soon I had a song each by the Who, Led Zeppelin, Yes, Rush and Lenny Kravitz.

In the "old days," learning a song used to mean puzzling out the lyrics one line at a time by endlessly rewinding and playing a cassette tape compiled from a mishmash of LPs and CDs. Now I can download the songs from iTunes for 99 cents each and print off the lyrics from the Internet, too. I love technology.

Really, the only songs I need to put any effort into learning are "The Real Me" by the Who and "The Ocean" by Led Zeppelin. The Yes song is "Roundabout," the Rush song is "Tom Sawyer" and the Lenny Kravitz song is "Are You Gonna Go My Way," so I know them inside and out already. Oh, and I guess "Highway Star" is still in the picture, so I'll have to print off some lyrics just to refresh my memory.

I'm really rather excited about getting to sing again, even if it's just for one party. The band practices and performs in a studio-type setup with headphone monitors, so the volume shouldn't be a problem for my fried-out left ear.

After all these years I've never actually played in a band with my husband, even though he set up our first date 12+ years ago on the pretext that he wanted to put a band together. He's a significantly better drummer than I am a vocalist, so I hope I can keep from shaming either one of us.

We're practicing Thursday, so I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Comments

[Huts]

Record it and put up MP3's!

[Jane]

Wow, that's a scary thought. I think we'd all regret that!

[dpulse]

You'll be fine, no worries of shaming anyone. Plus you'll have fun. mp3s are definitely a possibility.