When I was thirteen, I saw the movie Palm Springs Weekend, which was one of those inane Frankie and Annette movies but with Troy Donahue and Connie Stevens. They made it in 1963, the year before I was born, but I was watching this around 1977. Sure, there were cute women dancing in bikinis, but what stole my heart was a ukulele.
Jerry Van Dyke is in the movie as a sidekick and for comedy relief. While “the gang” took the bus from Los Angeles to Palm Springs, he sang a silly song and accompanied himself on the ukulele. It was amazing.
Oh, to be able to strum those strings and sing a silly song. That’s what I wanted my life to be.
With $20 I got for my birthday, I bought a ukulele from the music shop on the corner. The uke came with a sheet of paper explaining how to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, a far-cry from the song Jerry Van Dyke played, but I plucked away.
Soon, I realized I was not the sort of musical prodigy who could teach himself how to play a musical instrument. I didn’t even know how to tune it, so the plucking was painful. I practiced alone in the bedroom I shared with my brothers, and only when no one could hear me. I lived in terror at how my brothers would mock me.
One day, my oldest brother took the ukulele to a party, and it ended up broken. Details were not offered, but I assume it was like how John Belushi destroyed the guitar in the movie Animal House, which, coincidentally, had come out that summer.
My brother left for college, I discovered his collection of Playboy magazines, and I put my music career on a hold while I masturbated.
Clarinet and Sexy Saxophone
My other attempt at music, playing clarinet, followed a similar path of delusory stops and starts. But instead of my brother destroying the instrument, I basically destroyed it myself. I never really wanted to play clarinet. My father chose it.
When it came time to pay for clarinet lessons, my father mumbled something about teaching me himself, but that never happened.
I became so inept at clarinet that the conductor moved me to tenor saxophone. The fingering was different so, soon, I found myself in the marching band carrying a tenor saxophone—without a reed—pretending to play. Rather than hiding in my bedroom, I was now parading before an audience as a fake musician.
Finally, I quit the charade.
Lessons are my Achilles Heel
About twenty-five years later, I inherited my father’s accordion and decided I would learn to play. With age comes wisdom (if you’re lucky, and not an arrogant a-hole) and I arranged lessons.
The accordion must be one of the most difficult instruments to play well, right up there with trombone and kazoo (I know it seems easy to play a kazoo, but have you ever heard it played well?).
The first year of accordion lessons culminated in a recital at which I played—wait for it—Hot Cross Buns.
The second year, hoping to honor the memory of my father, I worked with my teacher on learning to play Spanish Eyes. It’s a beautiful song that my father played expertly and with passion. The sound of his playing still echoes in my mind, and that’s what I wanted to accomplish, finally proving to myself and the world that I could play an instrument.
No more would I be the pubescent boy consoling himself over the lost ukulele by jerking it in the bedroom.
Accordion Recital
I was the oldest student at the recital by three decades. It was me (a forty-year-old man on the accordion) and a bunch of kids playing piano. When my turn came, the tension built as I arranged my music stand, placed a chair on the center of the stage, and hefted the 120-button accordion out of its case. It weighed about forty pounds, and it heaved a heavy sigh as I settled onto the chair and adjusted the straps.
I was nervous. The audience was packed with children, parents and grandparents, all of them staring at this grown-ass man about to do something no one else dared do. My family sat in the front row, video camera rolling to capture this moment for all eternity.
I played the opening notes a little quickly, but soon gained some composure. The trick with the accordion is that the right hand plays the melody while the left hand plays both rhythm and harmony on the 120 buttons. The music is laid out in two staves; the melody is written with the treble clef signature while the harmony is written below it in the bass clef signature. Because you hold the accordion in your lap, you can’t even glance at the keys and buttons. You play by feel.
Your brain interprets two different note encodings. Your hands pull and squeeze the bellows. Your fingers do two very different things (keys and buttons) at the same time. All of this goes on simultaneously.
The Big Finish
Half-way through the song, I missed a note, my brain panicked, and everything screeched to a halt with a labored groan from the accordion.
For a minute, I stared at the music, unable to understand what I was looking at. My hands felt like clumps of meat. Sweat rolled down my forehead and dripped onto the accordion.
Out in the audience, no one made a single sound.
It seemed like an eternity had gone by, but I took a breath, made a few awkward attempts to find my place, and, haltingly, continued the song. Mercifully, I finished. I won’t call it a money shot, but I could at least get off the stage.
Like the actors in the Snickers commercials, I just wanted to get away.
Music For the Rest of My Life
I quit the accordion after that recital. The lessons had almost worked but, I realized, my heart wasn’t in it. Like the clarinet, the accordion was something my father chose. It was his thing, not mine.
It’s an amazing instrument, but it’s not my love.
A couple of weeks later, I went to a music store and bought a ukulele. I’ve bought several more (an affliction common to ukulele players) and have taken lessons now for over fifteen years.
I’m still not as good as Jerry Van Dyke playing that little ditty in Palm Springs Weekend, but I’m having fun. I love the music, and it makes me happy.
It’s kind of like masturbating. I’m playing with myself for pleasure, but instead of a mess, I’m making music.
Meanwhile, at My Writing Desk…
At the risk of whining, the rest of this month has been crazy busy. After the trips to Cleveland and Chicago, we had a house guest for ten days. Then an engine blew in the car. Then a storm hit last week and knocked down trees. Now I’m on a trip to visit family in Pennsylvania and I’ve had lots of excuses not to write.
Despite that, I’ve started back working on the novel. It’s fun. I’m so glad to be writing.
Upcoming Books and Stuff
I’ll be coming out with a story soon, and one of my humor pieces was and will be published in a week or two.
So that’s cool.
Next Picayune
In a couple of weeks, I promise I’ll have one or two fun things to share.
Thanks for reading the Mickey Picayune.
All the best,
Mickey