Music Lessons

Music was a big part of our lives.  My father played the guitar and had a beautiful deep singing voice. My mother was an elementary school music teacher for the Burbank School District and played the piano, Autoharp and guitar.

My parents loved to sing. And in harmony. Every Sunday at church they would harmonize the Doxology and whatever hymns were on the menu for that day.  My sister and I would cringe and slink down into the pew in embarrassment.

When I was about 10 years old, my mother conned me into taking piano lessons.  She assured me that this skill would make me popular at parties later in my life. I think she’d seen too many Bing Crosby movies and certainly couldn’t predict that by the time I was old enough to attend parties, playing the piano would not be able to compete with The Doors, The Stones and The Beatles.

She would come home from teaching all day, pick me up and drive me to Glendale. Like the swimming lessons, she would sit waiting for me to finish the lesson, inevitably hearing me being told that I needed to practice more.  Then she would drive home and make dinner. 

When I was in the sixth grade, it was announced at school that we were going to have an orchestra.  Mrs. Cobb would come weekly to teach us how to play a variety of instruments.  To be in the orchestra was a no-brainer.  The choice of instrument was a little more difficult.  I wanted to learn the trumpet.  My mother insisted that the noise would bother the neighbors and that the trumpet was a boy’s instrument.  We settled on the flute.  Later, as I walked home with my neat little case watching the saxophone and tuba players struggling, I realized the flute was okay.

I can still remember the smell of the Artley silver flute with its padded stops. I enjoyed twisting it to tune and polishing it with a purple felt cloth. I also liked that in the music we played, the flute parts were pretty much the main tune, not like the parts for the triangle.

During rehearsals, I was appalled by the other wind instrument players who had to vent their spit valves onto the wooden floor of the auditorium.  By the end of the session, little pools of saliva surrounded them. The flute was looking better and better.

When I graduated from Ivanhoe Elementary School Mrs. Cobb left my life. My mother hired a flute instructor, who like all music teachers seemed to, lived in Glendale.

By this time, the lure of a Dunkin Imperial yo-yo or the promise of popularity was not enough to keep me interested in playing the piano. I did it out of guilt to please my mother.  On the occasions when she would sit on the bench next to me I remember staring at her hands and their boniness and feeling even more guilt. In spite of the fact that my sister had now been roped into the lessons and the teacher moved a mere block from our house, I was desperate to quit.

 Frankly, I only remember two things about those lessons—other than the horrors and stress of the recitals.

One day I arrived a bit early for my lesson and Mrs. Gwendolyn Brain Lund was busy in the next room with a student.  She had a waiting room set up just like a dentist’s or doctors with magazines.  Except the magazines weren’t boring.  She had LIFE.  On that day I opened the large magazine and found an article about sharks.  There was a very realistic underwater picture looking up at a man floating on an inflatable raft with his feet dangling in the water.  Below him a variety of sharks were circling.  I had an inflatable beach raft.  One side was blue and one was red.  After that I always surfed with the red side up in case a shark might think it was blood.

The other thing I remember was my very last day of lessons. My mother came in and asked me to wait outside. I heard her tell Mrs. GBL that I would no longer be her student.  Without missing a beat, Mrs. Lund told my mother that that was just as well because I had horrible hands.

Now free of the piano, I was bitten by a new musical bug. The British had invaded and every rock and roll group had guitars.  Every group I listened to on my clock radio had guitars…and drums.  I would have preferred to play the drums but I figured if the trumpet was too noisy for the neighbors, drums would definitely be out. So, I was allowed to quit the flute (and I think my mother was secretly relieved that she didn’t have to drive me to Glendale once a week) on the condition that I would learn to play the guitar.

The teacher was Russian and named Serge—pronounced Ser-gay. And he didn’t live in Glendale. I was allowed to use my mother’s guitar for the lessons.

Things went along quite nicely.  I could strum a few tunes, enough so that my best friend would come over and sing with me.  We fantasized that one of the cars driving up Angus Street would hear us, stop in wonderment and present us with a contract. I think we actually believed it a bit.

Then the day came that the seventh grade class of Thomas Starr King Jr. High announced that they were having a talent show. My friend and I signed up.  We practiced the song over and over while sitting on my twin bed.  On the day of the performance, we walked out onto the large stage of the auditorium.  I started playing the introduction and then we both began to sing. I suddenly forgot the chords and stopped.  My friend forgot the lyrics.  We walked off the stage in shame.  I never played that guitar again and Serge lost a student.  The hit of the talent show was John Friesen on the drums playing “Wipeout.”  He went on to be in the 1970’s band Player that had a hit with the song “Baby Come Back.”  The last time I heard it was on a Swiffer commercial..