The Day My Motown Dream Came A Crashin' Down In FLAMES!
Tonight, a friend was taking about American Idol and these shows where you see auditions and the person is so tone deaf, it's unbelievable. The question is always asked, "Can't they hear themselves?" or "Whe doesn't their family tell them they can't sing?" Well, it brought back a memory of the time I tried to "audition" for Motown...and got royally shot down in huge, bright, embarrassing flames.
I was 13. I was well into my Motown fanaticism. I was going to be a singer and I was going to do it on Motown. One day after school [[where I had been involved in some very extreme Motown star daydreaming) I went directly to my room and got out my portable cassette recorder [[oh dear how naïve I was!) and decided the best way to demonstrate what a great singer I was to Motown was to sing some of Motown's biggest 60's hits. So there I was, playing all these records and singing right into the cassette recorder- YES, I was singing right over the records. Today, kids are so much smarter and savvy about things like this; I don't think there is a kid alive today who would be as clueless about making a demo as I was back then.
Well, I guess my brother could hear me singing my heart out in my room because he knocked on the door, walked in and looking at my setup, asked what on earth was I doing. When I told him I was making a demo tape to send to Motown, he just asked "WHAT?" I told him my plan to take Motown back to its 60's roots and he simply said, "You know you can't sing. Right?" I don't know if I was hurt or shocked or what but I really didn't believe what he had just told me. I just knew I had a voice that would sell records! I forget what I said to him, but whatever it was, he left shaking his head and I went right on singing.
Later, my mom repeated the very same thing my brother had done some minutes earlier. She asked what I was doing and then told me, "Honey, you know you can't sing. Right?" Shouldn't it have dawned on me that maybe they were right? Of course not. I was a Motown star in the making and they just didn't appreciate the special qualities of my "unique" vocal style. I swear, that is exactly what I thought of my singing and I even said as much in the letter I wrote to Motown to go along with the tape I was sending.
Right now, you're asking "well didn't you play the tape before you sent it?" Yes. I did. I still had my ears full of fantasy and so they only heard an exciting new star on the horizon. I'm shaking my head now at the memory. I bundled this great letter of introduction I wrote along with my demo tape and sent it to Motown, postmarked STARDOM!
I waited. I waited. And I waited. Did Motown get it? Were they so bowled over by my faithfulness to it's 60's Motown Sound that they were just trying to figure out the best way to launch me? I think about a week passed by without hearing anything and it was the most excruciating week at school [[if you don't count the week I had to keep dodging a bully's threats in junior high a couple years before.) My folks and brother would ask if I had heard anything from Motown but to their credit, they never said anything else about what they thought were my shortcomings as a singer.
Well, the day finally arrived! I returned home from school and my mother told me I has something in the mail. I was flying high for all of 3 seconds until I saw it was the package I had sent to Motown. I didn't understand until my mother showed me what was stamped on it: "UNSOLICITED MATERIAL NOT ACCEPTED" She explained that probably meant Motown only accepted things through an agent or some other official means. Well, I was heartbroken. HEARTBROKEN. I put the package on my desk and wouldn't even go near it for about a week or two. Nobody said anything about it, just went about as if I hadn't even attempted to become the next Motown Star. Looking back, it was much better that way because...
After maybe two weeks of moping, I opened the package and put the tape into my stereo system. I thought, might as well listen to what Motown missed out on and start making a Plan B to get this tape to them somehow. Um...what started coming out of the speakers wasn't what I had recorded. What IS this? That isn't my voice. This is Awful. This is Bad. This is Horrifying. This is...Me? I think I may have even prayed for the strength to not vomit. Now this was really confusing. My tape sounded so good when I was recording it. It sounded so good when I played it back. So who was this imposter on my cassette tape?
Suddenly, one of the things my brother and mother both tried to tell me came flooding back: You are 13 and your voice is changing. Listening to the tape, it was staggeringly clear my voice was rough, cracking and croaking and changing all over the place. Sometimes I'd manage to somehow hit two conflicting notes at the same time on one word. Not only that, the idea that Motown would be able to clearly hear my voice singing over their records was right on the mark- you could hear every last horrifying note I sang on that darn tape! Perhaps a little more volume on those records playing in the background would have helped by drowning me out!
Suddenly, I wasn't heartbroken or sad anymore. I wasn't even upset that my dreams had crashed down hard all over my head. I had escaped fatal embarrassment with Motown and possibly the entire recording industry! Imagine if Motown had made copies of this thing and used it for comedy relief at their conventions and meetings? I remember throwing the tape into the trash and going into the kitchen and asking what's for dinner? Crisis averted by homemade chocolate layer cake.
So when people talk about those bad audition videos and wonder if those people have anyone trying to tell them the truth, I tell them my story. Sometimes your ears really can become tone deaf when you're dreaming just a bit too hard.
