CHAPTER IV: Its an Honor Just To Have Been Nominated
Part II
OK. I never learn. I should steer clear of contests of any kind. But
I couldnt resist this latest hare-brained scheme of mine to enter
a singing contest on a local New York talk radio show and bring home the
$2500 first prize. Piece of cake, I thought. But as I said, I never learn.
Well, maybe I learn, but I get really bad grades.
I started listening to talk radio in my car because lets
face it music has become unbearable. New music more or less sucks
and classic rock
lets just say, if I hear Layla
one more time I might go on a murderous rampage. I never liked the damn
song to begin with. The show Ive been listening to is called The
Radio Chick. Its your standard chat fest, but Im hooked
on it. The Radio Chick is an intelligent middle-aged Jewish woman who
has a sexy and soothing delivery. Her two co-jocks are both quick-witted
and have a good chemistry with the Chick.
So one day Im driving around and I hear them talking about a singing
contest theyre presenting based loosely on American Idol.
The twist is that their contest is called American Ex-Con.
To qualify you have to not only be able to sing a tune, you also have
to have been handcuffed, arrested and incarcerated. Unbelievably I qualify.
Yes, I am an ex-con. Technically speaking. My crime? Trying to rescue
a stray cat. Its a long story which I will write about in a separate
piece, but in short, I was placed in a cell already occupied by two rather
frightening gentlemen who asked what I was in for and then when told,
menacingly accused me of trying to kill the cat. It took me twenty minutes
to convince them that I was no cat killer, that I was simply trying to
save her and find her a nice home when things went completely amok with
the park police. I know what these kind of people do to child molesters
and I definitely didnt want to find out how they handled kitty slayers.
But back to the contest.
I heard a couple of the initial entries and figured Id be a shoe-in.
The next day I sent in a song I had recorded for my new album. Its
a straight-ahead blues entitled Twelve Bars and I Still Have The
Blues. A few days later I was driving around when the Radio Chick
played my song on the air. Now, you gotta remember that this is not a
music show, this is a make-fun-of-everything-and-anything provocative
talk format. These people are skilled professionals at being opinionated
wise-asses. If they sense any weakness in a caller or guest, they pounce
like your worst nightmare bullies in junior high the kind that
make a mockery of the old adage sticks and stones may break my bones.
So I start having second thoughts about the whole thing, but its
too late. My friggin song is blasting out of thousands of speakers
throughout the tri-state area, not to mention the worldwide web. Im
waiting for them to start mocking my effort with some facetious remarks
when the Radio Chick says You know me, Im a sucker for the
blues. Then her co-host chimes in well this guy can certainly
sing and finally the other co-host says I gotta say, I love
this. I almost run my car into a pole, Im so hyped. Most of
the other ex-cons didnt get off so easy. The three radio judges
ridiculed, criticized and laughed through many of the songs they played
for the contest. But thats their job. I was just grateful they spared
me the humiliation.
Cut to the end of the week I receive an e-mail telling me Im
being considered for one of the six finalists out of over sixty entries.
I didnt realize there were that many talented ex-jailbirds in hearing
distance of this particular radio station. But apparently there are
kind
of. I sweat it through the weekend, kept in suspense until 4:00 Monday
when they announce the six who made it into the finals. They say the first
four names and I begin to wonder if maybe they had changed their minds.
Maybe I sounded too slick or something. Possibly Im too pro
this is supposed to be for laughs after all. When suddenly I hear
the fifth finalist is Xavier. Oh, I forgot to mention , I
decided to go under the partial alias of Xavier. X.
is my middle name after all and I didnt want anyone to know about
this
I was doing this strictly for the $2500, which could come in
handy paying off the cost of mixing the new album. So Im in. I call
Nancy and I have to admit Im excited. Im ecstatic, actually.
People who didnt know me from Adam heard me sing and thought I was
better than the rest of the rotten bunch. I felt good.
My question at this juncture is what song should I sing to clinch this
thing. I know Ill do something by Stevie Winwood. Dear
Mr. Fantasy or Gimme Some Lovin. Upon my arrival
home, I immediately pick up my acoustic guitar and start scheming. Im
confident Im going to win. These songs suit my upper register and
people have commented in the past how much I sound like Mr. Winwood when
I do his material. Im champin at the bit. Let me sing for
the Radio Chick!
Then a second e-mail comes in. This is what I feared. It says, do not
bring any instruments with you. You will be required to sing a duet with
one of the other five finalists a cappella. You will be assigned your
song at the station on the day of the contest. It will be one of these:
I Got You Babe (Sonny & Cher)
Enough Is Enough (Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer)
Dont Go Breakin My Heart (Elton John and Kiki Dee)
Ebony and Ivory (Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder)
It Takes Two (Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston)
A Little Bit Country, A Little Bit RocknRoll (Donny and Marie
Osmond)
I see the $2500 going up in flames and the ashes raining down. I make
a snap decision to back out of this farce at all costs. But then I have
a vision of them tearing me apart verbally on the show for being a thin-skinned
wimped-out spoil sport. They might even get hold of my real name and turn
me into the laughing stock poster boy for the sore loser of the week.
Or something equally horrible. OK, heres what Im going to
do. Im gonna go through with this but on my terms. The only song
here on which I can retain any shred of proficiency, not to mention dignity,
is It Takes Two. I can even sing Kim Westons part. I
dont care. Just dont make me sing one of those other creepy
songs. I mean, I love the Beatles and Stevie Wonder is a genius, but come
on, Ebony and Ivory is a piece of crap. Hated it when it was
a hit, hate it even more now. Some things improve with age, most things
dont, and Ebony and Ivory is even more cloyingly annoying
and sappy in the new millennium. The metaphor isnt even correct.
Any musician will tell you that the black key on the piano next to a white
key produces a half step interval which is a dissonance. Metaphorically,
Seinfeld had it better with the black and white cookie when describing
racial harmony. And thats the second best choice I have. The rest
of the selections are so dismal at least as far as me trying to sing them
that I begin to regret ever listening to this Radio Chick. It also occurs
to me that there is only one female finalist. What are they going to do,
make her sing the girl part on all these duets?
I practice It Takes Two over and over. Sometimes Nancy sings
the female part and I concentrate on the Marvin Gaye sections, or I just
sing both sides of the duet so I can be ready for anything. Im sticking
to my guns; Im only learning this one duet. Heres the other
thing I forgot to mention in the second e-mail, they informed the
finalists that one of the three duet couples will be eliminated. Boom,
done, get outa here, you lost, its over. The both of ya scram.
So Ive gotta get past this part of the competition. And damn it,
I will. As a matter of fact, Im doing a pretty good Marvin Gaye
as interpreted by a skinny white Jew, of course. But not bad. And my Kim
Weston well, lets just say I may need to wear some tight
jockey shorts to nail the high notes. But I can do it. As Sammy used to
say between knee-slapping fits of hysteria, Yes I Can! My plan, if they
insist I do one of the other lame choices, is the Robert Kennedy
Robert McNamara Cuban Missile Crisis theory. Nikita Kruschev sent two
notes to JFK. The first said he would back down and not send the nuclear
missiles. The second one was more aggressive and threatening. RFK said,
lets just pretend we never got the second one and respond to the
first. Which is what they did, saving the world from a nuclear holocaust.
Thats what Im going to do. Ignore the second e-mail. Ill
just say I never got it, the only one of these duets I even remotely know
is It Takes Two. Once Ive made it past the a cappella
duet with one of the other criminals, then Ill bring it all home
with a solo vocal sung to a karaoke track. Again, the choices are from
a list in the second e-mail. But Im in luck. Good Lovin
by The Rascals is one of the selections. Thats a song I can sink
my teeth as well as my vocal cords into. Like Eddie G. said in Double
Indemnity, everything is fitting together. Like a watch.
The day of the show, I carefully pick out my wardrobe; even though I
know this is radio, I want to look slick for the Chick. I choose a paisley
shirt and black pants just flash enough without looking like Im
trying too hard, and anxiously take the subway into midtown Manhattan
to the skyscraper where Ill claim my victory and seek my destiny.
The security is tight; we are ex-cons after all. Im patted down
and have a metal detector wand waved around my groin. It starts beeping,
but its only my metallic subway fare card tucked into my pants pocket
and not a gun or some kind of aluminum phallic enhancer a la Spinal Tap.
So I am let in to the radio station.
A security guard ushers me into the green room (the waiting room, for
you laymen) where I meet the other five contestants. Not a bad looking
group for a bunch of felons. Well, thats not exactly true
their crimes ranged from jay-walking to driving with an expired registration
to one guy who jumped out onto the field at Yankee Stadium disrupting
a game. The most egregious crime was that of a six foot five Southerner
who got caught masturbating in his car. I fit right in with these hardened
thugs.
A producer from the show comes in and begins assigning us our duet songs.
Before he starts, he tells us that one of the finalists dropped out of
the contest. The producer did not have nice things to say about this upstart
who had the audacity to challenge the wisdom of the radio elite. Inside,
Im thinking that dude is my hero. He did what I should have done
gotten the hell out of this godforsaken contest. He told the station
I want to sing my own songs or I dont sing at all. The
producer went to great lengths to pin this prima donna down as the biggest
jerk this side of Hoboken, even though he said he was perfectly polite
in his stance. He was promptly replaced by a runner up.
The first duet goes to two of the guys; they get I Got You Babe
which is not exactly a singers showcase. I laugh to myself, suckers,
Ill buy you a drink with part of my $2500 winnings. The next duet,
Dont Go Breaking My Heart, goes to a guy and the one
female finalist. This girl is ridiculously cute. Im talkin
five foot two eyes of
I didnt notice the color of her eyes;
I was too busy eyeing her perfect bod. Twenty-two years old and
well,
if this were TV shed win even if she couldnt carry a tune.
So Im anxiously waiting for our duet. Our meaning me
and the big country masturbator. Hes the only one left besides me.
I start chanting It Takes Two, It Takes Two over and over
in my head to induce the idea by osmosis into the producers brain.
Then I begin to pray. Please dear lord, Ill be good. Ill
do anything you want. Ill be kind to strangers. Ill even stop
surfing for porn. Whatever, just grant me this one wish. It Takes
Two by Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston. Im begging you.
The producer looks at me and the big guy and says Xavier and Mark,
you two will be doing
(please God!)
As his
mouth forms the words Ebony and Ivory I scream silently to
myself, nooooooooooooooo!. I muster up the courage and very diplomatically
and soft-spokenly ask ah, sir, would it be possible if we did It
Takes Two instead? No, Im sorry, these are the
songs weve chosen. I try one last attempt. How about
Mark does Ebony and Ivory by himself and I do It Takes
Two? I point out that I can sing both parts quite handily.
But now hes adamant. I slowly sink down onto the couch and watch
my contestant life flash before me. Im slithering down into the
deepest regions of hell where one has to listen to songs like Ebony
and Ivory for the rest of eternity. In my shocked state I hear my
partner Mark say with a southern drawl I dont even know It
Takes Two, never heard it. I now know what it must have felt
like for a prisoner on death row in Texas while Dubya was governor. Doomed
fait accompli might as well be measuring out the coffin
because my ass is fried. Over the years Ive managed to tune out
as I best I could music that I dont like. But back in the day a
song like Ebony and Ivory was hard to avoid and snuck in a
few times, enough to know it when I heard it. But thats it. I dont
really know it. And I dont want to know it. Could you imagine the
uproar if I back out now? The producer just trashed the guy whod
wisely quit in advance. I can only think of what the Radio Chick and company
are going to do to that poor shmuck on the air.
With my best poker face (which isnt very convincing) I tell my
singing partner Mark that I sort of know Ebony and Ivory and
well be just fine. OK, where do we rehearse, I ask the producer.
Rehearse? Oh, ah, I dont know, I guess right here. In
the green room. The room is only 12 x 12 foot square and there are six
of us doing three different songs. Sorry thats all weve
got. I didnt think I could feel much worse, but conjure up
this bit of auditory cacophony. I Got You, Babe, Dont
Go Breakin My Heart and the wonderful Ebony and Ivory,
all being sung at once in a small room, again and again, by six nervous
misters and misdemeanors who just met. On top of all my other misgivings,
I have a cough that started up due to allergies, so I brought along my
prescription cough syrup. I didnt bring a spoon because I figured
there would be metal detectors (this is New York), and I didnt want
to pull out my spoon and have someone shoot me thinking it was a knife
or at best an accoutrement for shooting heroin.
After fifteen minutes of this torture, were led into the studio.
Radio is a mystical medium. Because there is no visual, you are forced
to try to see what you hear. I had a certain vision of the Radio Chick
and her two co-hosts. Im pleasantly surprised to find that they
look pretty much as I suspected. The Chick was attractive and sexy, one
co-host was a good looking black man and the other had a shaved head and
a pleasant face. Im as star struck as the next person and Im
excited to be in the same room with these voices Ive been hearing
over my car radio for the past several months. Each of the contestants
was asked a few humorous questions. when it was my turn, the bald co-host
said he wasnt sure he believed anything I said because I had a smirk
on my face. When I mentioned that my crime was attempting to rescue a
stray cat, the Chicks sidekick Chuck came back without missing a
beat, why were you trying to rescue Brian Setzer from a city park?
Out of pure nerves I swigged down way more than the prescribed dose of
cough syrup, and before too long I was in a codeine stupor accompanied
by severe nausea and dizziness.
So the contest is underway. First up, the I Got You, Babe
contingent. They range from passable to dont-give-up-your-day-jobs.
I think even Mark and me massacring the already insufferable Ebony
and Ivory are going to beat these guys out. Next were served
up the delightful Dont Go Breaking My Heart with the
attractive female finalist. Not godawful by any means, but not god-good
either. Here we go. Mark is so tall that I grab a stool as a joke and
make the motion like Im going to stand on it to get up to eye level,
which gets a few chuckles. During our so-called rehearsal, I snapped my
fingers on the backbeat to create a groove and more importantly to keep
us together. We worked out that big Mark would sing the opening chorus.
I would sing the first half of the verse, then he would do the second
half, and then wed sing the second chorus together in harmony.
Unfortunately, they gave us hand mics, so while my left hand is holding
the mic, my right is clutching the lyric sheet. I try snapping my fingers
but realize its impossible to make any sound with a piece of paper
in your hand; try it some time. In all fairness Mark has a decent voice,
with a nice country twang and good pitch, especially for an auto-masturbator.
He starts the song a little lower than we rehearsed it but sounds strong.
I start the verse, we all know, that people are the same, blah blah
blah which is too low for my voice and admittedly wobble. Suddenly
Mark, of his own accord, begins singing along with me which throws me
off we go into a tailspin and were going down. When its
over the Radio Chick says Xavier, do you get nervous when you sing?
You sounded a little shaky. All I could muster in my mortification
was the word always. I dont know what I meant by that.
All I knew was there was no $2500 check to sign that day in my future.
They tell us to go back to the green room so they can decide which pair
is out of the contest. I already know. I take my coat with me and seriously
consider making a beeline toward the elevator and down to the street.
But I think about the consequences. Mr. Heyman, Mr. Richard X. Heyman,
that is your real name, isnt it? You can run but you cant
hide. I keep my winter coat on hand and decide to leave after they humiliate
me and Mark in the next segment. I bow my head in prayer please
let it be the I Got You Babe twosome; I dont care if
I win, just dont make me one of the first to go. But sure enough,
the Radio Chick says there was one duet that was shakier than the
rest. Mark and Xavier, you are out. I guess Im not a good
loser because even though in my heart I knew we sucked or at least I sucked
on that song, we were really no worse than the other duets. I was now
livid, pissed off at the whole world, sullen, miserable and completely
sick to my stomach, mainly from the overdose of codeine. I have to keep
reminding myself this is not a big deal so you made a fool of yourself
in earshot of tens of thousands of listeners. Its not a music show,
its a comedy show, but its not working. I may not be a household
name, but Im pretty certain Im the most critically acclaimed
unknown singer songwriter in the country, maybe even the world
certainly in the room. If you dont believe me, just go to my website
and read the reviews. My own family doesnt even like me as much
as some of these reviewers. I sure dont think Im as good as
some of these writers gush, but now is not the time for the humble bit.
False modesty aside, Im a solid rocknroll singer and
my fellow loser, masturbating Mark is a good old country singer. Frankly,
we were the two best singers in the room but were axed because of that
stupid song and the dumb rules they came up with.
I am about to leave as the segment ends before a commercial break, when
one of the co-hosts says Xavier, you dont have to leave. You
can stay in here; you and Mark already lost so it doesnt matter
which makes me feel ten times worse than I already did So I have to sit
there and listen to the four remaining contestants sing their solo songs.
My mind is steaming. Just let me do Good Lovin and Ill
wipe the floor with these posers. But that aint gonna happen. One
by one, they karaoke their way through a variety of tunes and then are
asked to leave the room so the three judges can eliminate the next two.
I feel about as low as Bushs approval ratings and dont even
have the strength to say no, Im going home; I sit down
on the couch with Mark while they decide on the next two losers.
Two of the guys get cut and it comes down to the guy who ran down on
the field at Yankee Stadium and the cute twenty-two year old girl. They
each get to sing another song. Baseball Crasher tackles I Got You
(I Feel Good) by James Brown and I have to admit he does about as
good a job as any white guy trying to do JB. The young lady takes a gamble
and does Creams Sunshine of Your Love. Theyre
both singing to karaoke tracks and it is obvious that the song is in too
low of a key for her. It was originally sung by a couple of men after
all. She soldiers through, jumps up an octave at the end for a last ditch
strong finish and then the voting begins.
The outcome is to be decided by the listeners who can either call in
or vote via e-mail. People are calling in, commenting positively or negatively
about the two finalists performances and several callers comment
about the other contestants. Not one mentions Xavier. Instinctively my
masochism kicks in and I sit there debating if its better to be
totally insignificant and ignored or to be laughed at as the butt of someones
cruel joke. At this moment Im leaning toward the latter before I
fade into oblivion like the guy at the end of The Incredible Shrinking
Man.
Its a close race reminiscent of the Bush/Gore election but after
all the votes are counted, the cute girl walks away with the first prize.
What a surprise. We runners-up each get a t-shirt with the name of the
station on it.
Were each asked for a final comment about the two finalists. If
my mind was even half working and I wasnt jacked up on codeine and
ready to puke, I might have said something mildly amusing like If
I were that infield crasher runner-up Id ask to have all the hanging
chads re-counted but all I can do is utter in a voice that couldnt
conceal my disdain and disappointment they were both excellent.
To which the three radio personalities all go ooooh, which
translates to what a thin-skinned spoil sport and the show
mercifully comes to an end. I shake hands with the Chick and company,
ride the elevator to the lobby, out the revolving door and promptly puke
all over West 53rd Street.
Through the ages, sages have passed down bits of wisdom such as dont
spit into the wind for it will surely return to its source meaning
you, the spitter. Well let me add to that, if possible never puke outside
on a blustery winter day. As chunks of vomit cascaded toward Mother Earth,
a gust of wind redirected them back onto my shoes and pants. Fortunately,
I had the perfect item with which to wipe off my regurgitated breakfast
the 92.3 Free-FM WFNY t-shirt. God works in strange ways.
I once played drums for a moderately well known rock singer/guitarist
who turned out to be such a jerk in person that I can no longer listen
to his music that I once enjoyed. The Radio Chick and her cohorts were
not in any way nasty or out of line in their conduct. I gave a shoddy
performance on the song I was forced to do, but the whole experience has
soured my desire to ever hear the show again, which is a shame because
unfortunately my only alternative is
what do you do when you
get lonely/and nobodys waitin by your side
Lay-laaaaa!
Oy. Look out!
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