[My Stories] For Want of a Capo

Before my senior year of high school, I discovered that I'd already taken almost all of the "college prep" classes the school had to offer, so I had to fill the space with three electives. For the first two, I signed up for Electronics and "I R & D", which was the most advanced "shop" class. I was invited to take it by my Drafting teacher from the previous year, who taught both. (Drawings of machine parts! In pencil! On paper! *There's* a future-proof career path!)

Each kid in I R & D got to do a Project, but since all the other kids had come up the official way through the actual Shop classes, they were classic "shop kids" -- they could weld and saw, but they couldn't actually think so good. I ended up doing the design and plans for everybody else's projects -- which I suspect was the teacher's plan all along -- and never getting to one of my own.

Anyway, for my third elective, my girlfriend talked me into taking Choir, and my "next year" schedule was all settled at the beginning of summer. By the end of summer, she wasn't my girlfriend anymore, but a bunch of other girls in Choir wanted me to try out for "Mariners", the school's 12-kid pop group. What they call nowadays a "show choir" -- smiley happy kids singing pop tunes while doing choreography. Like "Up With People" or Disney's "Kids of the Kingdom".

My brother had been a Mariner two years before, but I hadn't paid much attention -- not my kind of thing. Still, the pressure of all these girls wanting me to join up worked, so I tried out, and got in (not actually too impressive a feat, since they need six guys and only about eight tried out).

I had to drop Electronics to fit the Mariner class in, which in retrospect, considering my eventual adult career, seems like a mistake, but I had the time of my life and don't regret it at all. It taught me a lot about really singing and performing, and incidentally got me started me playing guitar. Changed my life.

A couple of years after I graduated, the director/teacher of the Mariners decided to make a go of constructing a "professional" group. He recruited all the best of the previous few years' worth of kids, and I auditioned, but didn't make the cut as a singer/dancer. But by that time I was a (barely serviceable) bass player, and this group was to have an actual backing band, not just a piano player, so I got in that way.

They found a drummer and my best friend Bob was brought in to play guitar, and we were up and running. We learned a bunch of songs, and might have even played a few gigs, though I don't remember any. Nor getting paid, ever...

The director decided to do an actual Concert, and rented the Long Beach Elks dome. We sold tickets to our friends and relatives, and almost nobody else. But it was exciting nonetheless.

It was decided that "the band" would get to do a song -- probably just to fill some time. Bobby and I chose James Taylor's "Hey Mister, That's Me Up On the Jukebox", with me singing. To put the song in the proper key to make it singable, Bobby would use a capo -- the clamp that makes the guitar neck effectively shorter, and therefore pitched higher -- the same as how James plays it. But bass players don't use capos, they just learn the song in the key that the capoed guitar now sounds like.

We practiced the song until I was presumably ready to do it in public for the concert. We got to the Elks Dome and set up on the huge stage under the spotlights. Our amplifiers were at the back of the stage and Bobby and I stood by them while the 12 main performers sang and danced out front.

When it came time for our song, the kids cleared out, and Bobby and I walked out to the front of the stage and up to the microphone standing there, dragging long cables behind us. I was nervous, obviously. I looked over at Bobby to see if he was ready, and he said those four fateful words, "I forgot my capo."

Time stopped. The implication was clear -- without his capo, we'd be playing in two different keys. I had two choices: sing it with only guitar, or only bass. Only bass would be in the right key, but sound lame -- obviously, singing with only guitar is more "complete". So, that choice made, I further decided it would look dumb for me to stand there holding my bass but not playing it, so I walked the half-mile back to the amplifiers, put the bass on its stand, and walked the now three miles back to the mic at the front of the stage.

Bobby started the song, and I sang it -- a little low sans-capo, but not out of range. One best-kept secret about playing guitar (or bass) is that, secondarily only to its use as a musical accompaniment, it also serves as Something To Do With Your Hands, and just as importantly, as a psychological shield between you and the audience. Without my bass I was naked -- nothing to do with my hands, and nothing between Me and Them. Multiply the stage anxiety by ten.

But I got through it. People say I did good, but how much can you believe your relatives in this regard? I wouldn't know -- I was in shock.

But the kicker was, when we finished the song and walked back to our places by the amplifiers, there was Bobby's capo, sitting on his amplifier. Sitting. On. His. Amplifier. By "forgot", he meant, "left it back there on the amp". Within arm's reach of, say, my bass stand. Instead of me walking back and forth to put down the bass and being left to sing the song without it, he could have walked back there and gotten the capo. And yet, somehow, he remains unmurdered.

If I recall correctly (though I'm pretty sure I don't), that was the last gasp of the professional song-and-dance group, though probably *not* really due to our little capo fiasco that I'm sure the audience barely noticed. But it did prove to be a somewhat inauspicious start to my solo singing career -- though that would be on hold for 25 years to let me get good enough on guitar to not be reliant on someone else's capo...