Excerpt from "Petal Pusher" by Laurie Lindeen

From Chapter 6 in Petal Pusher, “My Musical Resume, or I Sang Alto in the Choir and Other Confessions” * in this chapter, I attempt to justify to the reader my need to start and play in an all-women rock band in the late 1980s instead of finding a “real job.”

How does a music lover transform into an actual music maker? What are my qualifications? I can earmark a series of revelatory moments in my life that explain my passion and will aid in (my new band that lacks experience) Zuzu’s Petals progress. God, I hope so:

This is a snapshot, an old faded Kodak color print that I’ve carried around from apartment to apartment. It’s a picture of me in kindergarten in Peoria, Illinois, sitting on my bed with the white wrought-iron headboard. In it I’m wearing a flowered quilted robe that matches my bedspread. My hair is fashioned into a pixie just like the English supermodel Twiggy’s. I’m clutching my favorite record, More of the Monkees. I listened to that album incessantly, thinking that their lead singer Davy Jones might “forget that girl” and find the kindergarten siren of his dreams. I look like a five-year-old mod with dark circles under her eyes.

In first grade we moved away from extended family in central Illinois to Madison, Wisconsin. The Larson twins were my first Madison friends. They were dominatrixes in cat-eye glasses; I gave in to their orders without hesitation because there were two of them, and being the oldest child in my family, I had never been bossed around. At first their demands were wholesome, gymnastics and figure skating that I joined with them; they were gifted natural athletes and I always made them look good. Things evolved as their tastes matured; I was forced to steal my mom’s cigarettes and make prank phone calls for their smoking and listening pleasure. The Larson twins had a rarely speaking older brother two years our senior who had an electric guitar and amp in his bedroom. The summer before middle school, their brother joined a band called Lucifer, and they played this incredibly crotch-tingling song that ended with the words “wham, bam, thank you, ma’am.” I was moved beyond words.

When I was in fourth grade my parents hired a babysitter to take me to (the 1970’s teen heartthrob) David Cassidy’s concert. Once my eyes and imagination feasted on (ABC’s Friday night TV show) The Partridge Family, David replaced my Davy Jones, Bobby Sherman, and Donny Osmond posters on my closet door quickly and completely. When I got to his rescheduled concert (he canceled for emergency gall bladder surgery, and I had to wait half a year), ten thousand other girls knew all of the words to his songs. And even more threatening, some of the girls were teenagers with breasts. David didn’t belong to me at all. I felt betrayed. Bitter. All of that energy invested into nothing. I knew it wasn’t going to be a private concert in my logical mind, but I guess I thought I’d meet him and he’d somehow know me. That’s the deal with pop stars; you’re expected to share them with the masses. I hated the idea.

…

…I discovered Elvis in sixth grade. The CBS Friday night late movie, when not airing scary movies like Village of the Damned, showed Elvis movies. My favorites were Girl Happy and Blue Hawaii, movies where Elvis was young and unpuffy and his female costars (Shelley Fabares) weren’t threatening with their sexual energy (Nancy Sinatra, Ann-Margret). There were a lot of beach parties with spontaneous dance numbers and vacationing unescorted teens ready for a song at the drop of a beach ball, and life was simple. I ordered a Best of Elvis two-record set off the TV without parental consent. The albums arrived COD, and my mom paid for them, but I got in trouble – probably grounded. I didn’t care; I could listen to my Elvis records in my room uninterrupted.

I sang in the choir every day for four years in high school. When you practice something every day for an hour, you can’t help but learn and improve. To be allowed to open my mouth wide and let out a song every morning probably spared me from what so many call the Hell of High School. I had a daily release, a vocal venting, a melodic scream therapy. At the end of second period I felt cleansed.

I was a second alto, the lowest female voice in the concert choir and the a cappella choir. I stood in the front row, left of center. At Lafollette High School, the choirs were great. They were invited to Europe to sing in cathedrals. We sang madrigals, pop songs, musical scores, and classical choral arrangements, everything from the Beatles to Bach. In madrigal we sang a fifteenth-century ditty with the lyrics, “I sit, I sigh, I weep, I faint, I die: In deadly pain and endless misery.” We learned that when you express sadness and hopelessness in a song, it is released….