Back in high school, I was not only a band geek, but a choir geek as well!  But I did far more than just sing your standard choral music .  I loved composing, arranging and teaching, and often performing short songs in vocal quartets, and I founded my very own singing telegram business (“The Birthday Brigade”) to support this habit.

For $3, students could hire us to sing a special birthday song to one of the friends—in class, no less!  We even had teachers and administrators hiring us to sing for other non-students.  And by the end of our two year run, we earned enough money to purchase a sizable first-ever music CD collection for our school library (and back in the 80s, this was a big deal!).  Oh, and we also sang the national anthem at various school sporting events; one of the trios even got to sing at Dodger Stadium!

Anyway, in the middle of our second year, we decided to sit down at my place and record a bunch of our songs.  We didn’t do many takes, we didn’t use a fancy studio (just my dad’s old tape recorder!), and the results were certainly not perfect, but I think we did manage to capture a lot of the fun and also show off our love-of-singing .

And alas, the “album” below (from 1989!) is missing some of my favorites, including “Mr. Roger’s [Neighborhood] Birthday” and “A Muppet Birthday” and no doubt others I’ve forgotten about.  But I hope you enjoy the songs nonetheless. [and feel free to see more detailed notes below the player widget]

(I’m singing on all of these except “Love Me Tender”; I think tenor on all tracks)

1) “And Why Not!” - music and lyrics composed by me.
2) “Ole!” - lyrics (as they are) composed by me, and music arranged by me (original melody from “Mexican Hat Dance”)
3) “Love Me Tender” - not sure who composed/arranged this one; the girls might have arranged this one themselves
4) “Star Spangled Banner” - composed by Francis Scott Key, not sure who did this arrangement
5) “Beethoven Birthday” - all composed by me, with deep apologies to Mr. Beethoven
6) “Celebrate!” - music by me, and I think (but am not sure) that I wrote the lyrics, too
7) “Merry Christmas” - sung to the tune of “We Wish you a Merry Christmas” with a tiny bit of lyrical substitution. I think I did the arrangement for this one.
8) “See ya!” - composed, um, on the spot

*  *  *

Edited on December 20, 2008 to add:
I’ve gotten in touch with most of the people in this recording, which I previously didn’t list because I wanted to make sure my memory wasn’t failing me!  My fine co-singers were Robin (bass), Jen aka “Moose” (alto), Stacey (soprano) and Cathy (soprano).  Oh, and Robin insists that it was *his* tape recorder.  I’m still not convinced of that [and, yeah, I should ask ‘em if they’re comfortable having their last names here, and if so, I’ll add ‘em so they really get their fair notoriety )

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