It’s September 1971 - You’re A Teenager - You Knew The Violin Lessons Would Eventually pay off . . .
Intermediate applied Chick Magnet - go figure.
Fifth grade - free violin - free lessons - school needed music students. You looked like a good candidate. Parents loved the idea. Culture comes to your household.
You screech your way through elementary school. Learn how to read music. It’s the only class you’re getting A’s in. In a few months you stop sounding like two cats in an argument and actual notes come out. Mom and dad agree; you’re good - your teachers draw blanks, but that’s what music teachers do, especially violin teachers. The best you get from them is a grimace and a nod.
All through Junior High and High School, carrying the violin case around. Know your way around Bach. It doesn’t get you laid - even when you grow your hair girls look at you like they should call you Sir. Still, you’re determined - everybody plays guitar or drums - you don’t. They’ll come around some day.
Senior year - part time job at a record store, pushing The Three B’s - mono; 3.98 - stereo; 4.98 except on sale. Co-worker turns you on to Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks - rock band with a violin. A few days later he pulls out a copy of It’s A Beautiful Day - you drop Bach and learn White Bird by heart.
Music Major in college. Start thinking about the future. A career? You’re good, but . . .
You lose your job at the Record store - owners son needs work. You get the “no hard feelings” speech.
No work - tuition - rent - food. Looking grim. Pictures in your brain of you starving and eating boiled clothes.
You read a story in the paper about busloads of Hare Krishna followers, descending on LAX - standing at the boarding gates singing, gumming up entrances, chanting, pushing books and passing hats.
Genius. You grab your violin, race down to LAX and set up shop at the TWA International flights terminal.
Out comes Vivaldi, flying out of your mind and on to your facile fingers - borrowing a beat-up brown Fedora, strategically placed at your feet you fill the otherwise antiseptic air with music - the din of Hare Krishna is far enough away so you have the audience all to yourself.
Like magic - the hat fills. Girls who once avoided you like the plague gather in an admiring half-circle with shut eyes and nodding heads, smiling at every note, every glissando, every portamento. Future girlfriends - future ex-wives; life is brilliant.
A little over an hour your hat fills with loose change, crinkled dollar bills, business cards and scribbled phone numbers. You have arrived.
Seems the idea popped into a few other musicians heads as the International Flights terminal starts to fill with a veritable orchestra of out of work musicians and fellow students, all competing for loose change, crinkled bills and adoring fans.
Eventually, airport Security had other plans and the orchestra of hackneyed bliss merchants disbanded.
You wound up for a time on Westwood Boulevard, staking out a corner, competing with Fortune Telling cats and drunk Frat boys from The Bratskeller.
It was a good idea while it lasted.
Maybe there was a musical future after all.
And of course there was KPPC, supplying the background, just like it did on September 5, 1971.
https://pastdaily.com/2024/09/21/its-september-1971-youre-a-teenager-you-live-in-l-a-you-knew-the-violin-lessons-would-eventually-pay-off-kind-of/