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By Di3 Roberts
It wasn't easy to get his consent for this story. Of
coarse, we had to change his name.
You see, Tom, as he w21 be known, is a closet
musician.
Just as there are many kinds ol deset people, there
are many reasons for their characteristic secretiveness.
Sometimes it's shyness and sometimes plain common
sense that drives otherwise gregarious folk to their special
closets.
I accompanied Tom the other night on one of his
ritualistic withdrawals. First he peered out his residence
hall room door, checking for possible visitors.
Satisfied, he locked the door and stuffed a bathtowel .
under it. He reduced his refrigerator's temperature, to
insure a steady, muffling rumble.
Finally, he took up his guitar, sat in the back of his
coat closet and I closed the door behind us.
Curse of the tSatross ,
"It's my albatross," I heard him say wistfully as he
tuned the instrument in the dark. Tm cursed with this
Gibson. Ill never give it up. But then, why should I?"
He was playing now and I noted he missed a pluck of
the fourth string in his rendition of "Scarborough Fair.
"I don't care what the others might say," he said,
almost to the beat of "parsley, sage, rosemary and
thyme." I pour my heart and soul into this guitar!
I mumbled agreement, hoping to calm him. His out
burst reminded me of Tom in high school, before he
became a closet musician.
After months of practice, Tom mastered the quick
chord change and the art of pulling on strings for a
tremelo effect. Recognizing Lis destiny as rock'n'roll
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stardom, he formed a combo with all the modesty of
Joe Walsh.
In the locker room after gym class, Tom would stand
in his post-shower puddle plucking away on an imaginary
guitar, wailing "Inna Gadda Davida."
In his classes, teachers would tell him for the tenth
time to quit playing bongos on his desk. Students gave
him wide berth, and unintentionally a mobile stage, as
he be-bopped down the halls between classes. He was out
rageous and embarrassing.
Finally, Tom's combo got a job playing for the final
sock hop of our senior year.
A hush fell over the crowd. The spitbafls stopped
frying, the couples stopped swaying and all eyes turned to
the plywood stage on the east end of the gymnasium as
the band. . .
Tom flopped. The hush lifted, the spitbaHs and couples
resumed and all eyes began looking for their respective
pair of shoes. It was the last time Tom played in public
because he played badly.
StmL msish
To be frank, he still plays badly. And, for the most
part, he plays alone.
But there is one "friend" call him Jack-with whom
he plays guitar.. 1
They sneak into Jack's squalid apartment on Thursday
nights (when the couple upstairs regularly goes out),
taking a 12-pack and their guitars.
I don't know how the two met, but their friendship
is based solely on music.
I quietly got up to leave Tom's closet. He didn't
notice my exit, so intent was he on his picking.
But just before the door squeaked shut, I heard him
' once again miss that pluck of the fourth string.
Full houses result
of new conductor
The separation of the music public from current music
and the musician's loss of alliance with composers are the
major problems lnnis Russell Davies says he has en
countered as a musician and conductor of the St. Paul
Chamber Orchestra.
The orchestra will perform at Kimball Recital Hall this
weekend.
Under Davies, who has been with the orchestra since
1971, the group has quadrupled its home audience while
gaining international recognition as one of the world's
most important small orchestras and America's only resi
dsnt professional full-time chamber orchistra.
Divles saM one of the first problems he discovered as
the orchestra's music director was that it bid been striving
for whsl he called the wrong audience.
Davies" sdd he sought a different kind of audiease
through a different ticket pricing system: lowered &mi
con for scrhr citizens and students, and fifteen minutes
before each conceit, allowing those who still cosMn
sffori gdmissoa to enter on a pay-wbzt-ycu-csn hzss.
ILis he siil rested in full houses of persons truly
Daviss sdd he then worked to produce CenbHity in
the orchestra by introducing new types of music and di
viding the orchestra into subgroups.
While in St. Pfcul, the orchestra regularly divides time
between a subscription series with the entire orchestra and
a small series called the Prospective Series, featuring the
subgroups.
