America, by Simon and Garfunkel.
Garfunkel’s first appearance? I guess? Except that I can not do his parts, really, despite the almost-turtleneck? This is refreshingly mediocre, which means it was challenging, which means I have lots to learn.
Should I take actual voice lessons of some sort, someday?
Elementary school “chorus,” which mostly involved singing pop songs on the morning announcements, did not count, not even that one time we had to try out for a part in the musical by singing a “1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8” scale up and down a few times. I did not make the South Pacific chorus of fourth graders that year, nor did I earn a singing part in Grease in fifth grade, but in sixth I redeemed myself with a minor role in South Pacific — we switched off the same two musicals every year for a while — by singing the anchoring line in the chorus of In The Navy in the only style I knew, which was the way the sixth grader in the male starring role had sung it two years earlier. (What was a song by the Village People doing in South Pacific? You’re asking a lot of questions about Miami’s public schools in the 1980s, aren’t you?)
I love this song, and this didn’t do it justice, as they say, but the software clarinet bit is nice, as is the last little layer of reverby strummy guitar. Clarinets are cool. We like clarinets now.