I went back home to Massachusetts to play a doubleheader with my old disco band “The Boogies.”  I dusted off my old twelve-inch tall, hot pink, patent leather platforms and shoehorned myself into my old rubber catsuit, the one with the black studded sequins.  This weekend I’d hold nothing back I told myself.  The Boogies have always turned outrageous up to 11.  Once, we closed out a season with a “naked” show.

On the eve of our last summer concert, I bought 40 pairs of nude pantyhose and we shellacked ourselves with multiple layers.  We cut crotches and feet off half of them and wore them as shirts.  Realizing how androgynous we looked in our Barbie and Ken get-ups, we drew on various private parts to make ourselves look more believably naked and I covered my nipples with beer caps.  The guys in the band took advantage of excess stocking feet to endow themselves with unreasonably large and awkwardly lumpy appendages. 

Before the stage call, we covered our stocking outfits with customary pink and teal uniforms.  When it came time to sing our last song, we gave each other a nod and casually stripped off our clothing to reveal our faux-nakedness.  Every mouth dropped to the floor.  The air went out of the building.  The audience was so stunned they couldn’t dance.  We were thrilled and giddy and jumped around the stage singing “YMCA.”

Abandoning our clothes on stage, we ran into the green room where a friend from the crowd found us.

“I can’t believe you guys played NAKED!!!!!!” He said breathlessly

“Ha! Ha!” We said  “Joke’s on you!  We weren’t naked. We had these stockings on!”

“No No.” Said our friend “Joke’s on YOU! The stage lights shone straight through those things.”  We rolled on the floor laughing.  President Clinton’s Secret Service team had been at the show and offered us a gig the following week at the President’s press party.  That wound up being an even wilder night. But that’s a show for a different time.

So, back to my patent leather platforms and rubber sequin catsuit…. After ensuring everything still fit, I packed my outfit “neatly” into a ball, threw 10 plastic rings and a canister of glitter into a backpack and hitched a ride on a ferry to Martha’s Vineyard’s sister island, Nantucket.  “The Boogies were booked for two shows back-to-back at the hottest club on the island – The Muse. 

The Boogies and various Boogie girlfriends congealed in “the band house,” on The Muse campus. Having played there 3 summers running, we knew what to expect: A splinter-happy plywood floor, a pound of beach sand littered around each room, 2X4 indestructible bunk beds adorned with band graffitied penis’ and your run-of-the-mill island slander, couches so used they threatened to get you pregnant if you sat on ‘um too long, chipped mugs stolen from chipped diners and cracked mirrors on cracked walls.   

Though the 10 of us hadn’t played together in a year, the guys reassured me we didn’t need a rehearsal.  “The songs’ll just come back to you,” they said handing me a tab of ecstasy.  While I’d always been a strong advocate of our pre-show Goldschlager shot, this was a horse of a different color.  But it took me all of a second before that pill was chased down my throat by some Lemon Shnapps.   

With my catsuit on and glitter both inside and out (thanks to Goldschlager still playing a part in pre-game tradition) we marched through the woods to the stage.  It’s easy to believe an audience loves you when you’re tripping on ecstasy.  The bubbles that meandered from ceiling to floor felt like kisses blown directly to me by the adoring crowd.  The dancing floor, full of drunks looked magically choreographed somehow and everyone at the bar looked like they’d just walked off a modeling shoot.  Of course, this was MY onstage ecstasy experience.  Not everyone was having such a euphoric time.   Two of our three backup singers got sick before the 3rd song. Our bass player, who’d taken two hits, was too whammied to keep his eyes open and our guitarist kept sidling up to me mid-song convinced the audience was trying to put a spell on him!  He was inconsolable.  There were no intros or outros or cues between songs, it all just flowed like an orange tangerine taffy kaleidoscope. And two things became abundantly clear #1 I should NEVER do ecstasy on stage again and #2 The guys were right, those songs did come right back to me.

This whole week was like being at an ego petting zoo.

I got to play another show with Dad in LA, this time with Carol King at the famous Hollywood Bowl.  My nerves weren’t as bad as the ones at Fiddler’s Green despite a crowd I knew was chock full of famous industry people.  Backstage, after the show, there were amazing artists and actors with compliments and gifts and hugs and tears in their eyes that they credited to my song.  But swimming in the same waters were sharks on the prowl. They asked me in hushed tones, like drug dealers, if I’d signed a deal yet and could they get me in to discuss a record proposal this week.   I declined with humility but clarity. 

I took a meeting with an entertainment lawyer the next day just off Rodeo Drive.  Fred’s office was strung with some of the most beautiful guitars I’d ever seen strumming silent chords to welcome me.  Fred said he loved my songwriting and voice “It’s not like either of your parents.  It’s something all its own.”  He suggested we get some record company money behind it and that he’d help me.  But this trip out to LA has made me sure of one thing: I want to go this CD alone.  I need time to develop myself outside of the spotlight.  I want to build a relationship with my audience and figure out what I really want from the inside out rather than the outside in. 

Fred was surprisingly supportive.  He offered this advice — “Figure out where you want to be in 5 years from now and what you need in 2 years to get you there.” At this, he took a guitar off the wall and asked me to play him a song.  As I sang, in the eternity between chords, I became clear about where I don’t want to be in 5 years:

• Scared I’ll fail if I don’t get a ‘hit.’
• Scared of getting old or undesirable
• Bossy
• Hungry
• Inauthentic
• Manipulative
• Egocentric
• Lonely
• In a career that accommodates or alleviates my fears

While I know this is not the destiny of every signed artist, I think I know myself well enough to say it’s the course I would take.  I don’t think I’ll know what I want until I start touring.  I’ll cut my own path once I get there.