Secrets for FUN

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Hilary Weisman • Cambridge, Massachusetts

You don't have to be able to sing. You don't even have to be able to play an instrument. You just need to know an actual band, with gear, who will trust you enough to let you use it. Once they show you how to play three chords on the guitar (all you'll really ever need) and help you to turn the microphone on, you can call these practiced musicians your 'roadies,' and from there, it's rock and roll, baby. Play badly. Play loudly. Shout, 'check one, check one' repeatedly into the microphone.

Bandmates Sue, Sue, and I always had fantasies of being chick-rockets, so we didn't see the point in letting a little thing like our mutual lack of musical ability stop us. That's why we started 'Sandwich'. Sandwich has real fans even though we've only played 'out' a handful of times at our friend's parties and we only play one song (also called 'Sandwich') and we don't actually exist. Plus, you can get the satisfaction of playing at a party, and then four years later at work, in front of your boss, a woman you know as the friend of a friend might come up and start singing the chorus of your one and only song and say 'I love your band, do you guys still play?'

Sundae Horn • Ocracoke, North Carolina

The first present that my husband, Rob, ever gave me was a copy of Rise Up Singing: The Group Singing Handbook by Peter and Annie Blood. That book, and the spirit it embodies, is the best recipe for fun that I know: get several dog-eared copies and a group of friends and family -- all the musicians, singers and wanna-bes that you can gather -- and sit around somebody's kitchen and sing.

We get twenty-odd people (from three generations) in our big kitchen with low ceilings and lots of chairs, a table laden with food and drink, a fridge full of beer, six guitars, one fiddle, one banjo, songs to sing. We take turns, we take requests, we attempt four-part harmonies. My husband and his brothers sing their family canon, a group of songs that are loved because of tradition, not quality. Rob treats us to a song he wrote for me, affectionately titled, 'You're Just Another Rut Out There On My Road To Ruin,' which lends itself to some explanation, which leads to story-telling, joke-telling, opining and laughter. And then another song....

Homemade music is a rare thing in a society that aims to make us all a part of the audience. By making our own music we participate in something as old as humankind, and completely out of reach of consumer culture. Our participatory musical gatherings are actually as subversive as they are fun, and you can't beat that for one hell of a good time.

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