It's Rock and 'Rona Time
How many Scaramuccis are left in this pandemic?
“Time insists on its milestones even in a pandemic,” writes political organizer Sarah E. Moss, making her debut in The Experiment here to explain why she did her hair for the second time during the pandemic and how she’s finding harmony with others even in isolation. Now, if her cat will just shut up so she can get a clean take.
by Sarah E. Moss
Press record.
Smile.
Inhale.
Sing.
‘Peace, peace, peace on Earth and goodwill to allll...’
“MROOOW!”
Thus ends another take – five? six? – of my living room recording session singing “Peace, Peace” for The Colorado Chorale virtual choir: with my cat singing the song of his people while leaving a pungent deposit in the litter box.
A professional recording studio, this is not. It’s an urban multi-story condo building with neighbors loudly watching movies, neighbors loudly talking on the phone, neighbors loudly walking trash to the hallway trash chute. Outside are nearly-empty buses loudly transiting down the street, fire engine crews loudly responding to emergencies, and who-knows-who doing who-knows-what loudly at the alley dumpsters.
In The Before Times, I sang at Colorado Chorale rehearsal every week with people from across the Denver metropolitan area, across the political spectrum, high school students to retirees. In a rented church rehearsal space, we gathered and bonded through the love of singing beautiful music. That ended abruptly once The Covid Times began. We transitioned to every-other-week Zoom convenings for rehearsals, music theory lessons, and music trivia.
In The Covid Times, I record myself singing alone... but for the cat. Looking into the laptop camera is not nearly as fulfilling as catching the eyes of the conductor and audience members. This is my second virtual choir project this year. (Not coincidentally, it’s also the second time I have blow dried and styled my hair since March.) My first virtual choir experience, recorded waaay back in April, was easier: only a few weeks had passed since I’d been at choir rehearsal. In retrospect, the Face vocal band virtual choir rendition of “From Now On” from The Greatest Showman I recorded seems happy. We were all still new to this pandemic thing. People were not so – *slowly shrugs* – so 2020.
Now, in December, time and lack of practice have depleted my lung capacity and musicianship. I have to breathe more often, frequently before the end of musical phrases. The high notes don’t come as easily as they did in the spring. But the singing endorphins still come, both while recording take after take (in between the cat’s interruptions) and while watching the Colorado Chorale virtual concert premiere on Zoom the day after the winter solstice.
The 2020 winter solstice, the internet says, is “the shortest day on the longest $&@%ing year of our lives.” For 45 minutes in this longest year, our singing gave family, friends, and strangers some musical joy through a screen. The internet gods gave me great joy when they granted my prayer, a prayer now recited across generations in The Covid Times: ‘Please don’t let someone Zoom bomb this lovely virtual gathering (that is being hosted in Zoom Meeting instead of Zoom Webinar)...’
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I miss live music. Singing it. Watching it. Feeling bass in my bones, feeling lyrics in my heart, feeling that moment when a harmony tunes perfectly and raises the hairs on the back of my neck and lights up my soul.
I miss hanging with my friends at concerts, dancing, laughing. While it was only last year, it seems another lifetime ago that I was on vacation in Santa Fe, sharing a house with a group of friends (including multiple contributors to this fine publication). In the backseat of an Uber en route a Tank and the Bangas concert at Meow Wolf, one of my friends asked, “Who are we seeing? Tank and the Bagels?”
Tank and the Bagels could be a Jewish rap group from Brooklyn. I'd also see them.
I miss traveling and seeing concerts in other cities. I miss strings and brass at the symphony. I miss hip hop in dive bars… but not as much the sticky floors, dirty bathrooms, and unwanted touching by entitled men.
I miss Nocturne Jazz and Supper Club and their Renditions dinners, a TED talk for all the senses: a live band playing five songs paired with a five-course meal, wine, cocktails, and short talks on culinary arts and music history, with themes ranging from the many facets of Nina Simone to Radiohead’s OK Computer album. When I walked through Nocturne’s entryway velour curtain, the owners and long-time staff greeted me with hugs. I would sit at my favorite bar seat to catch up with the mixologists and sip the bubbly custom cocktail that a former bar manager crafted years ago for my grad school graduation: Spanish sparkling white wine, Denver’s own Leopold Bros. rye or whiskey, orange liqueur, and lime juice served in a champagne flute. I pray Nocturne survives all of – *gestures vaguely* – this.
God willing, someday Nocturne will host a Renditions dinner about pandemic-era music. I imagine sourdough bread will feature.
I decide to order takeout from Nocturne and exchange air hugs with the owners from 10 feet away when I pick up my food.
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Time insists on its milestones even in a pandemic. My niece graduates high school with a low-key drive-up ceremony, and I don’t get to attend and hear “Pomp and Circumstance.” Instead of our traditional big family gathering to celebrate both Thanksgiving and her birthday (with donuts instead of cake), I make a video of me singing and playing happy birthday on the piano in my living room.
My friend/business partner’s son grows teeth and learns how to sleep through the night. So they say. I haven't seen them since 2019.
Squirrels and/or birds build a nest in the tree outside my window. They seem to have a timeshare arrangement since they don’t occupy the nest at the same time of day. Or, I suppose, they are shapeshifting squirrel-birds. Or bird-squirrels. I could be watching too many sci-fi movies.
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Day in and day out, Spotify is my constant companion, filling my home with musical stories. Most of the music we hear today on any pop, rock, rap, R&B, or country radio station is written in a 4/4 time signature: four quarter notes per measure, and each of those quarter notes gets a beat. Listen to many Billboard chart toppers this month, and you can count a steady 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4: “All I Want For Christmas Is You” By Mariah Carey? 4/4 time signature. “Mood” by 24kGoldn featuring iann dior? 4/4 time signature. “Puppy for Hanukkah” by Daveed Diggs (which hasn’t topped Billboard but is #1 in my heart this Hanukkah)? 4/4 time signature. The 4/4 time signature dominates your listening unless you’re a big polka or waltz fan. Or, apparently, unless you’re me during The Longest Year Ever.
When Spotify delivers “Your Top Songs 2020” to my feed, I laugh. Not so much the “that’s funny” laugh, but more of the “that’s so apropos I might cry” laugh.
In The Longest Year Ever, Spotify informs me that the album I have listened to most is The Dave Brubeck Quartet’s Time Out. This 1959 album is important and great for numerous reasons, but perhaps never more so than in 2020. Its songs include time signatures in 9/8 and 5/4, totally different feels than the standard 4/4, messing with the steady rhythms to which we are so accustomed. Brubeck, a white man, was adamant about including Black musicians in his bands. Therein is the metaphor: In The Longest Year Ever, with these hard-to-count time signatures, when days blur together, during an awakening for racial justice, we are all in this together.
But are we? Amid a pandemic, persistent systematic racism, and economic devastation, we are not all in this together. Some people are on yachts, while others are furiously bailing water from lifeboats. Others are drowning.
My friends who are musicians aren’t working, or aren’t working much.
Americans are living separate realities economically, politically, and personally. While staying home is keeping me safe and healthy, 3,000 people are dying daily from largely preventable causes. I don’t understand why some of my family members -- on both sides of the political spectrum -- are socializing, traveling, and not wearing masks. I wonder how my nurse family members feel about it. I wonder if there is a ticking time bomb of family tension brewing beneath the surface of peppy video messages. Plus, I have preemptive FOMO knowing that most of my siblings and parents will get vaccines before I do and they’ll maybe probably hang out without me.
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What Spotify doesn’t recognize with “Your Top Songs 2020” is the song I heard most this year as I produced more than 300 Colorado campaign events, nearly all from my kitchen table: the Biden campaign’s theme song, “We Take Care Of Our Own” by Bruce Springsteen. And Spotify doesn’t realize how many times I’ve listened to Lizzo’s “Good As Hell” as I repeatedly watched footage of Boston Medical Center workers performing a joyous choreographed dance when the vaccine arrived on December 15.
In political campaigns, there is a mantra about the three most precious resources: time, people, and money. You can raise more money, you can recruit more people, but you can’t create more time. There are 24 hours in a day (or 1,440 minutes if you’re a scheduler). Election Day is when it is (unless it goes on for days and weeks, like in 2020 or 2000).
These days, I try not to count the days, months, or years until I might get a vaccine, until I can hug my parents again, until singing in a real-life choir won’t be life threatening. I don’t know what units to use. How many Scaramuccis? How many choruses of “We Take Care Of Our Own”? How many listenings of the Time Out album -- or, new for 2020, the Time OutTakes album, a raw version of those interesting time signatures?
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After months on the campaign, scheduling my life in five-minute increments and counting down the days until Election Day, my job concludes slowly as I write recommendations for my staffers and ensure bills are paid. Then, on November 23, I suddenly have nothing to do but recover, binge watch hours of TV, and read novels and long-form journalism.
After reading about ”an explosion of new words and phrases” in 2020, dozens of new band names join my list of hypothetical future music projects. Years ago, when I heard a phrase I liked, I began a habit of exclaiming, ‘Dibs on that for my next band name!’ The fact that I have never been in a band, named a band, or named an album does not deter me from curating an ever-growing list that includes Shimmering Possum, Hanukkah Armadillo, and Backpack of Noodles. DIBS! THEY. ARE. MINE.
With post-election down time on my hands, I start writing pitches:
Coronacoaster – Upbeat pop dance electronica, similar to LMFAO, the kind of music I would giggle and groove to at a beach party in Miami… if I ever get to do such things again.
Frontline Essential – Multiracial feel-good pop country.
The Zombie Minks – Punk.
Social Distancing – Post-punk new wave.
Blursday – Death metal. Or maybe a pirate band. Maybe a death metal pirate band: BluRRRsday.
Marchtober – Rock. Hair band.
QuaranTeam – Teeny bop girl group. Definitely British, a la Spice Girls.
Zoom Bomb – Teeny bop boy band. Probably Chinese. [*Goes down internet rabbit hole reading about C-pop*]
On Mute – Experimental performance art group that employs long periods of silence in between sounds from children and pets, a DJ scratching on turntables, and singers harmonizing with AOL dial up modem noises. (Speaking of, you must watch this Lin-Manuel Miranda interview in which he explains how he mimicked AOL tones for “My Shot” in Hamilton and in which he displays so much more musical genius.)
Lil’ Rona – Rapper who also plays flute like a less talented wanna-be Lizzo.
The Grifters – Parody act similar to The Capitol Steps that rewrites lyrics to songs by doo-wop/R&B group The Drifters. All songs are stories about Trump world. They wear matching red and white striped blazers.
Covfefe Nineteen – Parody act similar to The Capitol Steps (and The Grifters) that rewrites lyrics to songs by Nirvana and Blink 182. All songs are stories about Trump world. They ironically wear badly-fitting khaki pants, blue blazers, and ties like Hill staffers, complemented by crazy messy hair and expertly shaped mohawks.
Covidiot – Not a band. Rather, a punk rock opera album by Green Day as a long-awaited follow up to American Idiot. Not my cup of tea musically, yet an important piece of culture that I can appreciate intellectually for the skill required, much like barbershop quartets.
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I sign up for another virtual choir, this one based in London, seven time zones away. Whatever, time means nothing these days, right? The piece is called “Sogno di Volare” – dream of flying – and composer Christopher Tin says it celebrates human exceptionalism. The rehearsals and recording deadlines will add structure and rhythm to my weeks. The music will make me feel more human. My cat will undoubtedly interrupt.
Sarah E. Moss, MPA, once dreamed of being the first woman to play in the NBA. Instead, she became a civic dreamer and doer. Her career solving policy and political puzzles spans more than 20 years in advocacy, strategic planning and process improvement, and message events. She has worked for government, nonprofits, and political and public awareness campaigns. While this is her first contribution to The Experiment, she occasionally writes raps about the Colorado State budget. Follow her on Twitter at @SarahEMoss.
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