12 MAY 2024 A pril arrived and with it came the yard sale, an annual rite of spring during which we offer things we no longer need or use. And, as I reviewed the stack of potentially disposable items, I picked up an old compact disc. Without even looking, I remembered the title: “My Way.” Done my way. I should have thrown it out years ago, right after bringing it home. But, on the mistaken assumption that time might heal all aberrations, I shoved it into the far reaches of a desk drawer where it could age and perhaps become tolerable. It’s a recording of me singing. I made it in 1980. It cost five dollars. It was the worst investment I ever made, and that includes the time I bought a six-pack of nut Hershey’s and hid them in the attic so my brothers wouldn’t find them. It saved them from my brothers but not the ants. At the time, I had considered myself an adequate singer, good enough to perform with a couple of local groups, a few church choirs and, frequently, an isolated shower. So when I ran across an ad about a place that made recordings of individuals soloing, I decided to give it a shot. You never know. Somebody said Elvis got his start that way. Although a veteran songster of sorts, I was quite nervous while approaching the microphone. Fortunately, the man operating the facility observed my apprehension so he played some CDs made by other amateurs to reassure me that there was an ample supply of bad singers willing to spend five bucks to have their voices recorded. Most of them weren’t very good. Some of them sounded like the chickens did when we’d sneak up behind them back on the farm and yell, “Kentucky Fried!” But hearing them did settle me down, so I laid out the five dollars and checked the list of available songs that awaited treatment by my throaty baritone. They were basically orchestral background music with a voice on it; when you put the earphones on in the recording booth, you could hear the voice and sing along with it, but only your version showed up on the final product. It took a while to select a song because the groups I performed with didn’t sing about lust, hound dogs, backing up over your mother-in-law with a pickup truck or torching the chemistry lab so you could win the heart of a girl named Jenny. But finally, there it was – Frank Sinatra singing “My Way.” We’d do it as a duet in the recording booth, but the end product would be just me. Doing it my way. We proceeded. The man in charge gave me a trial run, then started the equipment. I couldn’t hear myself during the actual production but was fairly calm by the time the session ended. We finished and played it back. I was quite surprised. Quite surprised to discover that my voice sounded like a can of paint remover. Throat clearings, hacked up loogies, beer belches and fingernails on the blackboard were symphonies compared to the sound that emerged from the CD player. Embarrassed, I fled the studio and hid the recording in a desk drawer, hoping it would never be found by Swiss terrorists who’d use it to start avalanches. But time has a way of erasing pain. And so, when I came across the CD this time, instead of throwing it away without remorse, I got this strange sensation that maybe something miraculous might have happened as it lay there hidden away for decades. Maybe it had improved with age. Maybe the passing years had warped the disc enough to make it listenable. So I stuffed “My Way” into my CD player. Time had not been a friend. It was worse than the first time. It was a burping contest interrupted by squawks, grunts, moans and nasal congestion. It went beyond bad, beyond horrible, all the way to unfit for human consumption. I was singing in the key of stomach gas and I never hit one note right. I still don’t know how it ends. You don’t have to listen very long to recognize bad. The only good thing about the entire episode was that before I made the recording, I didn’t invite friends over to swig beer and listen to my vocal debut. All the beer in Germany wouldn’t have made that CD sound good. And yet, for one brief moment, I thought artificial intelligence, some computer whiz or a 16-year-old genius would create something that would erase all the stomach expulsions, snorts, wheezes and cataclysmic eruptions from the recording. Once they’re gone, maybe my rendition of “My Way” could be heard by others. But reality quickly set in. What if somebody bought it at the yard sale? And so, for the sake of music lovers everywhere, I dispatched it to a landfill rather than be responsible for an outbreak of ear cooties. My brief encounter with the music industry A former Valley newspaperman who now writes about his travels across Arizona, the U.S. and the globe. BY SAM LOWE                PHOTO COURTESY OF SAM LOWE This cartoon was drawn by Tony Bustos to illustrate a column Sam wrote about being a musician/singer, in which he describes the results as sounds similar to those made by Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny. 602.399.8540 debbiefrazelle.com dfrazelle@cox.net PAST P AST P ARCADIA PTO VP T O VP T PAST P AST P H AST H AST OP H OP H I OP I OP P I P I TA PRESIDENT P RESIDENT P ARCADIA RESIDENT FO F O F R O R O OVER OV ER OV 30 ER 30 ER YEARS Top 1% of Coldwell Banker Agents Debbie Frazelle | CLHMS | ABR Golden Keys, designed in 1964 by architect Ralph Haver, is an iconic resort style adult community located in the heart of Scottsdale. This light & airy home with an oversized front arched window has been upgraded & meticulously maintained. 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