1-9-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians – Starter Job #6 (background/intro to Forming a popular New Wave Band in the Late Seventies: Nervus Rex)

Even with my writing work, college schooling, and aspirations to REALLY WRITE (not to “be a writer” – I‘m beyond that ‘cause I know I am), I also had an inexplicable itch to write and perform songs. At the tender age of 12, I appeared in a local Queens talent show for kids and sang “Both Sides, Now,” with my mom at the piano. From what I know of being 12, it’s such an awkward age. . . but I knew it was a good song and something about being on stage and singing was very appealing.

Mom was a piano teacher and church organist on Sundays. . . . we had a piano and an organ in our living room – a place otherwise filled with uncomfortable chairs and a sofa that had plywood under the cushions rather than springs. It was good that the couch in the TV room/den was nicer to sit on (somewhat!). But I digress.

As a baby, I started singing around the same time I started babbling, so I’ve always sung – especially in church on Sundays, as we had to religiously (no pun intended) attend Catholic Church as well as Catholic grammar school. We also heard music at home, almost non-stop, between mom’s music and our dad’s tuning in to WQXR FM (the local classical music station) every Sunday morning. We also listened to vinyl 33 1/3 rpm albums on the Fisher stereo set: Musicals like My Fair Lady or Fiddler on the Roof (Fiorello! Was one of my favorites) or the Dixieland jazz sounds of the Kenny Ball Orchestra’s Midnight in Moscow (fabulous song, BTW). At Christmastime, The Harry Simeone Choir’s Little Drummer Boy album dominated the stereo and we sang along to it nonstop.

In 1964, I was given The Beatles Second Album, and it was definitely exciting to dance around to and sing with them. Later on, Simon and Garfunkel, The Mamas and the Papas, The Zombies and the Cowsills filled my ears with wondrous harmonies. . . I never could get them out of my head. In church, when the key of the songs were excruciating for my voice, I’d find what I called “an alternate melody” (a 3^rd or a 5^th harmony, it turned out) and belt along as joyously as possible. Thankfully, nobody told me to shut up, or I’d probably have developed a complex and I’d never have kept making music.

Then I started copying down lyrics of my favorite songs that I’d listen to over and over. . . Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon, Linda Ronstadt especially. From studying them (and rock & roll stuff I dug, esp. the Rolling Stones) I started writing my own lyrics. But I needed an instrument.

“Mom, how about I learn the piano?” I asked innocently, around age 13.

My comely red-lipsticked mom looked up from the sink where she was dyeing her thick hair a rich chestnut brown – or more accurately, covering up her gray hairs. She sighed.

“But Laurie, you’re too headstrong to learn from me! How about the guitar – would you like to play the guitar?” My big brother, Tommy, had a few guitars that I would borrow from time to time, especially a nylon stringed classical – and then, when he came back from a trip to Mexico, he brought a lovely, light, steel stringed guitar that started warping as soon as the climate change hit its untrussed neck.

Mom took me to the local Sam Ash music store and we picked out a cute Guild F-30 guitar that had a good neck and fit to my body (the curve went just under my right breast). Except for 2 guitar lessons with a teacher mom bartered piano lessons for (the hunky hippie, Danny Crowley), and a Mel Bay beginner guitar book that I impatiently eschewed, I mostly learned to play by ear. I still have that Guild (+ two others) and play it. Good quality is always a good idea. . . thanks, mom!!

With this background – as well as a short-lived stint in a few high school bands and talent show appearances, accompanying myself on guitar playing “Long, Long Time” (a schmaltzy Linda Ronstadt number) – I came to look at the music ads in back on the Village Voice one day in late 1976. I’d been out on the music scene, writing about it and digging the music, and I knew I could add some of my own noise – if I could find some simpatico bandmates to play with.

Little did I know how drastically that would change my life – and that by making that choice how it would affect my writing career. . .

1-8-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians – Starter Job #5 (Working at the Strand Bookstore, Broadway & 12th Street, in Greenwich Village)

So. I have a rockin’ start to a creative writing career at the tender age of 18. Some wag calls me “The Downtown Joyce Maynard.” I take an instant dislike to Joyce Maynard, as she’s writing for The New York Times and besides getting great gigs, has a rumored affair with writing legend J.D. Salinger. Not that I want my personal life to sully my career or credentials – that would be against my independent nature -- but I do wind up with a semi-secretive relationship (because I wouldn’t want my personal life to sully my career or credentials!) with a fellow Village Voice writer whose intellect and sense of humor were great aphrodisiacs. (His memoir book that came out recently, Lucking Out, mentions none of his ‘70’s flames by name because, “it was a decision on my part to leave my romantic/sexual/personal life as blurred as possible, not only because I didn't think it'd be that interesting to the reader but because I didn't want to embarrass anyone I had been involved in. They might have moved on with their lives, be embarrassed at having the past brought up, you just never know, so I decided to play it safe.” – entirely forgivable, then.)

And even though ol’ Trixie A. Balm wrote for the Voice, Creem, Circus, Gig, and many other fine music publications. . . Lauren still needed another job to supplement income during college. She did what any aspiring writer and junior boho in New York with any sense of history would do: Look for work at the world famous Strand Bookstore, in the Village.

Tom Verlaine of Television (New Wave Art Rock geniuses) worked at the Strand, as did Patti Smith, and countless other infamous and famous alums cut their teeth in that venerable used book emporium. At any rate, to the Strand I went and got a job in the office in the basement, fulfilling people’s book orders sent in the mail (remember snail mail?). We would type up these forms, throw them into a suitably sized box, then send them upstairs to the “pickers” to pick the books and bring them back for us to finish the order (when a title wasn’t available, we’d have to notate that) and then we’d have to look up the price on the inside cover of the book, tally up the order, and add tax and shipping.

Keep in mind this was the era before ANYTHING was automated; everything had to be done manually, though of course accuracy never suffered on that account at the Strand!! Or, at least, it didn’t suffer much.

Anyway, I met one of the coolest people who became a friend and bandmate to me; Miriam Linna, originally from Ontario, was living in New York, and working at the Strand. She had just been given her walking papers (the nerve of ‘em!) the ultra cool retro rockers The Cramps, and was a sad lil’ drummer gal. I had just spent several months brainstorming a new band, Nervus Rex, with Shaun Brighton. We needed a rhythm section, and so it seemed like kismet to have met the fabulous Miriam Linna and be friends with her.

The pay at the Strand was probably minimum wage, like $2.30 an hour, but it was on the books. I worked there for a few months in 1977. . . then one day I was talking in a too-loud voice at my desk when there was a boss-bashing session. Fred Bass, our boss at the Strand, just happened to be standing behind me at the time (who knew?!), so I was canned, pretty much, on the spot. Oh well. Probably taught me a lifelong lesson: to NEVER badmouth the boss on premises – and to keep my voice volume better modulated, generally.

1-7-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians – Starter Job #4 (Village Voice freelance Rock Writer) & 1-6-12 (Happy Birthday, daddy!)

Okay, so it’s the summer of 1974. Beloved father dies, eldest daughter goes to her first rock concerts with her beau, Ira, from the hood in Bayside, Queens. They go to hear Mott the Hoople at the Uris Theater on Broadway, and David Bowie at Madison Square Garden. After attending my second rock concert, ever, I felt compelled to write a concert review, using as may “fifty dollar words” as I could muster, inspired no doubt by the effete stylings of Melville or something from the 19^th century. “Cynosure” was one of my favorite words, but I digress.

I mailed off my proud three-page double-spaced review to “Music Editor, Village Voice, NYC 10013.” I had just turned 18 that spring, and in the fall was heading off to college at SUNY Purchase. I was glad to have something to do to get my mind off that terrible loss of my father. I had no idea how to pitch a story or even the name of the editor. But I did it.

In early September, a letter came to my mom’s house, in Queens, from Robert Christgau, the new music editor of the Village Voice, responding to my review and telling me to “think more and write less.” God bless you, Robert Christgau!! It was one of the darkest times in my young life and it felt like a true miracle. He said to give a call, so I phoned Christgau from SUNY Purchase (at a pay phone down the hall in my dorm) and he assigned the new Jefferson Starship album & concert for me to review. With a new sense of purpose I dragged out my electric typewriter and GOT TO WORK.

For the next four years, while attending college (four different locations – a glutton for punishment, I transferred a few times due to changing location and interests), I wrote for hire as rock writer TRIXIE A. BALM.

Trixie A. Balm was a name I dreamed up on the LIE one night driving with the chunk-a chunk-a roar of tires against the buckling asphalt expressway, sitting beside my high school sweetheart, the aforementioned Ira (heck of a piano player and band leader at the time, although the band had a terrible name, “Chords Melody” – really!). “Trixie,” I thought, was a name so unlike me, so very like a peroxide blonde honky tonk angel, and “A. Balm” was a play on words that could mean “A bomb” or “a soothing unguent-type balm.” That, plus the initials T.A.B. were my favorite beverage at the time, Tab soda.

Trixie wrote for the Voice, Creem, Circus, Gig, National Screw, and many other fine publications. . . and earned her way through college on inspiration, perspiration, and a definite talent for a turn of phrase. This was a rockin’ start to a creative writing career.

1-6-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians – Remembering Dad and his Jobs on the Occasion of his Birthday (he would be 81 years old if still alive)

My father, Bernard F. Agnelli, was the first of three boys in a second-generation northern Italian immigrant family. His grandfather’s name was Bernard; his father’s name was Joseph: both names figure prominently in several generations. When I moved to Chester, CT, I found out that other Agnellis, our “country cousins,” settled there at the turn of the 20^th century. They were farmers who raised very impressive horses, I’m told. But Bernard Agnelli and Mary Corno, his wife, moved to New York City, where their children assimilated into American life and became executive secretaries (Aunt Toots) and Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) of the Bell Newspaper Syndicate (Grandpa Joe).

Grandpa Joe Agnelli married a non-Italian, Muriel Nissen, whose writing and cooking talent and frequent bouts of migraine headache I inherited. Of their three sons – Bernie, Joey, and Artie – our dad was the best and the brightest, purportedly. They dwelt in a nice little house in St. Albans, Queens, where Bernie met Bobbie (Barbara VDL), our mom.

But mostly, the Agnellis – and our dad – were mysterious. . . that’s the best word to express my frustration at how little we know about them, REALLY. The few dimly recalled facts that remain make interesting reading, nonetheless:

B.F. Agnelli attended St. Francis Xavier High School and Fordham University, majoring in Philosophy and Ancient Languages (Greek and Latin). Jesuit-trained, he thought for a while that his vocation was to be a Jesuit priest. For one year dad attended seminary (in Paris, France), but he came home and decided to marry mom instead.

When first married, dad worked as a reporter for the Bergen Evening Record in New Jersey. Then he went into the Army Reserves in Fort Benning, located in Columbus, Georgia. He was a lieutenant and wrote for the Fort Benning paper. Back in New York two years later, dad started working as a “P.R. Man” for Burston Marstellar, Western Union and Diamond International. He then became Publicity Director for the NY Blood Center. From there, he spent two years doing publicity for the Singapore Investment Center, and our family very nearly moved to Singapore in 1968 (mom wouldn’t hear of it – she loved Queens). After directing PR for the tiny but mighty new nation at the tip of the Malay Peninsula (Singapore!), dad went to work for J. Walter Thompson. About this time, he also went to night school for graduate courses in Economics. He became the head of a new business-focused division at J. Walter Thompson, Dialog. Bernard Agnelli, now the father of four, was doing well.

Then, at age 43, he passed away, a massive heart attack. And his daughter, Lauren, published her first piece, “Intimate Yet Objective: An Elegy to Bernard Agnelli.” Published in the local paper, The Little Neck Ledger, this In Memoriam piece was five hundred words typed on a Smith Corona electric machine, and was my first experience of the Red Smith adage: “Writing is easy. You just open a vein and bleed.” It is unlike the below adapted prayer -- one of many fun creative writing exercises I enjoy doing because it’s close to lyric writing, finding the right length/syllables word with the right sound and the right meaning, and maybe getting a chuckle or two.

Our father, who art in heaven, Bernard be thy name; thy kingdom done, thy had some fun on earth, if he is in heaven. Give us this day our daily blog, and forgive us our travesties, as we forgive those who travesty henceforth. Most of all, daddy, lead us not into tarnation, but deliver us from Tivo, Amen.

I love you, dad – Happy Birthday again.

1-5-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians – Starter Job #3 (Carvel)

Recap: Although making music and writing have always been my main talents and the most blissful things I can think of (out of bed), you just know I’ve had an amazing array of “day jobs” and assorted other gigs to keep the dough rollin’ in. Some of those gigs were on the books, some of them not. I can’t say I’ve made huge amounts of undeclared income (take that, IRS!), but in the past, a few hundred bucks here and there, sure.

So, going back to the ignominious start of it all, off the books I was a professional Dog Walker at age 12, and then, five years passed before I got another job in our neighborhood of Little Neck-Douglaston, in Queens. This was my first “real” on-the-books employment. People from the tri-state area (NY-NJ-CT) know of an ice cream franchise that was famous for its product as much as its spokesman’s gravelly/bizarre speaking voice. “I’m Tom Carvel. Try our delicious frozen desserts, especially our ice cream cakes, made fresh in our stores. . .” Tom Carvel’s big sell was a strange looking cake called “Cookiepuss” – kind of like a cross between Caspar the Friendly Ghost and a cartoon alien. At Thanksgiving, Carvel would hawk a turkey-shaped ice cream cake that was shaped suspiciously like Cookiepuss, only rotated at a different angle and decorated like, well, a Thanksgiving turkey. And at Christmas, the Cookiepuss became Santa Claus. . . what a versatile cake mold, that Cookiepuss!

At the Little Neck-Douglaston Carvel, I had to wear a uniform of sorts (definitely a hat and some kind of shirt), and clock in with a time clock. I was paid minimum wage ($2.30 p.h.) which, at the time, was sufficient to live on, actually (if you keep in mind that rent on a typical Manhattan apartment was $125, and probably under $100 in the ‘burbs). I was good at the soft serve machine and at scooping ice cream. . . but only the manager got to make Cookiepuss! He was probably around 20 years old, a sweet, dark haired, dark eyed guy -- looked like Bob Cowsill with a bad case of acne – and I always felt respect and humor from him. He had a girlfriend or a fiancé and was around the Carvel store half the time when I worked.

The boss, on the other hand, was a kind of creepy man, named Howie or something, a guy once rumored to flirt with and feel up some of the other female employees. As luck would have it, I was in the height of my post-anorexic phase, and too skinny to appeal to a guy like Howie. Or maybe he was afraid of my dark, flashing eyes? Whatever. I didn’t want to take anybody’s s**t, but most of all I’d have been so freaked out. . . I’m glad nothing happened.

At my Carvel job, it must have looked funny to have this terribly thin person serving big cones of ice cream and huge, goopy ice cream sundaes, but there I was. As employees, we could eat ice cream to our heart’s desire (in the back), but my special treat was when they had banana soft serve Carvel ice cream. I’d pour myself a big one in a sugar cone, lay it down on parchment paper, place it in a freezer, then have a treat for later that I could eat VERY slowly for dinner or lunch (always gave me a headache and made me need a nap, but it was yummy). I’d always ask for shifts when they were selling banana soft serve.

At my Carvel job, they knew they could count on me to do a good job with customers, run the cashier efficiently, work hard, and be ultra reliable. I don’t do sick days – mostly, I’m too healthy and besides, why let a little discomfort (illness) get in the way of making money? Especially if you didn’t want to lose your job, you just showed up.

I’ve been showing up for almost forty years now, every job, every single gig, every deadline. Maybe I’ve had five sick days (including one gig I had to miss with the Washington Squares on account of Chicken Pox!). ‘Tis the secret of my survival job success: be reliable and show up!!

1-4-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians – Starter Job #2 (walking Winston)

The late sixties were good times to be a kid, especially if you were enterprising and could figure out a gig. In our family, we were paid a small weekly allowance for chores we regularly performed (for me, it was dusting furniture and emptying the dishwasher). I supplemented my income at home by shining dad’s shoes. He paid me a quarter per pair, so I guess dad was rolling in the dough. In 1974, the year of his death, he was rumored to be making forty grand a year – good money in those days. Anyway, I enjoyed brushing and polishing those wing-tip lace-up businessman shoes for my beloved dad. He had two pairs of black shoes and one in oxblood. Dad was a pretty dapper guy, all told, in his shiny shoes, groovy ties, and well made three-piece suits (he wore button down vests in the winter).

My other early starter job outside the home, though, was as a Dog Walker to Winston, an Irish terrier – a medium sized, short curly haired, happy looking dog – owned by a little old lady three blocks away. Winston was really cute and not too hard to manage. These were the days before people “picked up” after their dogs, so I didn’t have to scoop poop, which would have grossed me right out. I walked Winston after school for a few weeks, a few months, I don’t remember. And I don’t remember what I was paid, but the lady was nice, and I do remember Winston was a good looking dog who behaved himself. As a nervous person around some animals (dogs and horses – love ‘em but they scare me), that was a good thing.

I also recall that dog biscuit treats were one of the fringe benefits to working with this cute dog, Winston. On our walks, he’d get a biscuit, and I’d get one, too. Always immensely curious about the world, I wasn’t squeamish about trying a dog biscuit, and I kind of liked them. They weren’t as good for snacks as those hard, crunchy Bavarian pretzels that mom sometimes had around the house, but dog biscuits weren’t bad!!

Not that I’d eat them, nowadays. . . but the pubescent me was a secret dog biscuit eater. If the other kids knew, I’d have been tormented even more (they already called me “Egghead” and “Smelly Agnelli” – just because it rhymed, not because I’m smelly, I swear!).

So, I was an Interior Decorator’s Assistant, and a professional Dog Walker – all by the age of 12. What next??

1-03-12 blog Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians – Starter Job #1

Aside from the perennial freelancing that crosses my plate like a couple of sunnyside eggs just lookin’ at ya, smiling, I have done a dizzying array of jobs. This is probably because I learned at an impressionable age that writers have to experience everything possible that life shoves our way – was it Hemingway? – or maybe it was from my dad, one of his cute little gems of wisdom that seemed like so many oxymorons blowin’ in the wind, my friend. Anyway, I was always very impressionable. I like William Blake’s take on it: “The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” Blake from his attitude sounds to me like a real hippie, so it’s no wonder he was popular especially in the nineteen sixties.

Let’s start with my first jobs I got paid for, outside of the home where I grew up. Later on, we’ll call them day jobs or survival jobs. These are the starter jobs. At age 12, I got a part time summer job working at an interior decorating shop on Northern Boulevard, a half-mile bike ride from home. Great Neck, New York, was conveniently two towns over, next to Port Washington: the sort of clientele who’d hire interior decorators. The designer, Bob Both, was married to a woman whose name might have been Sharon: they were dark haired, slender, intense people whose hair, while not identically cut, was the same length: longish for a man circa 1968, and shortish for a woman, kind of a pixie cut.

My boss, Bob, hung around and supervised me in my work: my job was to clear out and clean up a back storage room for my bosses. I recall a lot of small brass boxes from India with florist foam and baby’s breath, and many more Indian motif tsotchkes, with the little mirrors, very colorful in reds, oranges, and blues. I dutifully worked a few hours a day for a few weeks, and can’t recall what I got paid. It was probably a dollar an hour or something, and I’ll bet I spent it on candy (Big Hunk nougat bars!) and issues of my favorite reading material, Sixteen Magazine. Either that, or I’d treat myself to a plate of silver dollar pancakes at the IHop’s on the way home.

Best of all, from this job, I learned that I had a propensity for rhetorical questions. Bob Both would stare at me with big protruding brown eyes, raise his eyebrows, and let me know that. I believe he was also a master of the question-that-already-has-an-answer – the rhetorical question – but I was thrilled to know that device had a name and that I was doing some pretty sophisticated talking! Looking back, he was the first man I met who behaved gay or might well have been gay. . . although, of course, I had no words for it, just a feeling that my boss was funnier, more sophisticated, and more artsy than most other men.

I loved the interior decorating shop. But at age 12 I had another job, too . . .

Bloggy New Year 2012

I was hungry. I had other places to be. I was in thoughtful mode. It was midday, and I was walking one of my favorite local trails in Cockaponsett, alone with my thoughtful thoughts. New Year’s Day came (yesterday) and I hadn’t any time at all to think on paper and write, between working at a new restaurant after four hours of sleep, then racing off to visit with my sister & family on Long Island afterwards (a 3 hour trip each way). And of all things, I REALLY like to write.

Today, walking this fabulous blue-blazed trail without a companion, I reflected on its allegory for a journey through life. In view of my goal to be more successful creatively every year – and desire to make this a banner year – the comparison made sense because this is a trail that I’ve often walked halfway, then turned back because of time constraints or fear, like the fear of darkness falling. Today was different because I started earlier and I generally tend to walk at day’s end; in winter, I’m usually racing against sundown. Hmm, that’s a pretty nice metaphor, too. Nature offers so many wise symbols – in a beautiful, unspoiled way. It’s such a treat to walk – and to be able to: in 2011, I had injured my hip and then my other knee, so I had a taste of disability and felt grateful to be back in good health, walking pain-free.

I don’t do resolutions; I make aspirations. On the woodsy winter trail, I aspired to keep to my path in life – to continue whether it’s rocky, slippery, soggy, or covered with leaves. Whether a brook or a fallen tree gets in the way; whether the trail goes uphill or downhill; whether the trail gets hard to follow because the path marks aren’t visible: I must keep to the path, knowing it’s exactly right. I keep to the path because there’s a goal in sight, just when I’m ready to turn back and give up.

So today, I was following the blue blazes on foot for 45 minutes, getting worried, getting hungrier. I kept praying – with an “open dialogue” in my mind to the creator – marveling over how great a metaphor for success walking a path I’d never walked to the end. Maybe before today the path wasn’t marked well enough to see the blue blazes and follow. . . But today, that changed. I found the blazes – when I couldn’t, I used intuition and was patient – and I followed the path with that calm and peaceful color, blue, to the end: the reservoir.

Seeing that water sparkling in the sun gave me renewed energy and faith in the path back home. So, yes, I’m on the path of success, whatever that means to me. . . and the fun of figuring that out is the key.

I also aspire to blog daily – not a lot, just a long paragraph or two. I hope this is the longest entry because really, it’s a daunting project to keep publishing online (especially if you’re a private person, like me), but I feel compelled, so I shall. . . so follow me, if you please!

PS – it was a very nice 90 minute walk, indeed – and my belated lunch tasted wonderful.