On the Tube
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"Feminine Fancies" was the actual name of a long-running, locally produced lunchtime talk and variety show on WKZO TV (some time later it was given the less gender-loaded handle "Accent"), and I was to appear and play piano on it in just a couple of months. Dad made recordings of practice sessions. Mrs. Kent, as ever, just kept asking for more repetitions, though she did not instill good practice habits and accordingly the renditions don't improve much right up to the end.
If Mrs. Kent had actual teaching chops, she wasn't applying them. But she did have older students who played advanced repertoire fluently and decently well, as evidenced by a surviving tape of a studio recital. Perhaps if Mom and I had been an optimal match for a while, then Mrs. Kent and I were… sub-optimal.
And yet when it just me playing on my own with the tape still rolling, I would start semi-improvising, looping around from place to place in the piece, sometimes idly transposing up a step (accurately), and back again. I don't remember doing this, but it's on tape. Strange. If Mrs. Kent knew of it, she must have been sorely vexed that she couldn't get on that horse and steer it as she wanted.
But the show, as they say, had to go on. Naturally we watched the Feminine Fancies show a bunch of times in anticipation (kindergarten was done by noon, home was a three-minute drive or a ten-minute walk, and the show was at 1). We also watched WKZO's local news-at-6 every evening, and I was especially taken with the weather segment's armamentaria of map displays (maps and atlases being one of my favorite distractions). On the appointed day, March 20, 1964, I was forcibly stuffed into my little Sunday-best outfit. Mrs. Kent, my parents and I drove to Kalamazoo with a light dusting on the ground that made me slip and fall between the car and the station's front door. At the same time that we were being treated to a brief preliminary tour of the studio, every one of the fifteen or so classrooms in Saugatuck Public School, wheeled out a TV cart and tuned in to channel 3. Mrs. Kent and I, taking the first segment of the program, sat on the studio couch waiting for it to begin; just as I thought the familiar theme music must have to start soon, the host started saying his introductory greeting into the mic and I realized "Oh! We can't hear the music but we're on air!"
And so we, and Ellmenreich and my Dennis-the-Menace cowlick enjoyed our five minutes of notoriety. Whether the performance was very good or not nobody ever said. What made it so memorable to viewers was how I spun around on the bench and looked wide-eyed at the big TV camera when the piece was over!
Previous: Taking It to the Next Level, Same as the Last Level Next: A Few Brief Digressions
"Feminine Fancies" was the actual name of a long-running, locally produced lunchtime talk and variety show on WKZO TV (some time later it was given the less gender-loaded handle "Accent"), and I was to appear and play piano on it in just a couple of months. Dad made recordings of practice sessions. Mrs. Kent, as ever, just kept asking for more repetitions, though she did not instill good practice habits and accordingly the renditions don't improve much right up to the end.
If Mrs. Kent had actual teaching chops, she wasn't applying them. But she did have older students who played advanced repertoire fluently and decently well, as evidenced by a surviving tape of a studio recital. Perhaps if Mom and I had been an optimal match for a while, then Mrs. Kent and I were… sub-optimal.
And yet when it just me playing on my own with the tape still rolling, I would start semi-improvising, looping around from place to place in the piece, sometimes idly transposing up a step (accurately), and back again. I don't remember doing this, but it's on tape. Strange. If Mrs. Kent knew of it, she must have been sorely vexed that she couldn't get on that horse and steer it as she wanted.
But the show, as they say, had to go on. Naturally we watched the Feminine Fancies show a bunch of times in anticipation (kindergarten was done by noon, home was a three-minute drive or a ten-minute walk, and the show was at 1). We also watched WKZO's local news-at-6 every evening, and I was especially taken with the weather segment's armamentaria of map displays (maps and atlases being one of my favorite distractions). On the appointed day, March 20, 1964, I was forcibly stuffed into my little Sunday-best outfit. Mrs. Kent, my parents and I drove to Kalamazoo with a light dusting on the ground that made me slip and fall between the car and the station's front door. At the same time that we were being treated to a brief preliminary tour of the studio, every one of the fifteen or so classrooms in Saugatuck Public School, wheeled out a TV cart and tuned in to channel 3. Mrs. Kent and I, taking the first segment of the program, sat on the studio couch waiting for it to begin; just as I thought the familiar theme music must have to start soon, the host started saying his introductory greeting into the mic and I realized "Oh! We can't hear the music but we're on air!"
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| As far as I know this is the only clear picture of our piano teacher Mrs. Kent that we've ever had. I don't happen to know whether Dad was the one who took it. |
And so we, and Ellmenreich and my Dennis-the-Menace cowlick enjoyed our five minutes of notoriety. Whether the performance was very good or not nobody ever said. What made it so memorable to viewers was how I spun around on the bench and looked wide-eyed at the big TV camera when the piece was over!
Previous: Taking It to the Next Level, Same as the Last Level Next: A Few Brief Digressions
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