Mica

I do Eric Arcenaux's vocal warm-up exercise, which has made available as a series of youtube videos. He says that you wouldn't want to just workout when getting your swimming trunks on, so, similarly, you wouldn't just warm-up before doing a gig. He stressed the importance of vocalizing every day, which makes a lot of sense to me.

Oh, and I almost forgot! Depeche mode rocks!

Jim Morrison was my first and still is my primary inspiration. He understood that music and performance is a portal to the infinite, to "the other side", and its roots are enmeshed with the gnarled spiralings of shamanism, archaic ritual, and ancient mythology. He showed that there are no limits to how far you can push the borders of reality. I think every good performer knows this instinctively, like a kind of body-knowing. I love "black" gospel. When I was young, my dad took me to a baptist church in Compton, to record the gospel music that was played there. If you've ever seen the Blues Brothers, there's that scene where James Brown plays a preacher. Man! It was just like that! So much different than a whitey church. LOL! And then that high-powered old-fashioned rock and roll, like Little Richard, and Paul McCartney singing Twist and Shout. I would love to sing like that without annihilating my throat. And then LOTS and LOTS more: from Portishead to Tom Waits to electronic music like trance and house to T-Rex to Dead Can Dance, etc etc etc etc

Hello all I'm a complete musical newbie, and so have MUCH to learn, but all the keenness to keep me going through all the frustration. I admit I am somewhat ashamed at being a noob since my dad was a professional recording engineer, owned several studios, played bass and guitar like the devil, but alas, I was too much of an undisciplined dreamer to ever pay attention to any of it and learn from him. Death teaches us many lessons. And now, recently, about a month ago, the most creative, inspiring, powerful, and musically-gifted person I know was taken from us. After coming home from the funeral of my good friend, Tempest Gale, I ripped into my closet, grabbed my old box of poetry and began tearfully singing whatever pages came into my hand, and whatever melody came into my head. Her inspiration has kept me going, and now, after years of dreaming about singing and after years of LOVING the stage, I'm finally on track with learning what I should have learned a long time ago. I'm excited to discover whatever cool discussions, learning opportunities, connections, support, inspirations, and revelations may be had in this virtual creative haven. If anyone is curious about my friend, here are some great samples of her music:

Hooray for the B.C.ers! I am one myself! And thank you for being here! I'm sure I'll be hitting you up with plenty of questions as I continue plodding along.