I Wanna Be A Rock Star

I don’t play an instrument. Well not anymore. I took plenty of piano lessons growing up only to find that now I’m reduced to teaching chopsticks to children I baby-sit for. I’ve worked around musicians my whole life. I grew up in the theatre. Yes, if you look hard enough you’ll find that when I was 14 I was in the national touring company of The Sound of Music. I played Brigitta. And then I graduated to working in the music industry at places like Madonna’s Maverick Records, and the talent management company The Firm. And then I opened my clothing store and I’ve sold clothes to plenty of musicians: Britney before she spiraled downward, Christina before she got pregnant, The Pussycat Dolls before they lost their lead singer. The list goes on… But never did I think that I could be a musician, let alone a Rockstar.

And then I heard about Rock N’ Roll Fantasy Band Camp. Quite possibly the coolest thing anything ever. You become a real live Rockstar with real live Rockstars all around you. It doesn’t matter whether you know how to play an instrument or not – they’ll teach you. For Five days and five nights you eat, sleep and breathe rock n’ roll.

You start in a small group, your band, and are actually given a celebrity counselor who stays with you for the duration of band camp. (I hope I don’t get stuck with Scott Ian. I know him and would be totally embarrassed to belt out “The Sound of Music” as my audition material.)

Your celebrity counselor then works with you to write an original song. I don’t know how that works because I don’t know how to write a song. I wrote a song once on my dad’s old electronic keyboard and he saved it and swore it was the best song he’d ever heard. Which is a father’s job to say. But it was sort of an Oom paa paa song – more like something you’d hear in a ballet class; definitely not the rock star material we’d be required to write.

Next we’d need to learn to play our song. Since I don’t play any instruments, and my last attempt at learning the guitar was dismal, I’m guessing I’d sing. Hopefully backup so I couldn’t mess up our act. My boyfriend when I was 16 years tried and tried and tried to teach me to play the guitar. I kept telling him my hands were too small. But with all the tiny girls out there who play the guitar I’m guessing that was a cop out. I just sucked.

After learning our song, we have to perform it live on stage to a sold out audience at a major rock venue. And there are Rockstars in the audience. Okay, that’s a little much for 5 day’s work. I mean, we rehearsed The Sound of Music for a month and a half before going live.

So as I think about it - we probably spend the first two days just learning our instruments, and at least a day writing our song, so what, two days to rehearse? That doesn’t seem like a very long time. I mean I want to be a Rockstar, but not one who sucks. What if we walk out on stage and forget our song? Band Camp is blown and we go home all alone because our band has broken up after only five sad days.

Well I’m guessing that somehow this doesn’t happen. That in some way it’s GUARANTEED not to happen, because for $8000 Rockstars, I mean customers, have to leave happy. Otherwise Fantasy Band Camp would be out of business pretty fast. Sadly I don’t have the eight grand to spend to become the Rockstar I dream of. But I’m saving up, because I am going to be Rockstar – even if I’m an aging 40 year old wannabe by the time it happens.