| One time, I
went with my brother to the "Queen Bee" club that was operated by
Mr. Jo Marcel. My brother was the leader of "The Flowers,"
backing up the "Apple-Three" which consisted of my cousin Vy Vân
and her friends
Tuyết
Hương and Tuyết Dung, Jimmy Joseph and Prosper Tha('ng. I told my brother I wanted to sing. I remember anh Jo coming to
me and saying, "Cu nnào muốn hát đây?" (who's the kid who
wants to sing?). I said, "me," and he introduced me on stage;
that was the first time I sang "Aline" in a nightclub.
Another time, when The Flowers were performing at a night club. Again, I
asked my brother to let me sing. I did "I Started the Joke" by
the Bee Gees in front of a group of American GIs. I guess my singing was
acceptable, but I was quite embarrassed because I didn't understand a word
I was singing and my pronunciation was far from perfect. Still, I
demonstrated a lot of guts. When I was a student at Taberd High School, I volunteered to sing during the graduation ceremony in front of 2000 students. I learned the song "Et Pourtant" by Charles Aznavour by heart. There was no band, not even a guitar. Just a microphone. I don't know how I did it but I finished the song and walked off the stage. All I remember was how I had impressed the heck out of my classmates. I did not do well in Cinquième (8th grade?), so my mom sent me to Adran Dalat. There was a band called "Les Chouchoux" that played for every school function. We were lucky to have a cafeteria where the band would practice once a week |
We
would sit there and listen to them play some songs over and over, then
sent one guy to the door to watch for the "brothers," while we
started to learn how to smoke. One day, I took all the courage to ask the
band to let me sing "Aline" . They let me do it
just once, then nicely kicked me off the stage. I thought to myself,
"One day, you'll know my name." During lunch one day, I was chatting with my friends when, all of the sudden, I heard the sound of a piano coming from the school theatre across the hall. We followed the music back to a little girl practicing the piano. I later found out she was the daughter of the laundry lady, and our parents sent us money for that extra luxury. I approached the lady and asked her if she would like me to help her daughter. Happily, she not only agreed but also offered to wash my laundry for free. From that day forward, I'd show up once a week to oversee her practice and used the laundry money to buy afternoon snacks. Every night after dinner, we had a one-hour walk around the schoolyard before doing home work. I wanted to play the piano so badly so I took my friends to the theatre and started to play some Trịnh Công Sơn songs that I had learned in Saigon. Soon enough, many students surrounded me and I entertained them with many melodies. All of the sudden, someone struck me in the back of the head with a finger fist. When I turned around, I found the director of the school yelling, "Unless you are a registered piano student, you are not allowed to play." Everyone was disappointed and I was pissed.
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