To the Demo Singers, Showing How it's Done

In planning his funeral they told me that Gary had gone to Los Angeles to pursue a musical career. He had a great voice. He was a wonderful entertainer. The odds, then as now, would have certainly been against him, but he would neither be the first nor the last to give it a shot. Some, after all, succeed. He, alas, didn't -- at least not in the sense of screaming fans and nationwide tours. But though it didn't work out the way he had hoped -- his name didn't make it to the tip of everyone's tongue -- he had gotten work. Bit things. Backup singing and the like. Among other things, they recalled, he had sung on the "demo" side of karaoke tapes.

I've been fascinated by that revelation. I haven't spent a lot of time around karaoke tapes, but I suppose I did know that -- back in the days of cassettes -- one side was just the music that you, presumably, were going to sing along with, while the flip side was a demo version with someone -- apparently like Gary -- singing along. Someone; some anonymous singer; some up-and-coming hopeful trying to make enough to pay the rent. Someone that, odds are, no one ever heard of before or since. It isn't fame but it is, I suppose, making music. And money. And someone's got to do it. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it -- not because I am that intrigued with karaoke but because it has prompted me to wonder about all those other people whose work it is to assist others invisibly. In the Broadway musical Chicago Roxie Hart's husband sings a song in which he describes himself as "Mr. Cellophane."

Cellophane
Mister Cellophane
Shoulda been my name
Mister Cellophane
'Cause you can look right through me
Walk right by me
And never know I'm there...

How many people, I wonder, are there like that -- cellophane people working cellophane jobs -- doing things others depend upon, transparently? We see -- or hear -- their work, but never them. Who, for example, are all those people who get up in the midst of bitter winter nights to drive snowplows along roads that, by the time I wake and dress and get on my way in the morning, I find miraculously cleared? Who are the nameless authors of the countless instruction manuals piled in our drawer for appliances and accessories, and the like? Who are the cooks who tested the recipes I clip from the magazines resourcing our kitchen?

How many invisible people are there out there, I wonder, propping up my life -- singing along, so I can learn the tune? Well, whoever you are, thank you. I need all the help I can get.