The Voice

A sketch of Guenevere Goode, Yarra Govinda Smythe and Constance Osbourne's junior high school band, Joyce Carol Oates, the predecessor to their present band, Glamourama

THE VOICE

In the beginning, there was Joyce Carol Oates.

Initially, it was known as The Joyce Carol Oates Project, then later changed to just Joyce Carol Oates. JCO, as it was affectionately known for short, was Guenevere Goode, Yarra Govinda-Smythe and Constance Osbourne's junior high school band. Guen served as lead vocalist and acoustic/electric guitarist; Yarra, bass and backing vocals and Connie, lead guitar and co-lead and backing vocals. Because there was no one available at the time, Guen (and sometimes Yarra) would play keyboards. Drums were usually programmed through the use of a drum machine. The intriguing name of the band originated from the fact that all three girls were huge fans of the author, Joyce Carol Oates.

"If Joyce Carol Oates had a musical voice, this is what she would sound like. This is what she would say."

"Joyce Carol Oates rocks. Rock with."

These quotes, more-than-less the band's philosophical anthems, were placed at the bottom of a visual representation that the girls had designed: the head of Joyce Carol Oates sporting long, curly black hair and owlish with her oversized glasses, in silhouette. This image appeared on a free promotional poster and T-shirts for the band's only two live appearances-- once at a junior high school dance, and once at a

teen night band competition sponsored by and held at The Coven nightclub (the first time ever that the girls had played The Coven). Joyce Carol Oates placed third behind two (then) house bands that would later be usurped when Guen, Yarra, Connie and their friends Nautica and Rio returned to The Coven a year later as Glamourama.

"If Joyce Carol Oates had a musical voice, this is what she would sound like. This is what she would say."

And what was that, exactly? For the most part, it consisted of music that Guen and her two friends referred to as "chick music with an edge." This was the genre of music known as the Neo-Confessional period, which basically originated with British singer, songwriter, musician and choreographer Kate Bush in the late seventies and eighties, and germinated in the nineties and early two-thousands with female artists such as Tori Amos, Jewel, Paula Cole and Vanessa Carlton. The girls would create their own arrangements of songs by these and similar artists and experiment with their own compositions. They were fond of making up their own chord structures and rhythms and "faking" instead of playing exact notation. Feeling what a song sounded like instead of playing it in a certain prescribed key signature was another hallmark of Joyce Carol Oates.

"Don't trust notation. Medieval monks didn't know how to rock." (Connie)

"A song isn't learned, it's discovered." (Guen)

"There's only two ways to play a song. The wrong way, and your way." (Yarra)

The girls, as can be seen, were fond of key phrases that described their musical philosophy at ages twelve to fourteen. But, more than just passing adolescent whims, the raw spirit of these beliefs and the concepts behind them stayed with Guen, Yarra and Connie throughout high school and beyond. In truth, however, JCO was more of an experimental garage band laboratory than a live band, and the only ones that were actually hearing what the hypothetical musical voice of Joyce Carol Oates sounded like and what she would have to say, besides the girls themselves, were their parents and some close friends and relatives on occasion.

But somehow, all-in-all, JCO worked. And for two years, even if not actually heard,

Joyce Carol Oates spoke.

Author's Note

(Ignore spell-check lines in story)
This is one story in a collection of short stories I am writing, entitled Amnesty Tales. Amnesty Tales centers around characters in my second novel (unpublished), entitled Girls in White Dresses.