Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 117574 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 588(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 392(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117574 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 588(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 392(@300wpm)
At a small get-together at Ryan’s about four months ago, I wound up chatting with Fish and eventually drunkenly telling him my big idea to give my wife a personalized boy-band song as her 40th birthday gift. I only told Fish about my big idea to ask him if he knew anyone I could hire to help me bring the idea to life. But to my surprise, Fish immediately said he’d do it. For free. For the fun of it. When I protested, Fish insisted. He handed me his phone, right then and there, and ordered me to sing all my song ideas into it. I didn’t have the whole song fleshed out at that point, but I had lots of ideas and snippets. Stuff I’d been singing to Charlotte for years, here and there. So, I sang them into Fish’s phone and handed it back to him.
Two months later, while Fish was here in Seattle for his mom’s birthday, he called me and told me to come over to her house, pronto. When I got there, I was blown away. He had a full-on music studio set up in her garage, and from those silly little snippets of vocals I’d made for him months before, he’d created an entire song, except for vocals—one with music that sounded as good as any real song you’d hear on the radio.
We fleshed out the lyrics together. And when that was done, Fish set up a microphone for me, and patiently led me through the process of laying down vocals on the track. Seriously, it was one of the best days of my life. I felt like a Make-A-Wish kid.
After that task was done, Fish got to work. He bathed my amateurish vocals in autotune and other production magic until they sounded legit professional. He added his own vocals to mine to fill them out and make them pop and he also added some background harmonies for good measure. Seriously, by the time Fish was finished producing the track, I almost believed "Auggie Loves Charlotte” was an actual boy band from the 90s.
Originally, my big idea was to awaken Charlotte on her 40th birthday by pressing play on whatever boy band song I managed to come up with. But once I heard the finished song, I scrapped that boring plan and came up with a bigger, better one: wrangling my very own boy band to perform the song at Charlotte’s birthday party. And now, here we are. Auggie Loves Charlotte, comprised of me, Max, Ryan, Fish, and a friend of Ryan’s named Henn.
I became friendly with Henn last year during Ryan’s birthday boy’s trip, so I knew he’d be a great addition to the boy band. He’s the kind of guy who’s always up for anything, especially if it would involve him making a fool of himself on a dance floor. So, that was that. I asked each of the guys to help me, and they all enthusiastically said yes. Well, okay, Max had to be cajoled a bit. But in the end, his wife, Marnie, convinced him for me. And just like that, about six weeks ago, all five members of my boy band were finally in place.
Finding the right choreography for our boy band to perform, and then figuring out a way for everyone to learn the dance in time for the party was a bit of a challenge. For one thing, the band is physically scattered. Only Ryan and I live in Seattle. For another thing, none of us are professional dancers, so we had to find something simple and easy to do that also fit the song and also could be learned by a bunch of amateurs from watching a video.
Luckily, Ryan’s friend, Henn, is pretty good with computers. He’s in IT. So, once I found a YouTube dance tutorial that looked like a pretty easy routine that was also at the right tempo, Henn kindly overlayed “All Strings Attached” with the dance video and sent it around to the group. From that point forward, I’d done all I could do, other than my part in privately rehearsing. I had to let go of my stress about us probably crashing and burning at the party, and just accept the performance would be what it would be.
The first dance cue comes up in the song. There are still no vocals on the track, but some hard-hitting, staccato chords require some herky-jerky, over-the-top hand motions and poses. I perform them all, on cue—I think?—and the entire crowd, including Charlotte, goes apeshit—which suggests the boy banders just behind me and on either side of me have also hit their cues.
The beat just dropped. Time for those step-together-steps and finger snaps. So far, so good. Phew.
Okay, the vocals are starting now. As the lead singer of Auggie Loves Charlotte, it’s now time for me to start lip-synching, with dramatic flair, while launching into the heart of the dance moves. Here we go.