| 1966 was the year Simon & Garfunkel released Sounds of Silence, The Mothers of Invention startled the music world with Help I’m a Rock, Brian Wilson began putting together “Good Vibrations”, and the Beatles were becoming more popular than Jesus. That same year Elva Connes Miller, a/k/a Mrs. Miller, hit the airwaves with her Greatest Hits: a collection of pop tunes ranging from “A Hard Day’s Night” and “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” to “Chim Chim Cher-ee” delivered in a warbling faux classical style, rarely in tune. Her album sold 250,000 copies in 3 weeks. She appeared on The Tonight Show, Ed Sullivan, Art Linkletter’s House Party, Laugh-In, and in the film The Cool Ones with Roddy MacDowell. Nearly 40 years later, the ultra nerdy William Hung achieved the same sort of unlikely popularity on American Idol with an enthusiastic and dreadfully out of tune rendition of Ricky Martin’s “She Bangs.” We all have a nagging little voice that tells us we might faking it, that we’re not really as competent as we pretend to be at doing what we are passionate about. The “fake police,” as singer Amanda Palmer calls them, are always waiting at our door . . . READ MORE |
