Me on the left and Pam at a cabaret she arranged at The Slipper Room, New York
Singing has been a big issue in my family. From as early
as I can remember I was forced to sing. Oh come, come Jane 'forced' is a strong word isn't it? Not in my book I say, twitching nervously. I have been blessed (or cursed?) with a robust singing voice, and since my
mother passed it on to me she thinks she gets a say in what I do with it. Singing was the be all and end all to my mum. For God's sake don't tell her about this bloody post. Look mum if you do happen to read this, I love you it's just some of your hopes and wishes for me that were hard to take OK? Anyway the pressure was on from the start. I am the eldest of three girls and
since Pam came in last she kind of got overlooked in the singing department not
to mention everything else. A
memory that encapsulates this for me is Pam as a baby in a baby bouncer. They’d just come in fashion so Pam got
to test-drive one. She would droop over in this contraption as she fell asleep and just well hang there. A little baby hanging by a thread. Anyway being gentle by nature Pam didn't have a loud screaming voice so she mostly wasn't heard in our family.
I’ve got to the point in life where
I’ve stopped singing. It has lost
all its joy for me. I got all the praise and the pressure around it. I had a panic attack when I was seven whilst singing my first solo at Sunday school. It resulted in me singing the same line over and over as I watched the expectant grin on my dad's face turn into a look of horror. Then a teacher kindly led me away. This event may well have been a pivotal moment regarding my future as a singer. Anyway I’ve been
pushed too much and now singing sticks in my throat. I’ve lost
the will to sing. If I hear my parents complain one more time because I am not on the X Factor (English version of American Idol) I think I'll have to be locked away in a padded cell. This is how I feel at the mention of the S word now...
Pam on the other hand didn’t realize she could sing
until she was in her thirties. She
didn’t even try to sing before that, well it wasn’t her place, she was the
flute and piano girl. So one
night at our parent's house mum was watching the Three Tenors on TV, her then favourite. Pam started to sing along in the next
room and proceeded to surprise herself by how good she sounded. Mum shouted out, 'Is that our Jane singing?' To which Pam replied, 'No it’s me!' That was the start of Pam singing and she didn’t stop. I was
already well on my way to my current dried up singer on the shelf self so as
far as I was concerned she could have it. You see there was also the small matter of us being a highly competitive
family so this could have been a problem. But since it took the pressure off me I was delighted. Although it was becoming increasingly
difficult for me to muster enthusiasm for the business of singing no matter who
was doing it. I had to snicker to
myself at parties during Pam’s coming out years though. ‘Friends’ of the family would strongly
imply in my general direction that Pam was by far the better singer. That old competitive spirit rearing its ugly
head again. Who was competing? Not me, I’d had a belly full. Still it was nice of them to remind
me what a precocious, big-headed singer I used to be thanks to the grandiose
praise that had been lavished on me by my parents in their hope that I live out
their dreams and become the next Barbra Streisand. Funny thing, it turns out Barbra
suffers from nerves singing on stage too. Have you
seen the film Shine? Let’s just
say I relate. Not that I am in any way as gifted as this you understand...just the film is about too much pressure on him from his father..
Anyway Pam sang and she sang and she sang after that. Like a bird. She could sing like a coloratura and go much higher and
faster on the trills than I could. This might have had something to do with the fact that she could make her eyes go very fast from side to side too. Quite amazing to see, like a nature spirit. She made lots of opportunities for herself
to sing. She joined a band for a while in New York, sang in church every week and in the last year before she
died she joined a dinner theatre cabaret in Newport. She could always be heard singing and whistling in the house
something I never did. She could
sing opera and even got into a prestigious music college in Leeds, which she decided not to pursue but that’s another story. She loved to sing that’s the top and bottom of it. She loved it, she wanted it and she did
it. I’m so glad about that now.
I have been transferring DVD tapes onto my computer, the ones that aren't getting chewed up by my stupid old camera that is. Oh I have to save them! There is a lot of footage of Pam that I can't transfer for fear of ruining it all completely. I do have some though like the Christmas I spent with her at her place in Long Island in 2002. Watching this film is heart-breaking. It is like she's just walked into the room, as I watch I feel how totally and utterly whacko it is that she is, you know... dead. WTF? Honestly I can watch it for a minute and then I have to turn it off because it is so freaky. That Christmas, just the two of us, I spotted an old Jackson Five Cd so I put it on and started singing along loudly, 'Whoooo's lovin you..' I was in the Jackson Five fan club when I was a kid and used to sing my heart out to them. So off I bellowed somewhat territorially, well I had been in the fan club! Pam became furious, her eyes flashed. She went into her 'I'm the youngest and I'm always last in line' stuff. Like I said at the beginning of this story, singing is an issue in my family.