I sing for Thee Midniters, it’s kinda crazy, they’re a legendary East L.A. rock and brown-eyed soul band from the early 1960s. I was 16 when I finally played their album from my Pop’s record collection and they fit my soul, my voice, and my dreams. For some reason, I always passed it up because my parents had these other great, East Side Story and Golden Oldies volumes that featured multiple bands. I was a balladeer at heart and loved to sing along to everything, even Mom’s Johnny Mathis, Nat King Cole, and Sinatra albums. I always felt I was born in the wrong decade and loved everything about the 1940s, 50s, and 60s from the music to fashion. All my friends loved 80s punk, rap, and new wave and later on it was alternative and grunge, but I wished for a time machine to go back in time to sing with those bands. The walls were thin in my house and I did a lot of singing in my head but would sing out loud when everyone was gone. It took years but eventually I built the courage to sing for my family and friends and when I was old enough, I finally found the oldies bands. They were in skinny dark little bars that dotted throughout the Eastside and I was always the youngest one in the room by at least 20-25 years. These little bars were dark. You could barely see in them, except for the lit stages and the bands. I’d drink and listen and if anyone asked what I did, I told them I was a singer even though I’d never been in a band. This is a much longer story, but when I was 19 years old, I had made a proclamation into the night sky, and said, “wouldn’t it be something to sing for Thee Midniters in Valentines concert, Thee Midniters, their songs,” and in 2006, I took the stage as a Midniter at the Valentines Super Love Jam, in San Jose, singing for thousands. Here I’m donning some dark sunglasses before singing at The Greek Theatre in 2008, but I might choose another image. I hope you’ll listen to Thee Midniters someday if you’ve never heard of them before.
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