So last week, one of the homies hits me up and says ‘Hey Mr. Actor, I need someone to sing the anthem for my event.  What do you think?’

Now, as with many things, once I committed (through professional necessity if nothing else) to get myself up to being a ‘competent singer’, I’m not terrible anymore.  I can sing pretty much all of my favorite songs once I bring them into my vocal range.

Vocal range.  Part of understanding the craft of singing is hearing the national anthem, and even without formal training, saying to myself, “I hear key changes, and octave jumps in there.  Might be out of my league.’

But only one way to know for sure.  So I closed all the windows in Aziz Manor, and gave it my best effort.

And I sounded, a little something, like this…

And after embarrassing myself to the point I couldn’t look at my own face in the mirror for a good hour, I asked one of my friends if she was interested, and she did a hell of a job.

The lesson, as Charley Steiner correctly says, is know your limitations people.