FOUNDER AND FIRST MUSIC DIRECTOR

AS I RECALL, THINGS BEGAN IN THE SPRING OF '73, my junior year. Mimi and I had talked about forming Princeton's first co-ed singing group during the year. I'm not sure who first came up with the idea; we talked a lot, often about music and our singing groups, and with that undergraduate sense of self-importance and history that seems to go with the place. I was music director of the Nassoons at the time, she was the founder and somewhat embattled director of the Tigerlilies, which had now existed for three years and was beginning to chafe at its inspirational leader. We liked the idea of getting together a few of the best people from the other groups to try out this new concept: Jeff Parsonnet from the Footnotes, Ben Indig and Dan Dempsey of the Nassoons, Debbie Petty from the Tigerlilies, Charlene Cosman from the world of real singers, and a few others I should not be forgetting. A few trials were made that spring with this proto-group in Blair Arch. The repertoire was culled from classical music (Morley, Debussy, Ravel, the Bach Prelude WTC #24), rearrangements from other groups (Too Much of Nothing had its inception as a too-wide and difficult Nassoon arrangement), and bits of arrangements I had just begun (Ticket to Ride if I remember aright). We left for summer with great expectations and auditions plans fully laid-out for Freshman Week.

The repertoire was the main problem. That summer I finished reworking Too Much of Nothing, and rearranged Try to Remember from a high school arrangement. New arrangements were Stoned Soul Picnic and Ticket to Ride, with Sam coming along later in the year. The Nassoons noticed the shift of effort, for they only gained one new one from me that summer, Get Around. Just what happened in the fall I can't recall, but we must have had an archsing to launch our auditions. They took place in the basement of Woolworth. I remember Pearl Seril coming in the door, and suddenly I realized that these were freshmen, and that if this group got off the ground, it would be around for a while.

The fall was rough. We had revolutionary ideas, like "no director," and later, "everybody direct their own arrangements." Senior theses took their toll, mostly on Mimi, while freshman growing pains were everywhere evident. And we had no name -- Mixed Company was bland, Mixed Nuts was absurd. Sessions devoted to finding a name were frustrating; people started to suggest names of food products as they got punchy (Light and Lively, Firm and Fruity?). We held a lottery for a name; did we really advertise the prize as "Submit the winning name and take the group-member of your choice out on a date?" Maybe that's my imagination. I don't think we got a name out of the event, but we did sing in the student center hyphen, and I remember thinking that we were really making music at that point.

Somehow the name Katzenjammer came up, was overlooked briefly, and then considered again. I looked it up in the OED, and got excited about the confusion of meanings:

1.distress, depression
2.a hangover, or symptoms of one
3.a discordant clamor
4.enfants terribles, as in the Katzenjammer Kids from the cartoon strip.

Images of wailing, drinking, trouble-making, cats, jamming, Katz: a little degenerate maybe, but otherwise perfect. That was it! We imagined ourselves the youngest but most musical group on campus. The repertoire continued to include both popular and classical music. I remember copying out some Weelkes madrigals, one of which had a crazy cross-relation, the subject of most of my work ever since. Arrangements were made tough, on purpose, to challenge our enfants terribles. Ben and Scott DeVeaux began adding some, as did Bob Cohen when he finally stopped fussing with it. I eventually wrote one in response, Mercy, equally fussy and difficult, for Tina's Janis Joplin side. I'm not sure these two were ever performed again.

By the spring, we may well have become the most musical group on campus. There were Reunions gigs, some raised eyebrows from Nassoon alums, and an amazing archsing in Blair. For the first time ever, I felt comfortable giving an announcement in front of an audience; I could represent this group without holding back, because I had created it.

Or had I? Princeton is a funny place. Things happen there that don't seem to happen elsewhere. Music sounds a certain way only in an arch during Reunions Friday night. I do feel that the creation of the Katzenjammers, and the music we made together, was the height of my Princeton career. But without those arches, without all those other people, the models of the Nassoons and Footnotes, the Princeton ambiance, etc., Katzenjammers could not have been. And then I know very few of you, for I was only in the group for a year. The real history of the group lies in the fact that it continued and grew, and you know a lot more about that than I.