Perfect Pitch and Perfect Suits

Here’s a video of my two children, AKA Unorganized Hancock, appearing on The Breakfast Club on Z 105.5 a couple of weeks ago. The host is a genial fellow named Matty. The woman’s voice you hear in the background is Bonnie McHugh, the station manager, who took this video with her phone. She’s a peach.

The kids enjoy appearing on the show. Nice people like nice people, I guess. This is the third time they’ve been on. The radio station is over an hour away from our house, and the show is on early in the morning, so we have to roust the kids out of bed extra early to make it on time. You’ll notice the young feller yawning and stretching to illustrate the hour. He has Perfect Pitch, sometimes known as Absolute Pitch. He can identify any note he hears without any other reference. He can even do it with ambient noises out in the world, like bird songs or sirens. They didn’t get around to it in the video, but you can play multiple notes on the piano, and he can tell you all of them. It’s a very unusual ability. Of course his father, in his infinite wisdom, taught him how to play the drums.

My sons have a certain amount of aplomb, I must say. The little fellow, Garrett, is about to be put on the spot, but he’s never nervous before a show. When he was only ten, the boys played under a little tent outside the Pickup Cafe in Skowhegan, Maine. They played one set, and then took a breather. There was a little courtyard behind the restaurant where the kids took their break. When they returned, the little fellow handed my wife one of his teeth. He had pulled it out while they waited around. Then he sat down and did the second set.

The big one is poised, too. He does get nervous before shows, but he doesn’t reveal it. I can tell, though. The boys entered a contest sponsored by Z 105 and the Lewiston-Auburn Fighting Spirit hockey team to write their fight song. There was a battle of the bands to decide the winner. Miles, the big one, had mononucleosis, and was very sick during the weeks before the show. His first day out of bed in three weeks, he appeared on Z 105, and the next day, he played at the Lewiston Colisee, and the boys won the contest. No one knew he had been sick. But I knew what an effort it was for him.

After the Perfect Pitch interview you see in this video, the radio station hired Miles. I knew they were nice people. Now I know they’re smart people, too.

[Update: Many thanks to Donald P. from California for his generous contribution to our PayPal tipjar. It is much appreciated]