Catatonic in a Closet
← The band
Portrait of Tracy: long straight blonde hair, pastel sweater, egg-crate foam behind her

Programmed every beat. Never played a real drum.

Catatonic in a Closet · Personnel

Tracy Lindahl

Plays
Drum machine
With the band
1984–1989
As photographed
Long straight blonde hair. Oversized pastel sweater.
Known for
Wrote the tempo on her left hand before every show. It was never wrong.

The story, as filed

Tracy took piano lessons for nine years and quit the week she first used a drum machine. She said it was the first instrument that listened.

She programmed every beat the band ever played, one step at a time, with a pencil and a sheet of graph paper. She kept the sheets in a three-ring binder. The binder survives.

On stage she sat cross-legged or stood at whatever surface was available: a folding table, a card table, once an ironing board.

In 1986 she enrolled at Kettering Hill College and handed a dubbed tape to the student station's overnight disc jockey. That is how the band got on the radio.

Now. Programs lighting cues for a regional theater company in Milwaukee. Has still never played a real drum.

On the tapes