BEST OF THE BEACH: XYZPDQ’s rock ‘n’ roll dream seems bound to come true
by Mark McDermott Unlikely dreams are a part of rock and roll mythology, from a 12-year-old Elvis sneaking into the Black areas of Tupelo, Mississippi, to hear the blues played at the juke joints, to Eddie Van Halen leaving his classical piano behind to play electric guitar with his brother at their Pasadena elementary school’s lunch break, calling themselves the Broken Combs. Salem Meade has an even more unlikely story about how she came to rock ‘n’ roll. When she was three years old, her mother, Kelly, wanted her to learn Mandarin Chinese. She found Salem a tutor, but those lessons had unexpected results. “He was attempting to teach me how to speak Chinese, but he had a piano in his apartment, and after our lessons I loved to just fool around with the notes on the piano,” Salem recalled. “And then one day he told my mom, ‘Oh, she’s great on the piano, but Chinese, not so much. He happened to be a Juilliard trained violinist.” Hence the Mandarin Chinese lessons shifted to violin and piano. She wrote her first song at age 5. “Music is definitely more my thing,” Meade said. That led to Meade picking up the red Squire guitar that had been kicking around her house growing up, which…
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