The performance aspect of his career all started in CRNA school, when he and some friends formed the Laryngospasms, a song parody performance group. The name was an inside joke, he says: A laryngospasm is an involuntary spasm of the vocal chords that occasionally happens when patients wake up after being under anesthesia. “Patients will make a squeaky sound, and we thought that was a particularly adept name for the group,” Mr. Cozine says.
The group’s first song, “Waking Up is Hard to Do” — a parody of Neil Sedaka’s “Breaking Up is Hard to Do” — was such a hit at the Minneapolis School of Anesthesia that the group wrote more parodies and took the show on the road, booking performances at medical conferences across the country. Eventually, the Laryngospasms started speaking at conferences in addition to singing at them, and the act was born.
Solo career
After about 15 years together, the Laryngospasms broke up — but that did not stop Mr. Cozine from performing. He has since started singing and giving keynote addresses on his own. The content of his one-man show focuses on the fun side of working in healthcare, with other topics, like taking on leadership roles, sprinkled in, depending on the audience.
“What I hope to do when I do a show or a keynote is make the people in the audience feel good about who they are and what they do,” he says, and some of his song parodies reflect that message. One of his newer hits is “Taking Care’s My Business,” a parody of Bachman Turner Overdrive’s “Taking Care of Business,” emphasizes the reason many people got into healthcare in the first place: to take care of patients.
“It satisfies a need to give back, in a way. It sounds silly, but if you see a big audience of physicians and nurses and you know they’re feeling good about who they are, it feels great.”
Mr. Cozine now lives and works on the East Coast but travels far and wide for his performance gigs and still finds time to write songs for his shows while working as a CRNA. In fact, much of his inspiration comes while on the job. “There’s practically always music on in an OR…I get a lot [of ideas] from that,” he says.
Even though he is still coming up with new tunes, Mr. Cozine says the favorite parody he performs is the original, “Waking Up is Hard to Do.” “It’s been a great blessing,” he says. “It has exposed me, the Laryngospasms and our music to a wide section of America and it’s been a great thing.”
Although he has a favorite, he enjoys performing songs as long as one thing happens: “My main requirement is if the song gets people in the audience standing and clapping,” he says. “It’s fun to get people moving and up and out of their seats.”
To view more of Gary Cozine’s songs and videos, visit: http://www.garycozine.com/
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