Mariah Carey goes back to school
Mariah Carey played a surprise concert for fans at her former junior high school in the small Long Island, N.Y., community of Greenlawn on Saturday night. Carey, who also attended nearby Harborfields High, performed at the Oldfield Middle School in front of roughly 900 students packed into the school gym. Another 800 watched the performance on a giant video screen in the auditorium. Students from both Harborfields and Oldfield were issued tickets.
According to Dr. J. Lev, the Deputy Superintendent of Schools for the district, Carey's handlers had contacted the school about a week before with an offer to do the show. The school, in turn, gave the students two days notice and requested that they keep the pending performance under wraps.
Lev reports that the activities lasted from 7:30 to 10 p.m. Although she only performed eight songs, Carey indulged in much onstage banter, talked seriously to the students about issues such as Columbine, and took breaks to mingle with the football team and other fans. Fans say she signed hundreds of autographs and that there were no security problems.
Carey also brought three of her old teachers onto the stage, including her guidance counselor, a junior high social studies teacher and her high school math teacher. She even signed a desk for the school. She told the crowd that during all her years in school, she had always wanted to write on a desk, and scrawled "Mariah Carey was here" with a marker she later tossed into the audience. However, she still wasn't defacing school property - according to Lev, she had bought the desk herself.
Carey, 29, graduated from Harborfields in 1987 with average grades. She was already pursuing a music career at that time, and often skipped school in favor of singing with her brother's band, earning her the nickname "Mirage" in honor of her no-shows. Within days of her graduation, she moved to New York City, eventually linking up with record exec Tommy Mottola. The rest is history (as is her relationship with Mottola). Carey went on to become the top-selling female vocalist of the Nineties.
At press time, Carey was scheduled to travel with twenty fans on a specially equipped 737 for a mini in-store and press tour coinciding with Tuesday's release of her latest album, Rainbow. Carey and her entourage start in New York on Tuesday (Nov. 2), continue to Chicago Nov. 3, then on to Los Angles Nov. 5. (Rolling Stone Magazine)
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