Musician’s message not music

Onstage with Sha Na Na, saxophonist Michael Brown is just another musician. Maybe he'll draw some applause today at the South Point for a solo or two, belting out good-time oldies such as "At the Hop."

Otherwise, Brown is just another working pro, a 45-year-old Pahrump resident trying to pay his bills and hoping Sha Na Na will ride out the recession and get back to full tilt on the state fair and tribal casino circuit.

But at Valley High School on Wednesday? Brown was center stage. He didn't play a note, but he was a riveting speaker with students who never heard of his oldies band. Sha Na Na didn't even come up until near the end.

By then, however, no one was arguing with Brown's post-speech assessment: "You could hear a pin drop."

His 31-year-old wife, Amanda, died four years ago of melanoma, but Brown is "still in fight mode," crusading against tanning parlors and for skin-cancer testing, taking his message into schools with a "Scared Straight"-style, blunt-force presentation.

"Look at my eyes. Do you see the pain? The heartache?" he said after students watched a news segment that first aired on KVBC-TV, Channel 3, with harrowing video of Amanda losing her hair and eventually succumbing to disfiguring tumors. (It's on YouTube as "Amanda's Message").

"I'm still messed up, as you can see," he told students. "Don't let this happen to your father, your mother, your brother or sister," he said. "It hurts too bad."

Teacher Mike Ovens backed up Brown, telling students early detection caught a spot on his nose in time.

School nurse Dale Nelson first made connections with Brown, and said it's rare to have someone so passionate reaching out to visit classes. Brown said the Melanoma Education Foundation didn't even have a chapter in sun-baked Nevada until he started one.

"My goal is to have every middle school and high school signed up for this program," he said. "I'm not going to stop until I get every school signed up."

But here's an irony. If Brown succeeds in growing his program exponentially, there's no way he could do every presentation himself. And Valley High students are likely to tell you it wouldn't be as strong without him.

It's a familiar dilemma of stardom, however odd this form of stardom may be.

"I would quit Sha Na Na if I could do this full time," he said.

Brown worries about making a living, but he's more excited about the day someone gets back to him and says, "You saved my family member."

"I'm waiting for that," he said.

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.