School concerts, recitals, plays,
performances, gigs; whatever rocks your metaphysical boat, these are the stuff
of nightmares. The parents may sit there, weeping with joy, tears streaming
down their proud faces as their children stand there singing songs so terribly
out of tune that any normal person hair wouldn’t just stand on its end, but
jump off and move to Hawaii. If you’ve ever been to school, which I’m going to
guess is a yes, then you know what I’m talking about. Once or twice a year –
maybe even three if you were unlucky, your school would be united in its
purpose to bring joy to the parents hearts and fear to the students minds. Sure
you may sit there now, smiling as you look at those old photo albums with those
pictures of you before you hit puberty and stopped smiling. Some of them will
have you, bright faced and with open mouths as you sing along to those generic
songs. But are you red in the face because of the makeup, or embarrassment? Is
your mouth open because you singing, or screaming? OK that last one was a bit strong
and also very unlikely – they weren’t that bad.
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| This was the best I could find... |
The concerts would feature every
child in the school taking the main stage for two hours for two nights running, with
weeks of preparation. In the early years we had truly horrible teachers who monitored
our training. It was like a concentration camp in that room. The years would
sit in lines facing the front, the teachers walking down the isles – glaring angrily
at any child who shifted their neck or sang out of tune. As the years went by
though, things got better – and not because I got older. Those teachers who
grew up in the early 20th century left the school, the music
teachers they hired who at best had got a B were thrown back into university.
We got teachers who would, instead, pat us on the head if we did well, and told
us how to improve through not staring with murder in their eyes. Instead of
those music teachers we had my dad. But he wouldn’t just do the music.
You see all those videos out
there for LCG, they’re all edited by him. Music isn’t his only forte. As well
as helping to play the sound loud enough so it drowned out the wining but not
so loud that it sounded like we could all sing like Take That (which to be
honest wouldn’t really be an improvement), he would also record the footage of
us all, red faced either from that make up or the embarrassment. He’d then edit
it all together, the timings right – the colours all matching. The footage from
all three cameras were mixed together to give the appearance that we had the
BBC in there. This footage would be burned to a CD, and then sold to the 5
families that actually cared. But it was the thought that counted.
Glossary
Years - Grades (I don't know what years are in grades, but I know there's a difference)
BBC - British Broadcasting Corporation
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