Entertainment For Lively Minds
Children's choirs.......
Prompted by the appearance of one, on one of the less memorable tracks on the coverdisc this month, (I forget which as I bin it after ripping the tracks I like, but I would hazard a guess it will have been) "Playground Hustle", I am asking is there ever a situation where it works well? I don't refer to the yukfests of St Winifreds school choir, but to where random kids are brought in to add "weight" to the song. Whether it's the memory curdle of "Grocer Jack, Grocer jack etc etc" to "We don't need no edu-kashun", it is all unmitigated tosh. Trying to understand the "Great Man" (copyright Collins, A) I yesterday sought out Morrisseys greatest hits, quite good actually, but one track is completely marred by yowling kids, or what sounds like them. Why, why, why? I don't even like the kids at the end of Wizzard at Christmas, but I guess that is the next to nearest acceptable example.
Unless any of you know better?
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Radiohead's In Rainbows opener features a school choir cheering. That's pretty good.
also, the start of "You can't always get what you want" by the Rolling Stones sounds like children to me, too
Childrens choirs
Don't have any problem with them at all.
Strikes me somebody got dressed in the dark and put on the grumpy trousers by mistake.
By mistake?
Oh, got a whole rail of them, have you?
I see.
Many of us
rarely wear any other strides these days, David.
I have the matching
curmudgeonly cardigan as well.
and the Sarcastic Socks
as well?
Worn as part of my tribute act:
The Luke-Warm Chili Peppers.
Good and Bad
Good example: The Pretty Things - All Fired Up (ok, it's more a bunch of kids shouting than a choir)
Toe-Curling: Kiss - God Gave Rock and Roll to You. How to take an awful song and turn the horror up to 11.
On a related note, I was in my primary school choir. My abiding memory is of the Christmas concert where, as instructed, we started swaying as we sang a calypso carol. The adults in the congregation started sniggering in an isn't-it-cute fashion, and I'd never felt such a twat in all my 10 years of life.
The following year I took up the invitation, issued during assembly, to leave the choir (I hadn't realised it was meant to be rhetorical) and almost everyone else followed me. The ended up with a choir of 3 people, and had to do some hasty recruiting among the lower year groups. This is an example of leadership which I have failed to match in adult life, but I'm still very proud of it.
Check out...
...the choir on Yo La Tengo's cover of Sun Ra's 'Nuclear War'. It's fantastic.
My best mate
sings with various choirs. Session work she's done in that field has included Damon Albarn's Good Bad And The Queen and the soundtrack to the more recent Star Wars films. A great choir can be a wonderful thing, and when the choirs are in full flight that's exactly what it is.
Gospel choirs are my peeve, (not for themselves, a great gospel choir is a mighty thing) but the way they're wheeled out to add that 'uplift' and soul, like some sort of vocal cross your heart bra. See: any X Factor for the ultimate bad use of a gospel choir.
Meanwhile: I like Grocer Jack..
Proper choirs I have no problem with
or indeed massed choral vocals, whether in Atom Heart Mother, on some Jackie Leven songs, on fave Runrig song Pog an Earraich or the last Willard Grant Conspiracy LP, tho' the adult choir in "You can't always git what you wa-ant" is rather too po-faced for me. It's the bloody kids taht get up my nose.
Gospel choirs…
… like bagpipes, are the last refuge of the uninspired.
Tender
... by Blur
a great justification of gospel choirs on songs
Ride
It works on this....
http://www.teenmusic.com/video/view/id/8645/Ride-I-Dont-Know-Where-It-Co...
Unrepentant do-what harmonies
Bloody hell, Austin,
I clicked on that to see what it was.
Silver lining: it reminded me of the other week, when I saw a young woman with a t-shirt bearing the slogan "I said no to drugs...but they wouldn't listen."
Clearly contained within this
is the inspiration for John Barnes Chuck D-shaming rap on World in Motion...
Sorry, slightly off-topic, I know.
Talk Talk
Happiness is Easy on The Colour of Spring album has a children's choir. Can't make my mind up if it's upper or a downer of a song but the choir adds nothing but good to it.
You Can't Always Get What You Want
That's lovely.
As is The Happy Wanderer by the Obenkirchen Children's Choir.
I win
Slight variation
Communal singing’s a great thing
Hymns and carols, football crowds. It’s a big part of what music should be about. And I love a children’s choir. This is just wonderful.
I love a children's choir, too…
… I always assumed there was one on this, although the 'children' look somewhat elderly here:
This, however, is the real deal:
Enjoyed that daft Heino fella, David
Never heard of him before so I looked him up. According to Wiki he now runs a cafe in a small town called Bad Munstereifel. What a great name for a town.
Crazy name, crazy guy!
Here's one of my favourite Heino clips, (which apparently prompted David Lettermen's quip: "Today we sing with Heino, tomorrow we conquer the world.”
No more to be said, really!
Yours truly, confused ...
"Morrissey's greatest hits, quite good actually, but one track is completely 'marred' by yowling kids".
Does this mean it was actually improved by the proficient, light-of-touch retro-jangling of infant axe-men. Oh alright then, as you were...
No-one's mentioned Bob Dylan in a while - and the home-made video tribute really does do it justice. A hefty bucket or similar receptacle required around 2.17 ...
Hefty Bucket
Is that for Dylan to carry the tune in?
And on the subject of Morrissey and children's choirs...
Panic by the Smiths.
Given the subject matter
I'm not sure a children's chorus was quite appropriate here.
The Dylan tribute above
I watched it all - and I'm now still staring at the blank screen - minutes afterwards - unable to speak, unable to move.
I had no idea things had ever got this bad. I mean people would wink knowingly and say "Wiggle, Wiggle" occasionally ...but this?
Strawbs
Thank You from Grave New World a bit cloying but the piano sound is glorious in a 'dusty school room with golden sunlight filtering through the windows catching the chalk dust at the end of term start of long hot yard went on forever summer holiday' day, kind of way.
David Bedford - Rime of The Ancient Mariner
I've always liked the school choir on part 2 of David Bedford's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner", an extract from which also appeared on Mike Oldfield's "Boxed" set (as he plays guitar on it) under the title "The Rio Grande".
gb
Congregation
Softly Whispering I Love You