Continuation of last night's story
Where was I?
Oh yeah. Cue Paul Simon.
Okay, so we (meaning Ian) had written the play. We'd figured out how the hell we were supposed to combine those songsnto a coherent whole.
Now we had to rehearse it and perform it. So we start rehearsing. Now we are a class of nine. Arthur and Greg are tone deaf. Not that Arthur sings loudly enough to be heard more than three inches away but take your blessings where you may. Eren is merely passable, Chris is nasal in the extreme and SBOF, well that kid is not only tone deaf, he is to rhythm what tax codes are to clarity.
Ian appeared one day in music class and handed a note to the teacher which essentially said that his parents said he didn't have to do the play. His parents wrote a note getting him out of it. We were all so jealous.
Doug said a couple days later that he had a soccer match that night and simply couldn't make it. I found out two months later that he just lied. I wish I'd thought of it.
Emily can sing on tune. She gets no volume, something that could be corrected, but she found a clever escape from supreme humiliation. She volunteered to play the piano. Offstage. Where no one could see her.
So now it's me, Eren, Greg, SBOF, Arthur and Chris. And the drums. Right. I forgot to mention the drums. You see our music teacher had a thing about drums that is a story for another time.
So the Paul Simon song goes something like this:
Hoooo-oooomeless! Hoooomeless!
bang-bang bang-bang BANG!
bang-bang bang-bang BANG!
Homeless homeless
moonlight sailing on a midnight lake
and we are homeless homeless
moonlight sailing on a midnight lake
bang-bang bang-bang BANG!
bang-bang bang-bang BANG!
bang-bang bang-bang BANG!
bang-bang bang-bang BANG!
bang-bang bang-bang BANG!
bang-bang bang-bang BANG!
BANG!
Something like that anyway.
You know how sometimes you say something and another person takes it totally the wrong way?
We're leaving our chunk of rehearsal time and I jokingly remark that since we're singing Modern Major General maybe Greg, who's supposed to sort of pretend to be said general, should maybe wear a hat. One of those newspaper triangle hats. We could paint it and decorate it and stuff.
Have you ever seen one of those hats painted black with a red stripe along the edges, scary pink plastic feathers glued to the front and sparkles acting as accents along its length? No?
Try watching one of your classmates wear it with a glee normally reserved for fashion fiends with prada. Watch him dance, unaware of the fact that he looks like a dork from the ninth circle of Hell in a paper hat.
We had no boom box. We used my wimpy little tape player instead for Eren to play the recalcitrant teen with.
Performance night rolled around. The younger grades performed. Then the class one grade behind us performed. They did the expurgated version of Singin' In the Rain. Megan was a professional calibre singer. The rest of the class acted well. Hugh was a frickin genius onstage.
Then it was our turn. We began. We sang the song of the general and Greg danced. We were off-key, off-tempo and off our rockers. SBOF's voice blasted beside me in our little back of the stage chorus.
We waited again and sang When I'm Sixty-Four. Greg put away the hat and danced again. Eren merely looked taken aback and rather grim. I'm surprised he didn't turn all his skill in martial arts to killing Greg at that moment.
I soloed on Yesterday. I still can't listen to it without cringeing. There was silence in the gym and wouldn't you know it, I had a cold. My voice didn't just crack on some of the higher notes, it snapped in two.
Then it was time for the big finale. SBOF swaggered over to the two centrestage and said that world beat was where it was at. We move forward holding our African drums. SBOF opens his mouth and . . . sound issued forth.
Sound like a cat being crammed into a blender.
He sang. We drummed. We sang. We drummed. Then it was over and we took our bows. As practised in rehearsal we turned in a sort of unison-ish movement to indicate the pianist. I could see Emily gesturing wildly from where she hid behind the piano. Telling us no. Pleading with us not to drag her down too.
I smiled, pointed out the location of my friend, bowed and got the hell off that stage.
The fact that there are tapes of that night chills me to the bone.
Oh yeah. Cue Paul Simon.
Okay, so we (meaning Ian) had written the play. We'd figured out how the hell we were supposed to combine those songsnto a coherent whole.
Now we had to rehearse it and perform it. So we start rehearsing. Now we are a class of nine. Arthur and Greg are tone deaf. Not that Arthur sings loudly enough to be heard more than three inches away but take your blessings where you may. Eren is merely passable, Chris is nasal in the extreme and SBOF, well that kid is not only tone deaf, he is to rhythm what tax codes are to clarity.
Ian appeared one day in music class and handed a note to the teacher which essentially said that his parents said he didn't have to do the play. His parents wrote a note getting him out of it. We were all so jealous.
Doug said a couple days later that he had a soccer match that night and simply couldn't make it. I found out two months later that he just lied. I wish I'd thought of it.
Emily can sing on tune. She gets no volume, something that could be corrected, but she found a clever escape from supreme humiliation. She volunteered to play the piano. Offstage. Where no one could see her.
So now it's me, Eren, Greg, SBOF, Arthur and Chris. And the drums. Right. I forgot to mention the drums. You see our music teacher had a thing about drums that is a story for another time.
So the Paul Simon song goes something like this:
Hoooo-oooomeless! Hoooomeless!
bang-bang bang-bang BANG!
bang-bang bang-bang BANG!
Homeless homeless
moonlight sailing on a midnight lake
and we are homeless homeless
moonlight sailing on a midnight lake
bang-bang bang-bang BANG!
bang-bang bang-bang BANG!
bang-bang bang-bang BANG!
bang-bang bang-bang BANG!
bang-bang bang-bang BANG!
bang-bang bang-bang BANG!
BANG!
Something like that anyway.
You know how sometimes you say something and another person takes it totally the wrong way?
We're leaving our chunk of rehearsal time and I jokingly remark that since we're singing Modern Major General maybe Greg, who's supposed to sort of pretend to be said general, should maybe wear a hat. One of those newspaper triangle hats. We could paint it and decorate it and stuff.
Have you ever seen one of those hats painted black with a red stripe along the edges, scary pink plastic feathers glued to the front and sparkles acting as accents along its length? No?
Try watching one of your classmates wear it with a glee normally reserved for fashion fiends with prada. Watch him dance, unaware of the fact that he looks like a dork from the ninth circle of Hell in a paper hat.
We had no boom box. We used my wimpy little tape player instead for Eren to play the recalcitrant teen with.
Performance night rolled around. The younger grades performed. Then the class one grade behind us performed. They did the expurgated version of Singin' In the Rain. Megan was a professional calibre singer. The rest of the class acted well. Hugh was a frickin genius onstage.
Then it was our turn. We began. We sang the song of the general and Greg danced. We were off-key, off-tempo and off our rockers. SBOF's voice blasted beside me in our little back of the stage chorus.
We waited again and sang When I'm Sixty-Four. Greg put away the hat and danced again. Eren merely looked taken aback and rather grim. I'm surprised he didn't turn all his skill in martial arts to killing Greg at that moment.
I soloed on Yesterday. I still can't listen to it without cringeing. There was silence in the gym and wouldn't you know it, I had a cold. My voice didn't just crack on some of the higher notes, it snapped in two.
Then it was time for the big finale. SBOF swaggered over to the two centrestage and said that world beat was where it was at. We move forward holding our African drums. SBOF opens his mouth and . . . sound issued forth.
Sound like a cat being crammed into a blender.
He sang. We drummed. We sang. We drummed. Then it was over and we took our bows. As practised in rehearsal we turned in a sort of unison-ish movement to indicate the pianist. I could see Emily gesturing wildly from where she hid behind the piano. Telling us no. Pleading with us not to drag her down too.
I smiled, pointed out the location of my friend, bowed and got the hell off that stage.
The fact that there are tapes of that night chills me to the bone.