We so rarely leave the house on a Saturday night, owing to a high concentration of loonies, pissheads, and pisshead loonies on the streets, that this week was quite an occasion for us. Goldsmiths hosted a choir of Gospel, Jazz, and Soul singers, and a friend was involved. After a quick drink in the Rosie we took seats in the Great Hall and watched as a stream of statuesque, beautiful people streamed onto the stage. Our friend Andy was there too 😉
The first couple of tunes were pure Gospel and my first experience of such an event. I had goosebumps throughout and it was so uplifting I could clearly feel the
power of the Looarrrrd!
The rest of the night consisted of subgroups of the choir singing in a range of musical styles and generally proving themselves to be superb singers.
The second half provided an opportunity for the audience to loose interest in the band, who had, until then, supplied a solid and effective backing to the singers. None of them were bad musicians, in fact they were all really pretty good, but the cracks were highlighted during their overlong intro to the second half.
They played the backing to “Rappers Delight” and it all sounded great for a while except that the bass player couldn’t do that tricky bit around the 4th bar and instead cheated by playing only the easy bits, but hey, he was young and what he did attempt was executed well.
The problems began when they started doing solos. The guitarist, despite looking like an enthusiastic curate, evidently decided he was Jimi fucking Hendrix and went off on one. After the rest of the solos including the obligatory dull drum solo, Jimi was pumped and decided it was his turn to take the stage. Swapping his electric guitar for a miced-up-classical he proudly pranced into the center of the stage and began to have a fit. I pulled out my phone and had managed to dial the second ‘9’ when I realised that his sporadic, spasmodic, behaviour was part of his turn! He was slapping all up his thighs, on the guitar and on his bum, and then started hitting the strings all over the neck whilst adopting a guitar-hero gurn. Michele and I grimaced at each other and then tried again to regard the act with anything but tragic pity. But still he continued. He got a bit of a tune out of the strings by hitting them but persisted to the extent that Michele and I were having trouble keeping our act together. Let me tell you, if her sphincter was as tightly clamped as mine we should both be going to the doctor tomorrow. It was a cross between gut-ripping comedy and tearful misery. About halfway through, Michele managed to whisper “yeah yeah we get the general idea” in my ear which resulted in a sudden, fundamentel, loss of gas.
Shockingly, when he finished his turn, there was a standing ovation! It seems that we were the only people in the considerable crowd not clapping. Now, the fact that we both understood each other is a good sign for our marriage, but the fact we were the only ones who did is a tad worrying; what if we’re just freaks ? Well, neither of us do cocaine and neither of us have a tattoo (even a subtle little tattoo that means something special just to us) so we’re freakish for London 30-somethings. Oh no! I don’t want to be a freak! But it’s quite nice to have another freak to share the experience with.
