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kate_nepveu) wrote2012-12-03 23:25
group singing memories
I was thinking about this on my drive home and I need to type something that doesn't make my stomach hurt, so:
What's your favorite memory of being in a group singing something? Mine is possibly an only-teenagers kind of thing, being on a school bus for a field trip (I think it was a summer session at Phillips Andover) and someone playing "Under the Bridge" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers on a boom box and everyone, just everyone, joining in for a perfect hair-on-back-of-neck raising moment of all being in sync.
(Yes, that is very teenager, isn't it. Also, I bet kids don't bring music devices with external speakers on school buses any more, even if it's a team bus.)
(I was thinking about this because "Landslide" came on, which was one of the songs we sang outside at Readercon this summer, which got me thinking about what makes a good sing-along song without recorded music, which got me here.)
Anyway. For those of you of an appropriate age, have some nostalgia.
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I was at a water park with a bunch of friends and my small cousins, one of those theme parks so huge that there is a bus/tram thing to take you from the far end back to the parking lot. The tram was playing oldies, and American Pie came on. One of my friends, who was German, said "Oh! This is the first song I ever learned all the lyrics to in English!" and started singing. After a bit I joined in, and my other friends...then, bit by bit, the rest of the people on the tram, who were stranger. By the time we got to the parking lot every single adult on that tram was singing along. I remember the look of awe on my little cousin's face. I don't think she'd ever seen anything like that happen before.
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My two best friends from nerd camp & I used to sing all the time when we were walking around -- they were from NJ & VA, so we used to meet up during school breaks & go to NYC. & I remember the three of us walking down the street in Manhattan, holding hands & singing Indigo Girls' "Least Complicated." In hindsight I cringe at how embarrassingly, bridge-&-tunnel-y (heh) disruptive we must've been, but it was beautiful at the time (even if our singing wasn't necessarily!) b/c we just didn't care, we were just overjoyed to be able to hang out together.
I realize 3 ppl is only just barely under the definition of a group, ha.
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I sit two stories above the street; it's awful quiet here since love fell asleep . . .
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I was in a choir as a teenager, and if it didn't conflict with other plans I'd be in one now, too, so I actually have a lot of warm fuzzies around group singing. It can be a very spiritual/prayerful act for me, often when nothing else is. Try me on "Amazing Grace" sometime.
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At an alumni game about, Jesus, fifteen years ago, now a bunch of guys from classes in the early 80's came back, and had a slightly different practice-- when called on to do a verse, they would occasionally do a verse of a completely different song (there were dozens and dozens of different songs). We resisted this for a while, but at some point gave in, and it was awesome. The rule against repeating verses was still in effect, but we went from one song to another, to another, back to the first, then a fourth, then a couple more from the third, and so on.
That might've been the most fun I ever had singing in a group. And I had a lot of fun with the drunk singing parts of rugby...
(It turns out that the Chief of Protocol when some of those guys were in college was legendarily flaky, and would regularly forget where he was during a song, so they made a virtue out of necessity, and started being flexible about what, exactly, they were singing at any given time. It only lasted a few years, because it's really, really hard to do. It worked that night in the late 90's because it was an alumni event, and the only people who would come back for those took the whole thing very seriously, and knew the songs really well.)
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The other one was at my choir's end-of-year party a while back. One of our sopranos, a pro, was moving to Boston. The hosts had a piano, and shelves of music. As the evening wound to a close, those of us left ended up singing "Age of Aquarius." We'd all had wine and it was hilarious (but well-sung!). We had one first tenor left by then and he really let loose on the high parts. It was AWESOME. We did it several times, just because of the awesome.
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I believe video still exists somewhere of us all singing in a heartfelt manner about the deliciousness of breakfasting on Tiffany, but I'm afraid to go look for it.
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There was another moment, only it wasn't me singing, as I was directing a production of The Sound of Music. It was the nuns' choir piece, and the girls were having trouble with it, then from all around the adults and staff started singing it after having heard it in rehearsal--sensurround, after which they broke up laughing, pleased with themselves. A lovely moment,
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We used to sing on the field trip buses in grade school: obviously, we sang "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" (one of the teachers made us change it to "99 Bottles of Milk"), but we also sang pop songs. By 6th grade, we had evolved a superstition about this: if we sang "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head," it would rain. So we only sang it on the way back from trips. My memory is that it worked, every time. (In my defense, that was a long time ago.)
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I can still remember running out of verses of "How Long, Dear Savior" and without so much as a moment's hesitation the whole choir launching into the next few printed lines in glorious polyphony:
"Jeremiah Ingles... was born in 1764. And died in 1838. Between his thirtieth and fortieth year..."
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