Part of what I do at Otter Creek as the tech/media guy is to also do work for some various groups that come in to use our building for shows. I've worked with a homeschool group on one of their annual shows. This week, I'm there every night with another group.
This last weekend, I worked with the Music City Chorus. MCC is primarily a barbershop chorus, and it wasn't what I expected. It was a group of about 40 or so voices. They did a lot of songs from the 20's and up to now. There were also several quartets that performed that were pretty good as well.
Now, I'll go ahead and admit that barbershop is not my preferred style of music and there were some part of it that from an objective observer that were kind of amusing to me. Watching the men choreograph their songs gave me a chuckle for example. And most of the jokes were "groaners," which seemed appropriate humor and I think it has a lot of history with it. It's definitely an older style of music and the audience reflected that as well. Most of it was probably over 50 or so.
The other part of the show was the TuneTown Show Chorus, an all-female chorus, that honestly blew me away. These women obviously put a ton of work into their performance, as evidenced by the fact that they're headed to an international competition in Calgary later. And while the men's choreography seemed a bit... to be honest, cheesy, what the women did really, really worked. I truly enjoyed what they did.
The greatest thing about the whole experience, though, was honestly feeling a bit like I was in a Christopher Guest movie, such as Best in Show or A Mighty Wind. There is this entire subculture that works within barbershop that the person with casual knowledge just has no clue about. Probably how some people feel like tech geeks or sci-fi afficiandos. Within barbershop, there are personality conflicts, and jealousies, and people who are incredibly passionate about what they do. There are some... interesting personalities in the whole thing as well. And I fell asleep on Saturday night wondering if I could parlay this whole experience into a screenplay of some sort.
It was fun.
-----------------------------------
Tonight, the final five episodes of the first season of Heroes. I've kept myself unspoiled beyond the preview I showed last week, and I'm looking forward to it. Possibly some discussion about it on Wednesday.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
Come on Phil. You don't have to sandbag on us like that. Possibly?
For the regular readers of this blog, I will be taking bets on when Phil will be posting on tonight's Heroes.
Odds:
Tuesday - 3:2 (he may not be able to resist)
Wednesday - 1:3
Thursday - 7:2 (this does not include the likelihood that a Heroes related YouTube post will show up)
Friday - 4:1
Odds of the end of Kinsey's story including a Cylon or a dual-personality Japanese office worker that can fly and see the future - 10:1
Can you tell I'm going to Vegas this weekend?
There is this entire subculture that works within barbershop that the person with casual knowledge just has no clue about.
Oh, believe me, you have NO IDEA!!! As the daughter of a barbershopper and the wife of a used-to-be barbershopper, that world can be a very scary place!! But on the other hand, it's also a very neat place, too. I've attended international competitions and you just meet the nicest people. It's kind of like meeting the bloggers - on the surface there's so much that different about you but when you're united with a common thread, it's makes all those differences so unimportant.
Oh, you'll post tonight. You won't be able to stand it.
I'm a Sweet Adeline barbershopper -- and yep -- 30,000+ women world wide all dressing in rhinestones, sequins and sometimes fake eyelashes... you bet it is a subculture. And incredibly passionate!! It is great to hear that the women blew you away... I'll be linking this post to a number of my local barbershop friends :-)
Carrie in Tucson
Amanda told me you'd blogged about us...Glad you like our performance! I'm new to the whole thing, but it is a different world. We're singing next at the Bellvue picnic...Bring the kids!!
Post a Comment