Category Archives: Music

Posts on musical topics

General, Music

Gossip

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We had the annual adult choir post Christmas dinner last night, at a restaurant in Wokingham.

However, there was an interesting bit of gossip. According to the daughter of one of the people in the Choir, who heard it from her friend, whose Mum knows the local estate agent, Robbie Williams has bought one of the houses in the parish.

It gets better though – the house he has bought is called ‘Angels Rest’, (for those who miss the significance, one of his best known songs is called Angels) and the local fireplace shop in Sandhurst has taken a special order for a new fireplace with carved angels!

It is worth saying at this point that somebody else at the dinner knew the next door neighbour, who has said that whilst Robbie Williams had been interested in the house, it had subsequently been sold to someone else. However since another person had commented that since the girls in her office had found out they had spent lunchtimes walking or driving back and forth in front of the house, I expect the people who live next door would be actively trying to discourage to much attention to their street.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see if it’s actually true…

Church, Music

Thatcham Rockmass 8

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Tonight a group of seven of us from St James went to Rockmass number 8 at Thatcham. Amongst our number were several people who had never experienced Rockmass before, including Rev Richard. We have on a number of occasions tried to ‘explain’ Rockmass to Richard, but I guess tonight is proof that you can’t really explain it, and the only thing to do is experience it for yourself.

Also there tonight, as the ‘star turn’ so to speak, was Ian MacDonald, the Diocesan Youth Officer. You can get the view from his side on Youthblog, but from ours it was a great talk. As Ian said to us before the service, Rockmass is a difficult congregation as there is a really broad mix of ‘young people’ – although Rockmass is usually thought to be the kind of service aimed at young people, the reality seems to be somewhat different, with a broad range of ages coming along.

Anyway, as this was Christ the King Sunday, Ian used the example of the third Lord of the Rings movie, Return of the King, to explain the meaning of the festival. He also managed to include that one of the reasons he likes Rockmass is because it is so loud nobody can hear how badly he sings, and also a really rather funny story about Colin the Fireman at Bristol Airport. Certainly it kept our interest throughout the whole talk, had some laughs, but ultimately a good message at the end.

Surrounding all of this was the usual selection of quality music, the band sounding better than ever. As at previous events there was a good mix of songs that were new, together with ones that we knew from previous visits – although two of the new numbers – the Rockmass style Christmas carols did leave some people somewhat stunned I think! They also expanded on the use of more secular numbers started last time with Lean on Me, adding in What if God was One of Us? – Ian has linked to lyrics of both songs over on his blog. As Ian comments, the use of mainstream songs is quite a brave move, and as last time has left me thinking about which other tracks could work in a religious setting.

Anyway, I diverge – all the people we took along said they enjoyed themselves, and I think Rev Richard went away with some new ideas. As he said as we left, he’s seen everything today, from a BCP 8am service, through our new Family Service at 9:30am, through to this, almost two hours of loud rock music, but surrounding a perfectly straight Eucharist. Incidentally, apologies for the lack of pictures this time – I only had the mobile phone camera with me, and with all the electronics around, we were asked to turn phones off. However, there are pictures of what it is like over at the Rockmass site.

Movies & TV, Music

DIY Soundtrack Album

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If you’re of a certain age, you’ll may be familiar with a series called Airwolf which ran from 1984 to 1987. The plot followed a super (and frankly impossible) helicopter, that had been stolen by it’s test pilot in order to try and persuade the branch of the CIA that built the machine to help with the search for the pilots brother, missing in Vietnam.

One memorable aspect of the programme was the music and the theme, written by Hungarian composer Sylvester Levay. Indeed there is one person who works on my floor at work who has the theme as a ringtone. However despite it’s popularity, aside from a few cover versions on soundtrack CD’s, there has never been a CD soundtrack album, or so I thought.

Yesterday I came across the Airwolf Themes site which in part describes, and includes snippets from a special 2 CD set of music from the series. However, whilst the second CD has Sylvester Levay himself, the first CD is entirely down to a massive fan called Mark J Cairns who recorded the tracks having played them by ear – neither being able to read music himself, nor having access to the original scores. It has to be said that from the samples on the site he has done a stunning job, with the samples that I have heard being almost indistinguishable from the real thing.

Having heard the samples, I thought it would be great to pick up a copy, however this leads to the problem, only 1000 copies of the album were ever produced, so much so that it holds the record for the most expensive TV soundtrack album, one copy having sold for over $700 on eBay. Further than that there are dire warnings on the samples page requiring that the samples be deleted after seven days, let alone what would happen if someone made the full CD available online. There is also the curious threat that they have the resources to mount a legal case, and yet when you can get even game soundtracks on iTunes, and Silva Screen have been selling the Battle of the Planets soundtrack, one wonders why these resources couldn’t be used to produce a longer run of the CD, or make it available online to satisfy demand. The response from the makers of the original CD is that they are putting their time into a new CD. Whilst with a limited repeat run such as they produced for the original version, the costs and risks would be high, however I’m sure that a specialist such as Silva Screen would be only too happy to pick it up, give Cairns stunning work a much wider audience.

Music

A Different Sort of Music

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Voces Cantabiles by Candlelight

So after our youth service last night we were back at St James for music of a different kind, a concert by Voces Cantabiles, a well regarded choir that was formed in 2003, drawn from a variety of musical institutions around the country.

If you take a look at their list of concerts on their website, you’ll see that St James is in amongst some fairly illustrious company, indeed from St James the choir are going to compete in the International Choral Grand Prix in Italy. So how come such an acclaimed choir were performing in a small Berkshire church on a Monday night?

The link is through Barney and Paul Smith, who lead the choir. Although they have sung in many cathedrals, their parents live in the village and come to St James. Both Barney and Paul helped out the St James choir when we were without a Director of Music, and on special occasions, indeed every so often when Barney or Paul are around on a Sunday, the harmony lines of the Church Choir are augmented by the two of them.

Anyway, as a result, they have been using the Church to practice, and in return they gave us a concert to raise money for the restoration. Sadly as it was on a Monday a number of people couldn’t make it. Plus since the power had failed in part of the village, the concert was by candlight too. However it was an excellent occasion, and as with their previous concert for us we feel honoured to have them sing at St James.

Church, Music

Rocking the Church

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View Down the Church

Tonight we held our second youth service at St James since Rev Richard arrived. This time we had a different band, a third of which was actually home grown talent, plus we actually described it as a Rockmass.

We used the same layout with the band in the chancel, and celebrating on a small table in front. We also used our soon to be patented projector mount of a MDF board and two C-clamps to provide a shelf for the projector in the arch into the north aisle, projecting across onto the screen in the pulpit. The laptop that drives the projector is then positioned up in the chancel so that the person working the screen is close to the people leading.

Matt Doing a Sound Check

We were up at the church from about 3:30pm, and got all of our gear set up first before the inevitable chaos when the band arrives. In this case we had got together with the local Baptist Church, and the band consisted of Matt Valler, the youth worker at the Baptist church, his brother, and Richard from our Church as drummer. Matt knows our church pretty well having attended the youth group when he was a teenager.

As with anything involving a live band there is a good deal of fiddling around to make sure sound is good, and ensure that everything works. However we were all ready to go in good time.

Matt Doing Some Practice

As an aside just before the service I had a slightly strange encounter. Whilst I was walking back to the Church from the Parish Centre, a white van with all sorts of strange things on the roof drove into the car park, and parked – pretty badly, and the two guys in the front got out and went into the back. It looked to me like a TV detector van, so I walked over to ask them to park a bit better as we were expecting cars in the car park for the service. Anyway, I put my head round the door, and one of the people in the van was John Redwood. They asked if they could stay and I said not to worry, just that we needed space to get round the car park. Having said that Rev Richard went and had a chat when he arrived and suggested that if they wanted quiet (it was actually a radio van) they might be better going elsewhere before all the young people arrived.

The service went well, and we even had Ian, the Diocesan Youth Adviser for part of the service, who seemed to have met almost everybody involved having led a youth camp that Matt and Richard had attended! Matt did the talk, and Beth did the prayers, using a ‘prayer basket’ idea where a symbol is brought up for each prayer, for example a mobile phone was brought up when we prayed for friends. The band were great, and we even had some of our Youth Group sing a song during communion to give the band a break.

Clearing Up

To some extent it was a learning experience for all as our Youth Group aren’t used to having a band, and also the Baptist Youth Group aren’t used to our comparitively formal litugical structure for the service. Having said that we got good feedback from both groups after the service, and certainly we are looking at trying to do something similar again in the autumn. As we said afterwards, each of the three Finchampstead Churches can’t put something like this together on their own, but by pooling resources we can pull it off. Certainly it has given us a good place to start.

Anyway, after all the young people had gone, one thing left, clearing up – the downside with having a band!