Talent Show

I guess it's the same song except usually I'm complaining that I can't get a shot of Em on stage. I still couldn't, not like I'd want to, because they hide her in the back rows on accusations of height.

I have a compulsion to shoot even when my camera isn't the right gun for the job.

Lighting and distance considered, I did much better than average, photo-op-wise.

One kid sang "Don't Stop Believing." I guess Journey has gone full circle. It would have been laughably passé when I was in high school (back when the plains were black with buffalo and I had visions of Reagan drafting me to kill commies in central America). So while I feel incredibly un-cool saying so, what a great song.

Another performance was by a teacher who remembers the disco era. She described it as being two camps: rock & roll on one side, which people liked to listen to, and disco on the other, which they liked to go dancing to—this to introduce a country song. She sounded a lot like I probably do when I talk about the late 1980s, except she was talking about the late 1970s. I guess when it comes to nostalgia, we can't smell our own bullshit.

The overall caliber of the performances was pretty high, even allowing for the occasional karaoke bit. I'm not a fan of singing to a recorded background as a talent show entry. Nothing against the singing, but I think it robs the performer of a lot of the interpretive canvas. The kid with the Journey song on the piano owned his song in a way I don't think a karaoke singer can.

I did dig that the choral pieces had quite a bit of choreography to them. The choirs I remember from high school were so dull they could have been classified by the FDA as a Schedule I narcotic.

The show included the jazz band, too, and here I did get nostalgic. I lost some of my hearing sitting directly in front of a drum kit with a cymbal by each ear, but gawd I loves big band music. I like being the guitar player in the big band even better than I like listening to the band—well, I have Joe Henderson's big band album going on the hi-fi right now, I don't know if I like playing in a mediocre big band better than listening to a world class one.

The flashback effect of seeing this band was made the more vivid for the bassist in this band being, basically, a redheaded version of the bassist from my alma mater's jazz band (and the band that was never going to be called Foolkiller).

One of the neatest performances was a girl who sang with a buy playing a djembe as accompaniment.

Kind of surreal, the plaid shirt and African drum.

And I admit to getting some decent shots though desperate zoom measures of Em. She made herself up for the occasion and the impression was, basically, one of the girls from Robert Palmer's Addicted to Love video.

The stand-out performance, I thought, was this folkie type kid who came out and said he wanted to do something impressive since it was his senior year, but realized he should do something simple and powerful instead. I've lost the name of the piece, so I can't Google it to find out if it was a cover or if he wrote the piece, but I remember thinking If this is his simple piece, I wonder what the complex shit he plays is like.

I tried to get some shots of this girl with the batons, because I've never seen a twirler with such a well developed routine, but she moved far too fast. It was set to Walk This Way and at one point she was juggling/twirling three batons.

The show lasted over two hours with an intermission. Mo got a bit fussy when we went back in after the snack. She reasonably thought the show was over, and to settle her down I had to show her the program and count out that there were only eleven more pieces and then we could go home.