Customer Reviews

Innocence & Despair

5 star:		(56)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

This is an astounding CD. The story that I read in the Vancouver Sun was that a hippie elementary school music teacher in 1976 recorded a choir of students from several schools singing classic rock/baby boomer music. The resulting album was pressed and copies were given to the students in the choir. Recently someone found the album on vinyl in a thrift store and fell in love with it. The recording was passed to radio stations and it was picked up by a record label.
While on vacation I heard the CD in a small coffee shop in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia and was immediately amazed. Covers of Wings, Beach Boys, David Bowie, Fleetwood Mac, etc. are transformed from standard FM radio fare into something more meaningful and strange as sung by children. The lyrics of Wings' "Band on the Run" come through as rather sad and downbeat yet very touching. The most arresting moment on the CD has to be a little girl singing The Eagles' "Desperado". The strangest moment is when the kids take on David Bowie's "Space Oddity". The background arragements are wonderful.
Want something unusual in your music collection? This is it!

As a ex-rock musician who has found his career in music education, it would be an understatement to say that I can relate to this disc. When walking into a performance with students, a good music teacher hopes for perfection but expects disaster. Somewhere in between these two extremes there lies what we call in the trade a "musical experience". All music teachers have a story about their musical experiences, the times when we felt something that we've have never felt before, nor since, and that cannot exist without music as a part of our lives. This feeling drives us, and help us to keep music alive in young minds. We hope to impart one or two musical experiences in the average student's career, and these keep us going in a when our job is stressful or even sometimes thankless.

Hans Ferger was not only gave his students the opportunity to have as least (count 'em) nineteen musical experiences, he was smart enough to capture them on two-track.

The story of Hans Ferger, the music director of the Langley Schools, reads like the familiar story of a real-life Mr. Holland. Playing gigs by night and teaching guitar by day can pay the bills if you're thrifty, but when a child comes the story changes. When presented with this situation, Ferger got teaching certification and began teaching elementary music. However, it was in the format of the classroom that he finally found his "band". Instead of a bass player, or a drummer, his format consisted of sixty-plus kids, various drums, cymbals, Orff instruments, and "modern" electric instruments. He played guitar and piano. The result of this collaboration yielded some of the most energetic, honest, and musical performances that I can think of.

"Innocence and Despair", in its own way, totally ROCKS, but you have to be able to recognize how children express themselves. The Bay City Rollers' "Saturday Night" is an obvious example. Even the most lost kid comes in with the "S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y - NIGHT" part of the song, so much so that the bulk of the ensemble misses the entrance of the first verse. Most of them would seem to be more than happy to just jeep singing the chorus over and over and clapping quarter notes all day long.

Remember, we aren't talking about the Vienna Boys Choir, here. "Innocence and Despair" is, above all else, a performance of sixty-plus public elementary school students singing hits from the sixties and seventies. The ensemble performances are of questionable intonation, timbre, and security. Most of them might bug you because of thier very nature, but think about it: an age-appropriate obstacle for some kids at this age is just to follow the melodic line. To get kids to follow a melody up and down is the goal of any elementary school music teacher, and this is something that Ferger's students are able to do almost flawlessly. They are even able to sing in harmony pretty well ("In My Room"). However, after an hour or so the average listener might not be able to keep tuned in, and this is quite understandable. Most elementary concerts don't last for more than thirty minutes or so for just this reason.

To get an idea of whether or not "Innocence and Despair" is for you, I suggest listening to "Band on the Run". The genius of Hans Ferger's arrangements meets the energy of the students head-on on this track. The song form of the original "Band on the Run" is not standard by any means, and it has some guitar playing that is integral to the song. Ferger's arrangement stays totally true to the original song form, but is able to distill the guitar licks into totally digestible and age-appropriate four-note Orff patterns. Ingenious. In addition to this, the kids really seem to LOVE the melody of the song. When they sing the line "I hope you're having fun", well, they seem to be - just listen to it.

As good as the ensemble performances are, there are also a couple of standout gems on this recording, and those are the solo performances. The subject material of both "The Long and Winding Road" (as performed by Joy Jackson) and "Desperado" (as performed by Shiela Behman) would most assuredly elude the average elementary student, but I cannot imagine a more convincing and heart-rending rendition of either of these songs. Both of them are eerie, and almost unlistenable in terms of their honesty and empathy.

Musicians, take note: perfection is not so important. Its not important that you hit every note every night. Its the love of what you do that drives you. How can you like both Nirvana and Frank Zappa at the same time? You simply have to recognize that both belived in what they were doing, and they were realizing thier vision to the best of thier ability. These kids LOVED the songs they were singing, and on the whole I think they believed in what thier teacher was saying. Because of this, "Innocence and Despair" is an indespensibly human recording.

People hold music they choose to listen to very close to their heart. Musicians in particular are shaped by the music that they love, and the music they listen to quite literally becomes part of them and their life's experience. Ferger was able to pass on to these children was the love that he obviously had for these songs. All music educators hope to inspire their students the way that they themselves were once inspired. Inarguably, Ferger achieved this aim, and was able to share an intimate part of himself with his students. More enviable, he found ways to express himself through an unimaginable medium. His arrangements and orchestrations were both meaningful and relevant to him and well as his students, and that is where he and his students shared something thatthe average educator will never understand.

I first became aware of the LS Project when my brother's friend let me listen to their version of Rhiannon on his portable CD player. Although intrigued, I didn't even know who they were and didn't think much about them again until I saw the CD in a record store and made a spur of the moment purchase. WOW!!! I am so happy that I did. The singing and simple but dramatic instrumentation makes my scalp tingle and brings tears to my eyes. Perhaps I am more affected than some others because I was the same age as the children when they made these recordings and have special memories revolving around many of the songs they sing. But I would recommend this to anyone for its beauty and purity. Their version of David Bowie's Space Oddity is positively eerie and really captures the solemnity of someone lost in space. It's pretty weird but incredibly moving to hear a bunch of 10 year olds singing, "Tell my wife I love her very much..." Band on the Run brims with exuberance and Desperado - a song by the Eagles that I never cared for- takes on a whole different meaning when sung by then 9 year old Shela Behman. I have not gotten tired of it yet. I could go on and on as there is something special about each song. The one caveat is that because of the way it was recorded, the volume sometimes changes and it is difficult to pick up some of the subtleties that make this album so wonderful. It seems best suited to earphones where it suddenly is easy to hear everything.

Right now, every person who owns a copy of Innocence & Despair had to be originally drawn by sheer curiosity. After all, we haven't seen anything this weird come our way since perhaps as long ago as when The Shaggs beamed in from whatever planet they came from: here's a cd of nineteen sixties & seventies pop songs sung by suburban Vancouver elementary students twenty-five years ago, unearthed by a man who bought the original LP for a quarter and showed it to a New Jersey dj, who then championed it to the point where it received a wide release. This is the stuff of legend.

It is indeed the weirdness of it all that draws you in. Sixty kids singing in a gymnasium, with minimalist musical accompaniment consisting of their music teacher on guitar and piano and students themselves playing one-string bass, a drum kit, a big bass drum, cymbals, steel guitar, and xylophones. Some of the arangements are hysterical, with overeager drummers going too fast and almost confusing the singing kids, or cymbal crashes that come in half a beat too late. But it also has its weird, surreal moments, like the arrangement of David Bowie's 'Space Oddity', which is so creepy, so otherworldly, that it comes off as a masterstroke of demented genius.

Weird & funny, it sure is, but once you keep listening, Innocence & Despair gradually becomes oddly moving, thanks to the pure, naive earnestness of the children's singing. Their renditions of songs like 'God Only Knows' and 'In My Room' achieve such a sublime beauty that Brian Wilson himself couldn't have dreamed of. 'Saturday Night' and 'Band On The Run', on the other hand, explode with youthful energy. And of course, there's the incomparable 'Space Oddity' and a truly freaky cover of 'Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft'. These kids transform one of the cheesiest songs on pop music history into something completely sincere; it sounds like they ARE singing out to other worlds, and when they sing the coda 'We Are Your Friends', well, it just splits your heart in two.

Standing highest above all performances, however, is the version of 'Desperado', sung solo by nine year-old Sheila Behman. Personally I hate all music by The Eagles, especially the overwraught piece of sentimental trash that 'Desperado' is, but Behman's insistent, elfin-voiced, completely unironic singing suddenly transforms such badly written, easy-listening tripe into a mighty powerful ballad, blowing The Eagles' version to smithereens.

I named this cd my co-album of the year alongside Bob Dylan's "Love And Theft"; the two albums kind of serve as a musical version of William Blake's Songs Of Innocence & Experience, the craggy old veteran's singing counterbalancing perfectly with the children's. The two-track recording is very primitive, the music isn't perfect, the harmonies are sometimes a bit off, but if you're not moved by these wonderful kids' voices, you'd better check if you have a pulse. This is completely different than an antiseptic, well-trained choir; this is just a bunch of kids having loads of fun thanks to their creative music teacher. It starts off as a musical oddity, but it'll end up staying with you forever. Absolutely amazing.

It seems reviews here are mostly "this is God touching the earth" or "this is awful." I hope to offer a less one-sided review.

I can easily see how someone might not enjoy listening to the CD. To criticize the recording, vocal and instrumental quality or allude to child manipulation for profits doesn't hold up and misses the point. That low quality is what makes the music special for those who enjoy it (and not in some pretentious hip way). These songs were recorded without any concept of them being publically released; they were discovered and published years after recorded. The kids weren't manipulated for monetary gain. They were just singing in a gym.

The CD captures an energy that you can't find in most children's choirs... because they are being forced to sing things they don't want to (I was once in that position myself as I'm sure many others were). The Langley album is pure musical fun, undisturbed by perfected recording quality.

So, I'm not going to say anyone who doesn't love this has no soul left. Many won't find it appealing. Some will only like it for novelty purposes. Others, like me, will find something in it they can't find anywhere else. I love listening to these songs, and not just once but repeatedly. They move me... and many times they make me laugh (particularly "I'm Into Something Good").

You'll know pretty quickly upon listening where you fall, I believe.

You want to get away from the contrived tripe that you ususally see in music bestseller lists? Sick of overproduction and empty feelings? Want a little real emotion in your life? Well check out this recording of young kids singing their little hearts out. The history of this recording is recounted in other reviews (schoolage kids recorded singing popular hits of the 70s), but what will stick with you is how much meaning these songs get from the kids. You might have heard them before, maybe a thousand times, but now they actually MEAN something. You might never think "Desperado" would make you cry on the 1,000th listen, but it will.

I bought this thinking it would be a kitschy little addition to my ever-expanding CD collection. I could not have been more wrong. The exuberance and longing in these recordings will stay with you for a long, long time. I never liked the song "Mandy" but the sweet, tender rendition by the Langley kids gives it a whole new feeling.

The best part about this record is that it takes you back to that time when you didn't care what others thought of your singing voice, or how you dressed, or how good you were at your job, etc. You were a kid, and you just WERE, and you felt everything and weren't afraid to show those feelings. This CD captures all of that. I admit I cried listening to some of the songs, namely "Desperado" by soloist Sheila Behman and the students' cover of "God Only Knows."

These songs are a blessing and a gift to every feeling person out there.

C'mon, drop the cynicism and faux-hipness long enough to listen to this reminder of a purer time. Remember when you were 9, 10, 11 years old? Kudos to the kids' teacher for drawing from them this wonderfully simple and nostalgic recording. Melodic, shy, off-key at times, earnest and fun, this gem of past-pop covers belongs on every collectors shelf. There's a wistful quality to most of the cuts. And you can tell the kids aren't American by their disciplined approach (you can actually distinguish the words), and they make an honest effort to sing in unison. What a find! It's impossible to listen to "Desperado" only once.

OK, I bought this thinking it would be kind of funny and something to play to my friends. I had no idea it would have such an impact on me! If you have any kind of a soft spot for nostalgia and childhood, you cannot fail to be moved by this. To hear a choir of sixty-odd schoolchildren belting out a rendition of the Manilow classic 'Mandy' is something I never thought I would hear, and it actually brought tears to my eyes. Another thing: the sound on this album is magical. If you're a fan of Belle and Sebastian's church hall recordings, you'll love this. In fact, I can't imagine many B&S fans not loving this record. There are too many highlights to name, but the kids seem particularly good on the Beach Boys songs.

I read about this album in a local paper, and ordered it from a local record store. Let me tell you, I NEVER buy things without hearing them first, but when I heard that the guy that "rediscovered" Esquival in the mid-90's was behind this CD, I decided to try it. I thought it would be funny and funky; it is, but it is also the best CD I've bought in years. The arrangements are spartan and sometimes wierd, but nothing more is needed as the children's voices will hypnotize and charm you. I love the upbeat songs as well as the slow ones, for this CD is not a sentimental reminder of what music once was, it is a testament to what music (and community) CAN BE to anyone.

One more thing...I download a lot of music for free thanks to the internet and don't feel bad about it, but I would feel like a real thief if I didn't pay full price for this CD. It's THAT good, and I want the school district and the people who are responsible for it to get proper compensation.