I was in school again this afternoon. My usual afternoons are Tuesday and Thursday. I was in again this afternoon because I was catching up on a day I missed last term when my car broke down. I have two more Wednesday afternoons coming up for catch up lessons, so I am enjoying more time at school than usual.
Today was a Tuesday catch up. Jess bounced in full of the joys of spring. She settled down at the piano, then looked at me pathetically and intoned, "I still feel really tired and out of sorts."
I glared at her and replied, "I think you are just angling for another insult-free lesson. It is not going to happen."
Jess smiled sweetly at me. Really, really sweetly. I have mentioned before that I know when I am beaten.
"Ok. Let's see if I can do it twice" I replied. "I did ok yesterday."
"I was impressed. I didn't think you would do it" she came back with.
The lesson progressed and Jess made her usual range of lunatic mistakes and said her usual range of lunatic things. Every time this happened, I repressed the usual instant insult and offered, "Another insult swallowed there poppet."
Came the time when I was demonstrating something to her and made a lunatic mistake. "Did you hear that Jess?" I asked. "What a dweeb."
She pounced with the accuracy of a pussy cat that had been wobbling its bottom in preparation for an hour. "Yep. You do dweebness so very well. You are the best dweeb I have ever met."
She thought for a couple of seconds and then came out with, "Ha. The tables are turned. How does it feel?"
Under normal circumstances, I would have threatened her with The Pencil - or maybe it should be The Blunt Pencil. These were not normal circumstances, and so I could not. Hey ho. I gave her a high five instead.
Dommy wandered in for his torture session so I wrapped up with Jess. "Ok Jess. That is the last time I allow you to put me through an insult-free session. We revert to normal next week."
She replied, "But Dominic always follows me, so why not carry on being nice to me and take it out on him instead?"
I thought about it. "Possibly. After all, I really do not like him at all. Note the other insult swallowed there Jess?"
Jess and I could not have timed the next bit so perfectly if we had rehearsed it for a year. It was an astonishing moment. Dommy said plaintively, "I feel as though I am being picked on here." "That is because you are" we chorused. 
And yes, I did subsequently make sure the Dommy knows I love him. He is only 13 after all; best to make sure.
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I just realised that I never told you guys about the school musical last term. It was "Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat". Utterly appalling so-called 'music', but a lot of humour - especially when it is kids mucking it up.
I was roped in last year to play fiendishly difficult piano parts that nobody else in the school could manage. This year was different. There was nothing hard for the piano, so I was asked to play a synthesiser and provide a variety of different synthesised orchestral sounds. Total doddle, and 'the band' was placed in such a position that I could watch what was going on on-stage. You all know how much I love watching kids strutting their stuff, so you can imagine how much I enjoyed this.
The school does not spend months preparing stuff. Instead, they have a few long and intense rehearsals in the three or so weeks leading up to the performances - singers are expected to learn much of their stuff via youtube.
Here are a couple of lovely incidents from one of the full Sunday rehearsals, held in the school hall.
A group of kids not immediately involved in the action had found an office chair with wheels, were sitting on it and being free-wheeled to from side to side of the bottom of the hall. MD looked at them and said, "I really should stop that. They could break that chair. Trouble is, it looks great fun and I want to play." I replied, "Leave them. They are happy. We can try to repair the chair later if it breaks. If it breaks, I will smuggle it out later and you can deny all responsibility." We left them to it, and the chair survived.
There was the usual hiatus and there was a little girl on stage practising some moves. She saw me watching and stopped in embarrassment. I gave her a huge grin and a double thumbs up. She returned them and carried on rehearsing.
Here is a wonderful feature of these rehearsals. We can tell the kids to take a break. They disperse. Those of us in the band will use the time to practise something. Within 5 seconds of starting to rehearse, every child involved in the scene will have appeared and be singing/dancing the routine that we are rehearsing. They cannot help themselves. They are prisoners of what they are trying to achieve. 
These rehearsals are very long and very intense. Kids' attention can flag. Drama teachers running the show as production managers can get a tad dramatic. Our PM 'lost it' after a few minutes of spectacular under-achieving, called all the kids on stage, berated them for about 5 minutes and told any of them who did not want to be here to go home and forget it. I leaned across to the MD and muttered, "I defy any child on stage right now to get up and walk home." He replied, "Thank goodness. I thought you were about to say you were going home."
Back to the kids and the incredible problems they were facing, and the band and the incredible problems we were facing. Back in my day in the 1960's, a 'large' school had 300 pupils and a hall the size of a decent living room. Kids could sing without needing to be amplified to be heard. Here and now, a large school has 2,000 kids and a school hall that dwarfs the Royal Albert Hall. Ok, a slight exaggeration, but you get my drift.
Add to that the fact that our 'tiny' band consisted of a piano, two synthesisers (yep, two of us), a multi-purpose woodwind player, three guitars and drums. Even a band as tiny as that makes a lot of noise when playing quietly.
So the singers need amplifying. Schools are geared up for this. Everything is controlled by a musically-savvy techie via a 'mixing desk'. Or so I understand - not a clue what they are talking about.
Which is fine and dandy until the mixing desk breaks down, which ours did a couple of weeks before the run of performances.
Here is the thingy. Children are unreliable performers. They can miss bits out. They can add bits. They can come in early. They can come in late. It doesn't matter. Nobody cares. It is up to us pros to ensure that what happens next does not descend into chaos. We do it brilliantly. Magnificently. Stunningly. Without missing a beat.
So long as we can hear what is going on, which is where that bloody mixing desk comes in.
Delivery of its replacement had been promised a fortnight before the final Sunday rehearsal. Here was the schedule:
- Sunday: all day rehearsal.
- Monday: all day rehearsal (this school really doesn't muck around with last minute intensive rehearsals).
- Tuesday morning: final dress rehearsal.
- Tuesday afternoon: performance to feeder primary schools whose pupils are about to come to us.
- Tuesday night through Friday night: performances.
That bloody mixer had not arrived for the final Sunday rehearsal. Those of us in the band had no idea what was happening on stage. The kids were being drowned out by the band. Nobody had a clue what was going on.
Come Monday, still no mixing desk but the techies had managed to cobble up some amplification for the soloists using an old and knackered mixer. The band started to hear some singing and the kids on stage started to make themselves heard.
Come Tuesday morning and the techies had managed to cobble together a few more singers but still not enough. The band could still not hear enough to enable us to help anybody in trouble. The kids could still not make themselves sufficiently heard. At the end of Tuesday morning I was thinking to myself, "This is the worst disaster waiting to happen to a school musical ever. We should postpone." What a dweeb.
Came the performance for the primary schools. What a disaster. The poor little buggers had been told the story, but what was coming across to them was total chaos. They did their best. Their teachers would lean across to them and clap hugely in an, "It is time to clap now guys" attitude, but their hearts were not in it.
And the kids on stage knew it. And were demoralised. And faced three re-runs of this horror.
The techies managed to mike up a few more highly unenthusiastic kids.
Here are two of the thingies I have learned in recent years - learned recently because it is only of late that I have become involved in these thingies:
- There is no such thingy as an audience of parents, relative and friends who attend these events with anything other than total love and support in their hearts. The enthusiasm of their response to the kids' performance is a joy to behold.
- There is no such thingy as a group of performing kids who fail to respond to the enthusiasm of a wildly admiring audience.
So, the first tremulously sung number was greeted by wild applause, cat-calls and demands for repetition. We in the band could now hear most of what was going on on stage and I could see the rest, so we coped with any minor glitches. The kids realised that they were onto a winner and performed as only kids can do in the face of a loving audience.
That bloody mixing machine arrived on Wednesday and everybody could hear everybody else for the last two nights. Joseph missed out an entire verse on the Thursday, cutting straight from chorus to chorus. The band followed him without blinking an eyelid.
An experience such as that evolved in the production can change lives. There might be members of the cast who ultimately go on to enjoy careers in the performing arts and bring pleasure to millions of people as a result of taking part in the show and having their enthusiasm for acting/singing aroused as a result. At the very least, they took part in something they will remember for the rest of their lives - guess how I know? Note to politicians: we do not only need maths and science graduates here in the UK, and anybody who does think so has lot touch with human emotion.
In a different age and under different circumstances and quite a long story, all of you reading this and I are here for the same reason as the kids I described earlier. Give it some thought politicians, if indeed you are capable of such thought.
Then we have Billy and Masie. Oh boy folks, but I wish you could meet these two kids. They are two of the three guitarists in the band, the third being their utterly fantastic teacher.
Billy is 13. Masie is 15. Neither of them have been learning for very long. Playing the guitar is hard work. Those strings are small and sharp. They cut into the fingers of the left hand - I tried it a long time ago so I know.
They are both brilliant. Production Managers waste every body else's time ruthlessly during rehearsals for shows. "You have been learning to play this piece for 6 months? Tough. The singer cannot reach the single high note in it and so we are cutting it." Those of us in the band know to expect this and do not spend any time on preparation. Billy and Masie were well advised by their teacher.
Even so they were stunning. They played whatever was thrust in front of them. They edited whatever was demanded that they edited.
More than that, they played and played and played and played and played.
It was time to let the audience in. The background music player had broken down (!) so the MD asked the guitar teacher to fill in for a while, so he called out chords and Masie filled in whilst Billy improvised a melody. For 20 minutes. Twice.
So let's try a rough estimate of how long Billy and Masie had been plucking guitar strings just in the week of the show:
- 6 hours on the Sunday.
- 6 hours on the Monday.
- 5 hours on the Tuesday - let's say two in the morning followed by 90 minutes for each show.
- 1.5 hours each of the Wednesday and Thursday for the shows.
So 20 approx hours spent plucking a guitar by a 13 and a 15 year old in a 5 day period. So not every child at the school is wet and pathetic.
I hope you guys are starting to get a feeling for why I love my other job so much.
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