The Choir That Rocks - or just jiggles about a bit - Part 2

Having got over the disappointment of 'The Choir That Rocks' - or as the Daily Mirror calls it, 'The Choir That Sucks', not the Choir itself, just the documentary, and I couldn't really argue with that, I was interested to see if it pulled its socks up for Part 2. They stayed resolutely around its ankles with the odd foray up to just below knee level.

This episode was to feature the Farnham 'Teen' Choir who I had seen perform at Wembley (well,  you all know we got there so not much point pretending!).  I was knocked out by Rachel O' Brien, who sang 'You've Got the Love' by Florence and the Machine to rapturous applause.  That such a great voice could come from a teenager was amazing. So I was a little bit miffed to discover that she's actually 22 and a university graduate.  It seemed to be stretching the idea of a 'Teen Choir' just a little bit far.  There are lots of new Teen Choirs being set up all across the country. The age range states 11-20. Hmm, so why, I have to ask myself, is someone who is clearly too old for a teen choir taking the starring role in the documentary?

And my dears, the producers must have just about peed their pants when they discovered that not only can the girl sing but she's got a heart condition too! And one, incidentally, that Hugh Bonneville can't seem to get right. He called it Vasovogal Syndrome. It's actually called Vasovagal Synchope, a synchope being a medical name for a faint.  It's not, strictly speaking, a heart condition, rather a malfunction in the autonomic part of the nervous system that regulates the flow of blood to the body. It causes a drop in blood pressure and slowing of the heartbeat and then you faint.  It's not lifethreatening, just bloody annoying, but the producers, and Rachel herself were not about to let that stand in the way of a bit of dramatic telly. 

Most VS sufferers have a trigger that brings on an attack according to a friend who suffers from it. Rachel's was clearly a very rare one as it came on every time a TV camera was pointed at her.  We were treated to a 'beauty shot' of  'all the drugs she has to take to control it' but a quick freeze frame revealed that they seemed to be all the same drug, Fludrocortisone, which is prescribed to anyone with what is called orthostatic intolerance (just see how much you're learning!)  - basically if you stand upright too long, you faint - and what looked suspiciously like vitamin tablets. I'm not trying to make light of her condition but I can't deny that by the end of it I was mutteringr rather unkindly "Just faint for God's sake and get it over with' every time she fluttered her hand and commented on her heart 'going funny'.

My own choir featured far more so it was fun to see who got a close up and who was going the wrong way in the dance moves (Steve, you know who you are!). The sudden appearance of one of our soloists fronting the Stroud Rock Choir was a bit strange. As far as I know, she only goes to ours.  It gave me a creeping sense of unease, that the documentary was not, in fact, being very honest.

This was further compounded by the secondary story of whether or not Rachel would sing well enough for 'The Man from Universal' to be whisked off to record her 'first' solo at the Abbey Road studios and thus realise her dream of becoming a recording star.  We all knew she'd do it, she does have a wonderful voice but when I did a quick Google of her to find out her surname, having missed it on the documentary, I discovered that she has already sung solo on Rock Choir's first album. (Track 5 apparently, in case you actually care). So the big 'will she/won't she' get to sing solo was just another bit of not entirely honest telly.

So it's the final instalment tonight, and I think it will be the best one. The whole Wembley thing was absolutely fabulous and I hope the cameras manage to really capture the atmosphere. I'm looking forward to hearing how we all sounded together. When you are sitting in one voice section it's quite difficult to hear what the whole thing sounds like. 

The single 'Something Inside So Strong' from the (my!) new album goes on download release at 10pm tonight.  It will be available on iTunes for a mere 99p.  Please would you buy it and ask all your friends to as well. The live track we recorded at Wembley is Track 20. All the royalties go to Refuge, and goodness knows they could do with it.  With a fair wind it might even go to the top of the download charts which would mean I could (almost) honestly put No 1 recording star on my CV, which is in itself as much a work of fiction as this whole documentary thingy.

Apparently Caroline is in discussions with the Olympic Games Committee about Rock Choir performing at the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics. That would be pretty amazing. Watch this space!



The Choir That Rocked

Thursday at just before 9pm saw me hot-footing it from the Parents Forum at school through the driving rain to plonk myself down in front of the TV for the first episode of  'The Choir that Rocks'.

Ten minutes later I was Facebooking all my friends to tell them that we really were all normal, honestly.  From the opening credits you'd think that one of the criteria for joining Rock Choir, apart from an inability to sing a note in tune, was to be morbidly obese. I was genuinely worried that what we thought was a serious documentary was actually going to take the mickey out of the Rockettes, some of whom think of it as a virtual religion. Every one they spoke to seemed to be a little bit weird/sad/boss eyed or worse still, a town crier!  In front rooms across the land big women with dodgy eyes would be making effigies of the producer.  His picture was on the Rock Choir website. They would know where to find him.  

I thought of all the lovely ladies I know from my choir, most of them just great fun and very, very funny. They are older than me but they still go to Glastonbury.  Rock Choir was starting to look like some sort of community service for the socially inept.

The problem with the documentary is that it's really just about a bunch of  very ordinary people getting on together, being nice and doing something fun, sometimes even with their own husbands. There are no drugs, clandestine affairs or meanness.  No-one gets vajazzled and there's not a spray tan in sight. Not exactly thrilling television. So the producers have to find a tag. Cue the shot of the rundown council estate with the old sofa almost a little too artistically place in shot while a lady who may or may not actually live on said estate warbles over the top.  The message is that even if your life is shite, hey, you can join Rock Choir - if you can afford the £100 a term of course!  

Later on, the obligatory cancer survivor is wheeled out to tell how Rock Choir practically cured her. The Guardian commented that there should be an OFCOM ruling that if anyone  uses cancer sufferers to spice up a programme one of the production team should undergo a course of chemotherapy. Probably not a bad idea.

We head up North to meet two new choir leaders struggling to get the Rock Choir message across to the good people of Yorkshire who are clearly not getting the point.   Too much stout if you ask me!   The producers managed to find a man in a pub who clearly wanted to make the most of his 15 minutes of fame. He only really needed the flat cap and whippet to be a true Northern stereotype. "It'll never work" he tells the cameras, almost gleefully and certainly seeing poor Nic Slack's many tumbleweed moments as he tries to inspire his choir of nine, including possibly the only person under 30 in the Northern Hemisphere who had never heard of a flashmob, you might be forgiven for thinking he was right.  Even the news that they would be playing Wembley was greeted with silence. Maybe they just hadn't heard of it.

Certainly some people in Rock Choir are discovering the downside of putting yourself in the public arena where you have no creative control and the 'story' is king.  Caroline Redman Lusher has been portrayed in some papers as a failed pop star who came up with the idea of Rock Choir to ensure that she would always be able to front a musical act and a control freak who only became animated when she talked about money rather than the very shrewd businesswoman that she is.  The underlying 'will they/won't they' Wembley story in which they tried to suggest that poor Caroline faced financial ruin if she didn't pull it off was a little weak and of course you lot all know she did.  Our own choir leader having made a throwaway comment about the cost of being separated, arrived to pick up his children from his ex-wife to get the door slammed in his face. 'Too expensive are we?" was the parting shot.

My own feeling and that of the other choir members who I spoke to at Monday's session was that is was just a little dull.  It didn't seem to get to the essence of Rock Choir. It doesn't heal the sick or cure the lame and it isn't a panacaea for all society's ills, it's just good fun. But fun doesn't sell.

That said though, there were so many enquiries about joining after the first episode that the website crashed. It has something like 23,000 hits immediately after and the taster session being run by our choir at the weekend has 150 people booked on it, so it must have done something right.

Episode 2 airs on Thursday at 9pm.