…and then 3 come along all at once…
written by steven and posted in The Wheels on the Bus
3 come along at once…. protoPLAY workshops / performances for the next three weekends see ‘dates for our diary’.
so wheels on the bus this weekend meet at 11am at 52 Old Shoreham Road.
please invite people to come and join in if they want.
Orion
Please let me know if you are planning to take part, it would be good to have an idea of numbers. Leave a comment on this forum or text me on 07909773177. Also, if you have a discrete audio recording device, please bring it along.
Steven xXx
March 28th, 2007 at 8:40 am
Hello you all,
I don’t think that I can do that………………………
Sorry.
X Anna Chocola
March 28th, 2007 at 8:41 am
hi anna thats a shame…
I’ve also moved your comment from the public section to the planning and discussion section.
Orion
March 28th, 2007 at 8:52 am
tomas see website discussion on forum - i’ll change date for now….
March 30th, 2007 at 9:08 pm
I was going to come to support Anna but if she doesn’t do it I don’t have a reason to come.
I’m sorry Steven, but I didn’t really felt concerned by the subject of your performance and how it takes form.
So we won’t be there tomorrow morning. Hope you found people and that your performance will go well, like a bus on a wheels on the bus.
Have a good week-end.
March 31st, 2007 at 4:55 am
Thanks for responding, and because I’m truly turned on by this wonderful site, I’m going to use it to expound the thoughts behind ‘The Wheels on the Bus’ here and now!
The best example of the corruption of music that I have come across happened last weekend at a friends birthday party. I ran into an old friend, Lou Davis. A ridiculously talented vocalist and writer that I first met about 10 years ago. She moved to that London 4 years ago thinking that it would further her career. We’re good old pals and I asked her if she would sing on my album.
“I don’t do music any more” was her answer.
A long conversation followed with me trying to make sense of her comment. Turns out, her career floundered and she became totally disillutioned with ‘music’. She was perfectly happy to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ along with everyone else though.
‘The Wheels on the Bus’ is one of the first songs that children in Britain learn to sing. Simply singing it as a 4 year old is enough to bring admiration and love from adults. At that stage in life, it can’t be sung wrong. If you sing it aged 7 or above, grown ups will think you are a little backward.
By the time you are 14 you had better have the right answer to “what kind of music do you like?” or you’re socially ruined.
What happens in the ten years between 4 and 14 is that the prevailing culture in Britain subjugates music’s role in joyfull communication, mutual entertainment, expression, connection etc. and replaces it with a purely ego driven need to succede. Music now has a high threshold of acceptability below which, it has no merit. I, personally, am outraged that music has been lifted so high that it has become worthless and that anyone can no longer make a valid contribution to it. To try to make a distinction between ‘proper’ music and any other kind of music is to ignore the fact that anything other than ‘proper’ music is regarded as a sign of insanity or at best a severe lack of self-editing; misguided and foolish. The only time that that it breaks out of its exile is when the performer is drunk.
I am a ‘proper musician’. I learned to sing The Wheels on the Bus when I was 4 and because of a misguided lack of self-editing and a foolishness that always led me to like the wrong kind of music, I am perfectly comfortable performing sober. This elevated vantage point makes me all too aware that I still believe that it can’t be sung wrong. The last hundred years has actually stolen one of our fundamental human joys. This brings me on to Brighton & Hove busses.
Blaming ‘The X Factor’ and it’s siblings is to blame the symptom and not the cause. To blame ourselves is to blame the host of the desease. Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Elvis and Colonel Tom Parker are all dead so it’s too late to get our right to sing back from them. So when Brighton & Hove busses tell us that we cannot make music, we have a declared adversary.
One lonely person on a bus - singing - is a lunatic. It flies in the face of what we know to be right. Why the hell would someone sing if they weren’t drunk or a bit backward. We have rules to make sure that this does not happen.
Two people prepared to sing on a bus is already too much to handle. Already, primeval feelings of joy and freedom from musical tyranny start to prick.
How many seemingly unconnected people, singing a song that once brought everyone on the bus unconditional admiration and love will it take to tip the balance?
…Well, more than I could get to do it. I’ve had a zero response to my call out - no blame whatsoever, honest. I rather suspect that I haven’t done enough to convince people that it would be a great thing to take part in. That’s why I’ve posted this, cause I still want to do it with at least ten people, sometime soon. If you’ve never done any street theatre (I think they call it ‘intervention’ in the art world) you might be surprised how many shackles you can remove from your leg - that you didn’t even realise were there, and do the same for complete strangers at the same time.
…all day long.
p.s. Lou Davis eventually realised that I was talking about music and not ‘music’, and said she’d be delighted to sing on the album. Thank God for that, I couldn’t have just anyone singing on it.
April 3rd, 2007 at 4:41 pm
Hiya Steven
I was up for the whole thing the first time, and was disapointed when it got canceled the day before, and I had planned things around it. The second time I just couldn’t make it as I am working in Dorset the most of this month.
Best Wishes
Vicky