They Will Rock Us.

Spring Concert was last night. Once again both kids got all dressed up (Mark wanted to wear his suit, but it needs to be cleaned because it absolutely reeeeeeks of lobster and smoke from the bonfire) and I got to sit in the very front row and listen to a bunch of kids massacre some music for an hour.

To be fair, most of them did a pretty good job. Even the mess-ups were funny, like how the chorus slaughtered "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." And they knew they were slaughtering it while it was happening. A bunch of the girls absolutely could not keep straight faces, and one girl in Mark's class was completely unable to sing from laughing and had to hide her face behind her music. Several of the kids bravely soldiered on and tried to rescue the song. It could not be done.

Kira had been quite excited several weeks back, because they had been told that they were going to be singing "Breaking Free" (from High School Musical...tell me, could there BE any more exciting school concert news to second-grade girls?). However, apparently the music teacher judged that song to be "too difficult" and switched it out for several folky songs like "Aiken Drum," "Lazy John," and "Rocky Mountain." Which bored most of the kids to tears. However, you had to consider that the music teacher combined kindergarten through third grade to sing these songs, so she had to go for the lowest denominator. I guess.

Then we got to listen to the Combined Bands. This is the Beginning Band and the Intermediate Band, you guessed it, combined. We were told ahead of time (as usual) how hard the kids have worked on "some very difficult pieces." And then we listened to some barely recognizable stuff played at half-speed, one not-bad-at-all solo sax of "The Pink Panther" (he got such an incredible amount of applause that I think it freaked us all out), another destroyed song and finally, they lived up to the threat that "We Will Rock You." At which point the kids in grades K-5 who were not in the band, but who had sat patiently for the better part of an hour, broke out in the stamping/clapping beat we all know so well. A little startling coming from them, when I remember doing it myself in high school. :D Most of the audience got really into it, though (hey, if you can't beat 'em) and we applauded like hell for the kids when it was through.

And then it was over. While I was trying to find my children in the swarm, I heard a couple of kids back on the stage bashing out "We Will Rock You" at a much faster tempo, on drums and trumpet. I knew the drums had to be Eddie, 'cause that's what he plays, but it turned out the trumpet was Mark. They did a pretty darn good job of it. (and imagine if Mark practiced!)

I took a bunch of pictures, but alas, photos taken in the gym have a tendency to make all persons captured look like grainy, possessed demons. (I know this, yet I continue to try. Optimism? Or idiotic futility?) But here're my monsters before we left for the concert. mk

(he refuses to get a haircut.)