Langley Schools Music Project - Innocence & Despair
List Price:
Our Price: $11.46
You Save: $5.52 (33%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: Music CD
See more CD details
Buy this Music CD at online store in your country
Canadian Music Store
Canadian Music Store
CD Details
Artist: Langley Schools Music ProjectEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2001-10-23
Music Label: Bar/None Records
Soundtracks:
- Venus and Mars/Rock Show (Paul McCartney & Wings)
- Good Vibrations (The Beach Boys)
- God Only Knows (The Beach Boys)
- Space Oddity (David Bowie)
- The Long and Winding Road (The Beatles)
- Band On The Run (Paul McCartney & Wings)
- In My Room (The Beach Boys)
- I'm Into Something Good (Earl-Jean/Herman's Hermits)
- Saturday Night (Bay City Rollers)
- I Get Around (The Beach Boys)
- Mandy (Barry Manilow)
- Help Me, Rhonda (The Beach Boys)
- Desperado (The Eagles)
- You're So Good To Me (The Beach Boys)
- Sweet Caroline (Neil Diamond)
- To Know Him Is To Love Him (Teddy Bears)
- Rhiannon (Fleetwood Mac)
- Wildfire (Michael Martin Murphy)
- Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft (The Recognized Anthem of World Contact Day) (Klaatu/The Carpenters)
Description of Innocence & Despair
Originally waxed for friends and families of a rural Canadian elementary/middle-school chorus, these mid-70s vanity recordings capture the joy, confusion, discovery and loneliness of childhood like few before. The production's serendipitous journey from thrift store to non-commercial radio to public release fully preserves the original lack of premeditation, and further highlights the distance these performances kept from any taint of commercial calculation. The sugarcoated cuteness one might reflexively expect from a children's music project is entirely absent. Rookie teacher Hans Fenger wedded elements of Carl Orff's pioneering music curriculum with contemporary hit songs, to forge an inventive, safe space for his young performers. The occasional rhythmic wobble or flubbed note is subsumed by the children's unbridled expressiveness and modulated by the Spectorian gymnasium acoustics. No one associated withIn the mid-1970s, Hans Fenger taught music in the Langley, British Columbia, school district, using an experimental method inspired equally by Brian Wilson and Carl Orff. Occasionally he would record his students in the school gymnasium--elaborate affairs involving more than 60 kids per session. The result is this compelling collection of semi-accidental genius. Picture the Shaggs and Danielson presiding over an elementary school assembly for shy kids, and you begin to understand how sweet, sincere, and slightly unsettling these recordings are. The Langley students perform their favorite 1960s and 1970s hits as if they never heard the originals; they turn "Mandy" into the kind of lo-fi pop song that Neutral Milk Hotel would perfect 20 years later, and sing "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft" like a delegation of extraterrestrial children on a friendship mission to Earth. Fenger's arrangements are spacious but elaborate, with prominent Orff percussion instruments that coat everything with a glimmering otherworldliness. The Langley students must've been proud just to hear themselves on tape, but for those of us encountering these artifacts for the first time, it's impossible to come away unmoved. (The photographs are precious, too.) --Mike Appelstein
Pop CDs
Music Genres
Bestsellers in Pop CDs
Yvette Freeman - Dinah Was (L.A. Theatre Works Audio Theatre Collection)Release date: 2005-04-12; Music CD
Best price: $18.61
Price in other shops:
Twin Sisters Productions - Building Character Music CDTWIN SISTERS PRODUCTIONS; Release date: 2007-01-01; Music CD
Best price: $6.75
Price in other shops:
Bernadette Peters in ConcertDVD
Best price: $92.90
Everything Must Go/ Two Against Natureby Steely Dan
Published: 2003; Music CD
Scattered Ashes: A Decade Of Emperial WrathRelease date: 2009-07-28; Published: 2009; Music CD
Best price: $13.28
Price in other shops:
![Christmas at the Biltmore Estate [VHS] Image](/images/Christmas-at-the-Biltmore-Estate-VHS-076700437X-X.jpg){kind=small}
Christmas at the Biltmore Estate [VHS]A&E Home Video; Release date: 1998-09-04; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $6.08
Price in other shops:
The Shadow: Rare Radio Gems (Rare Radio Gems)Release date: 2002-09-01; Published: 2002-09-01; Music CD
Best price: $20.00
Price in other shops:
On the Shoulders of Giants, Vol. 1: An Audio & Musical Journey Through the Harlem Renaissanceby Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Release date: 2011-09-06; Published: 2008; Music CD
Best price: $1.98
Price in other shops:
Francis Durbridge, Paul Temple & The Gilbert Case - Radio ShowRelease date: 2003-05-12; Music CD
Best price: $21.20
Price in other shops:
The Serenaders - My One and Only YouRelease date: 2011-05-28; Music CD
Best price: $8.59
Price in other shops:
Similar CDs
Son House - Original Delta BluesRelease date: 2008-02-01; Published: 1998; Music CD
Best price: $2.56
Price in other shops:
St. Vincent - Strange MercyRelease date: 2011-09-13; Music CD
Best price: $7.98
Price in other shops:
Fall - Grotesque (After the Gramme)Release date: 2004-03-22; Music CD
Best price: $4.02
Price in other shops:
The Beach Boys - The Smile Sessions Box SetRelease date: 2011-11-01; Music CD
Best price: $120.68
Price in other shops:
Harry Nilsson - Nilsson SchmilssonRelease date: 2004-01-13; Music CD
Best price: $4.43
Price in other shops:
Esg - South Bronx StoryRelease date: 2000-05-29; Music CD
Best price: $20.99
Price in other shops:
Tom Waits - Bad As MeRelease date: 2011-10-24; Music CD
Best price: $8.99
Price in other shops:
Beastie Boys - The Mix-UpRelease date: 2007-06-26; Music CD
Best price: $7.99
Price in other shops:
Songs in the Key of Z: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music, Vols. 1 & 2Release date: 2004-11-22; Music CD
Best price: $9.67
Price in other shops:
American Song-Poem AnthologyRelease date: 2003-02-11; Music CD
Best price: $11.47
Price in other shops: