30 September 2021

Ed and Jack did a thorough sound check and someone told me I got the month late. So I edited that. It’s a little cold in the hall so we might be in need of a more physical warm-up as winter approaches, with all the ventilation requirements. 

But we did do some vocal-sizes and no star jumps. 

Ed gave is a recap of Jack’s life since lockdown started (nice) and reminded us about our concert (read last week if you didn’t come) and announced that the new ABBA song will have to go up a pitch or two to suit our young fresh voices. 

First song of the night is an old friend California Dreamin’ but it rather lacked the melody and the brightness of higher cheek bones! Do sing winner and not winter otherwise it sounds a bit jam and Jerusalem. 

Christmas Concerts are not on the radar yet. But we could do an outdoor thing. We slipped into Make You Feel My Love don’t forget your aaaaaahs in the second verse. We agreed that the key was comfortable for Ed to make a backing track or two, and that Jack will get some links on the website on Saturday because the weather will be pants. Blowing in your face. Best stay home and sing then. 

Time for a Wartime Medley with rats, cats and bats to sing about. What fun we had in the olden days! Oh we did have fun packing up our travels and smiling those cheeks higher! 

ABBA song time, but first and anecdote. ABBA recently made a comeback but they are going to come back all holographically so we might go to said hologram concert on a coach together. Won’t that be fabulous. 

I Still Have Faith In You lead to a two man tinkering on the piano, and we were off, in a new key. I don’t mean we were off key. (Plus 2) (transpose is function and f sharpe and f in case Ed forgets). 

We decided to top and tail If You Could Read My Mind which I still don’t know oops, mind you I had members sitting nearer so my own mistakes as loud this week, hooray! We stood to perform. Well, when I said we I was bending the truth a bit. This song is my homework, what’s yours? 

Wow well done DFS. It’s so good to be back isn’t it? Keep singing but only where it’s safe to do so. 

23 September 2021

Back! Back we were. Even if no one sat near me, it was so good to be back. The piano was a little wobbly and we had to do a quick google to find out how to transpose. Perhaps Ed was a little wobbly too. 

Ed welcomed everyone and reminded everyone that we already have a concert booked on the 31 October which will feature a brand new wartime medley. It will be for the festival of remembrance. 

We were going to be singing old songs and new songs again tonight marking the end of the odd ‘nearly two years’ and kicked off with a Dum Dum Diddle together. Yes! 

The first song in our concert will be Make You Feel My Love and we were off singing a real propper song! Considering we had not sung for a long time, well together, it sounded pretty nice and Ed just had to revise timings with us. It was so lovely singing that I was tempted to forget to blog. But then where would we be? Dorchester probably read this to see if we were as good as them, for starters. 

This will be our opening number … we stood to perform. And Ed said that it was good. 

Wartime Medley was our next piece of fun, for me it was the rats but for some of the guys it might have been the marvellous harmony part. And Ed said it could have been worse. We stood to perform!

Homework may have been to listen to I Still Have Faith In You but it was very new to many so Jack looked out a lyric video for us. 

We had a stab at the beginning with Ed at the piano, held back by Jenny’s handbag. The piano I mean, not Ed. 

Next up was If You Could Read My Mind familiar to many of DFS. We ran through that and the first verse of First Time and ran out of time. 

Wow DFS, didn’t we do well? I loved it. Keep singing and definitely keep smiling, Love, The Blogger x