A Fish Supper with Ed and Elton - gig review! (and blatant plug)

Yesterday I had a really enjoyable night out, Talking, giggling, dancing and eating fish and chips, down in the hall at Wey Valley School...It was probably the tail end of my 40th Birthday celebrations, but what a lovely ending it was too!

The school hall has a really good stage, and at just the right moment Ed's son Jack tugged on the curtains to reveal Mr Hintze in his signature red jacket and straw hat. All held their breath at the curtains momentarily paused, then squeaked the rest of the way open. Ed played the grand piano, alongside his trusty TYROS3, perched on top,and did what he always does so well, entertained his varied audience with top performing and a smattering of tasteful jokes ...Ed chose real audience pleasers from his HUGE repertoire of Elton songs and the atmosphere was brilliant.

Then the awesome school dinner lady brought out chip-suppers for all, you could have a sausage or a veggie burger, if you wanted, and some tartare sauce was dug out for the birthday girl too. With lights up, there was an opportunity to chat with friends and family, and some thing nice and comforting to soak up the rosé drank by members of Dorset for Singing.

In the second half, fuelled with fishies and encouraged by Ed's lovely wife Jenny, the dancing began, as Ed appeared on stage in Gold Lamé and rocked the school hall. I simply cant say enough how impressed I am with the size of Mr Hinze's repertoire, although his enthusiasm for playing got the better of him when his G-string snapped, mid song! After that he let it hang out so it wouldn't make funny noises.

Ed thanked his supporters, and us for being fab fans, and we knew he really meant it. And we really were happy we came, especially some of us! The last encore was an Elton track, to dance to, and so we did! And I got my poster signed at half time, too!

12 May 2011

Breezes will blow endlessly...


To being with the hall was all set up wrongly, and in addition there was Michael selling polo-shirts off the stage, Dave fiddling with speakers and mics, and me giving out ARTWEY art-trail maps again. Our Warm up was also a sound check, as it was time to record our Choir Anthem competition entry, and then there was an especially nice warm up song, just to celebrate 40 years of me getting on peoples nerves a lot! Have to say, having heard it a few times now of course, that’s the best Happy Birthday chorus EVER so thank you all! Unlike some parties I have been to, Ed will always start it in a sensible key!

And then it was time to try a couple of takes, and Ed very carefully explained that there must be absolute silence for a few seconds before and after the actual song, as EVERY sound we made would be captured and sent off for the judges to frown at! Suddenly, there was a loud ‘parp’ sound from the direction of the stage and we had to wait for all the giggles to subside before trying to play/sing! Ed said it was just a chair. Of course it was.

We sang a few of our recent new songs, including the one about love, chosen by Adrian, and my choice – Heart, Alone ... I used to have big hair like those babes! A few things The Cat was asked tonight were, ‘these tops, are they compulsory, was there a vote?’, ‘aren’t we on the harmony side?’ and finally, ‘will you tell Ed it sounds like a dirge?’! Big hugs everyone, well done for making a good recording in two takes, and sorry you missed it Fulvia XXX

18 November 2010

Brown Girl in the Ring ....

I love listening to Wey-Hey-Bay WI choir before we all get to sit down. They sound quite good these days, even of down in numbers, and much more grown up than DFS... But after they have finished we pile into our seats, and rattle thru a warm up before Ed gets up and announces a surprise. Which is singing Christmassy songs.

So we all should out the name of songs we like, apart from me, and come up with a list of 25 songs, paired down with voting and groaning to a humble 9. I liked watching Dave type then out on the screen, it reminded me of the Match-of-the-Day teleprinter, only much more exciting.

Then we sang our way through some of the songs, many of them in too high a key, and at the end Ed hinted that although this list had been very democratically chosen, it might change when we saw it again the next week.

But there was an awesome super duper surprise this week, when right at the end the lovely person I had seen wielding equipment at our concert appeared with a nice shiny disk, and after Michael and especially Dave twiddled lots of things on the mixing desk, the beautiful sound of a well-rehearsed, happy, and rather good community choir rang from the speakers and made many a hair stand up on end! So now, the burning question would be, we can we have one? Me Mam would love it!

So proud of you Dorset for Singing, Traa-la-la-la-lah! XXXXXXX