Barely Tolerable Tollerton - a night to remember

Submitted by steve on Sun, 19/07/2009 - 17:29

Do you remember the scene in Spinal Tap where a set has been designed to recreate 'Stonehenge'. Down from the ceiling come some polystyrene standing stones and suddenly out come a tribe of dancing dwarves. Well forget the druidic artefacts (No! This is not about Gleadless again) and just focus on the dwarves. Now imagine that instead of 3 or 4 there are thousands - a bit like Gremlins - dancing, playing air guitar or being bored and endangering some of the smaller people by doing backflips, handstands and cartwheels. Pull back that focus and imagine you can see some murky, prehistoric looking creatures - bovine if you will, a whole herd of them with flared nostrils, breathing heavily with a combination of an ocean of adrenalin and the anticipation of a mass charge against predators and you have Tollerton School BBQ. So many kids I had to scrape one or two of them off my feet afterwards and their mums 'standing guard' in case they needed their noses wiping or to stop them enjoying themselves. That was our gig that was - the rest of the 'parents' carefully tucked out of the way poking sausages on the barbie, swigging Carling from cans and smoking their heads off. Thank the Lord that everyone's bed time was 10:00pm and we could go home!

 Never again........................

........... until next time I suppose,

 Steve

Comments

A lyrical quandary

Submitted by ruth on Sun, 19/07/2009 - 21:24.

I sympathised for our vocalist, as Sharon herself mentioned it being somewhat difficult to sing certain lyrics with the conviction they deserve in front of a group of 10-year olds.  You can't really sing  'Rape','Murder' (Gimme Shelter) in a Johnny B Goode kinda style.  Or is it ones duty to educate, no matter how young, about the political and social unrest of that time.  Oh well, it's the parents who will have to answer the questions later.

'Daddy - what's rape'?

'It's some kind of oilseed, isn't it'?

 

 

 

To be fair.......

Submitted by sharon on Mon, 20/07/2009 - 00:16.

It was a tough one but the people at the end of the night liked us and we were probably outside our comfort zone. The guy from the PTA said that he was sorry that we weren't playing to our usual audience, that the ball would have been more our scene and that the convergence of the ball and the BBQ had left us singing to infants. But I was grateful for their faith in us, for the more than modest payment and for their genuine drive to get us to play. It wasn't my thing and I felt very weird doing some of the songs, as Ruth says, but I was touched by the kids enjoying us so much and dancing and playing air guitar. Perhaps I am just a bit of a softie......