Look What I Found in My Garage: Innocence and Despair

Round two:

The garage discoveries continue with the gem of The Langley Schools Music Project

This record really speaks for itself -- and you love it or hate it. (No haters read Loss Leaders do they?? If so scram!) But a little introduction does set it up nicely: In the mid-1970s an amazing music teacher (do they still exist??) worked at the Langely School in British Columbia and recorded two albums with the school's chorus and pressed records for their own enjoyment. Lost for decades until Bar/None released the music commercially for the first time. The music is pure joy and a wonderful piece of found art...

Richie Unterberger in All Music Guide put it well: "The kids are engaged and having fun, certainly; there's not much despair here. But they sound close to what you would expect 50-strong vocal ensembles of nine- to 12-year-olds singing in a school gymnasium to sound like. What does probably lift this above most other vanity school music class pressings (and you know there must be plenty more where this came from) is the spooky, minimal strangeness of most of the arrangements. It does indeed sound refreshing and interesting to hear the Beach Boys, Paul McCartney, Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles, and Neil Diamond songs with weird off-kilter xylophones, off-the-wall cymbal crashes, and teacher Hans Fenger's basic singalong acoustic guitar and piano. It's more valuable as a cultural curiosity and something to get the guffaws going at parties than it is a deep listening experience."

Cultural curiosity / Deep Listening experience ... are those mutually exclusive??

Listen to two LSMP Beach Boys covers:
In My Room is one of my favorite Brian Wilson songs. This haunting performance imbues the song with a lonliness implied by the original but fully captured here. Listen and imagine a bunch of pre-teens singing about the their refuge and dreams. And then the attempts at those high notes...!

Good Vibrations is a pretty bold song to even attempt for an elementary school chorus! I'd be proud if my son was in the group doing this version.

Two good pieces on the album:
NPR feature
NY Times article