Friday, February 26, 2010

Lent Blog 8: Mistakes and Music

My second radio encounter yesterday was on the way back up the M6 from Preston. It was 3pm, so over on Radio 2 the Steve Wright non-stop oldies resumed. For What It's Worth by Buffalo Springfield, Will You by Hazel O'Connor, In The Air Tonight by Phil Collins, Freebird by Lynyrd Skynyrd. It was going well, and then we got...Shirley Bassey.

It made me think about a disagreement I had with another vicar from our Diocese about in/out music for weddings. His view was that the organist should play it, and he extolled the virtues of his parish's musician. My view was that if people want Everything I do, I do it for you, they expect Brian Adams. It's not a song written for playing on a church organ; it's the wrong genre. Either you ban those sorts of songs altogether, or you allow the version that actually makes sense. That's no slight on his (or our) excellent organists; it just seems to be common sense.

The Adventures of Robin Hood (TV series)Image via Wikipedia

As a caution to my colleague, I did hear of a wedding where the 'Theme From Robin Hood" was requested for the organist to play. And yes, instead of Everything I do, I do it for you, the organist struck up with... well have a listen here to Dick James singing the theme from the vintage TV show The Adventures of Robin Hood.
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

1 comment:

Mr Chris said...

100% Mike.
Either do music properly or default to the CD! This also applies for worship songs in churches with insufficient musical resources..
Full organ can be amazing for Hymns, choir items and amazing voluntaries but pop music... Aghhhhhh.
Equally Tim Hughes on a bontempi keyboard and flute with congregational half hearted clapping is enough to make me throw up.