The Langley Schools Music Project
Innocence & Despair
Label:  Bar/None Records 
Date:  10/23/2001
Length:  0:00
Format:  CD
Genre:  Rock; Pop
  Category:  rock
    Track Listing:
      1.  
      		 Venus and Mars/Rock Show (Paul McCartney & Wings)    
      2.  
      		 Good Vibrations (The Beach Boys)    
      3.  
      		 God Only Knows (The Beach Boys)    
      4.  
      		 Space Oddity (David Bowie)    
      5.  
      		 The Long and Winding Road (The Beatles)    
      6.  
      		 Band On The Run (Paul McCartney & Wings)    
      7.  
      		 In My Room (The Beach Boys)    
      8.  
      		 I'm Into Something Good (Earl-Jean/Herman's Hermits)    
      9.  
      		 Saturday Night (Bay City Rollers)    
      10.  
      		 I Get Around (The Beach Boys)    
      11.  
      		 Mandy (Barry Manilow)    
      12.  
      		 Help Me, Rhonda (The Beach Boys)    
      13.  
      		 Desperado (The Eagles)    
      14.  
      		 You're So Good To Me (The Beach Boys)    
      15.  
      		 Sweet Caroline (Neil Diamond)    
      16.  
      		 To Know Him Is To Love Him (Teddy Bears)    
      17.  
      		 Rhiannon (Fleetwood Mac)    
      18.  
      		 Wildfire (Michael Martin Murphy)    
      19.  
      		 Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft (The Recognized Anthem of World Contact Day) (Klaatu/The Carpenters)    
    Additional info: | top

      Originally waxed for friends and families of a rural Canadian elementary/middle-school chorus, these mid-70s vanity recordings capture the joy, confusion, discovery and loneliness of childhood like few before. The production's serendipitous journey from thrift store to non-commercial radio to public release fully preserves the original lack of premeditation, and further highlights the distance these performances kept from any taint of commercial calculation. The sugarcoated cuteness one might reflexively expect from a children's music project is entirely absent. Rookie teacher Hans Fenger wedded elements of Carl Orff's pioneering music curriculum with contemporary hit songs, to forge an inventive, safe space for his young performers. The occasional rhythmic wobble or flubbed note is subsumed by the children's unbridled expressiveness and modulated by the Spectorian gymnasium acoustics.