In 1976 and 1977 an impressed music instructor within the small faculty dis­trict of Lan­g­ley City­ship, British Colum­bia, a sub­urb of Van­cou­ver, report­ed his ele­males­tary faculty stu­dents singing pop­u­lar songs in a faculty health club. Two vinyl information had been professional­duced over the 2 years, and fam­i­lies had been invit­ed to pay $7 for a duplicate. The report­ings had been massive­ly for­bought­ten — simply anoth­er per­son­al memen­to saved away in a couple of houses in West­ern Cana­da — till a report col­lec­tor stum­bled throughout a duplicate in a thrift retailer in 2000.

Enthralled by what he heard, the col­lec­tor despatched a sam­ple to a disc jock­ey at WFMU, an eclec­tic, lis­ten­er-sup­port­ed radio sta­tion in New Jer­sey. The sta­tion started play­ing among the songs over the air­waves. Lis­ten­ers had been touched by the hang-out­ing, ethe­re­al qual­i­ty of the per­for­mances. In 2001, a small report com­pa­ny launched a com­pi­la­tion referred to as The Lan­g­ley City­ship Music Venture: Inno­cence & Despair.

The report turned an underneath­floor hit. The Wash­ing­ton Put up referred to as it “an album that appears to cap­ture noth­ing lower than the sound of falling in love with music.” Spin mentioned the album “appears to sum up all of the rea­sons music is holy.” And Dwight Gamer of The New York Times wrote that the music was “magazine­ic: a form of celes­tial pep ral­ly.” Lis­ten­ers had been moved by the ingen­u­ous­ness of the younger voic­es, the unusual authen­tic­i­ty of per­for­mances by chil­dren too younger to underneath­stand the entire grownup themes within the lyrics. As Hans Fenger, the music instructor who made the report­ings, writes within the lin­er notes:

The youngsters had a grasp of what they favored: emo­tion, dra­ma, and mak­ing music as a bunch. Whether or not the outcomes had been good, unhealthy, in tune or out was no massive deal — that they had élan. This was not the best way music was tra­di­tion­al­ly taught. However then I nev­er favored con­ven­tion­al “chil­dren’s music,” which is con­de­scend­ing and ignores the true­i­ty of chil­dren’s lives, which might be darkish and scary. These chil­dren hat­ed “cute.” They cher­ished songs that evoked lone­li­ness and unhappy­ness.

You may study the sto­ry of Fenger’s further­or­di­nary music mission within the 2002 VH1 doc­u­males­tary above, which incorporates inter­views and a reunion with among the stu­dents. And lis­ten beneath for a couple of sam­ples of that contact­ing qual­i­ty of lone­li­ness and unhappy­ness Fenger and oth­ers have been speak­ing about.

David Bowie’s ‘House Odd­i­ty’:

Probably the most extensive­ly praised songs from Inno­cence & Despair is the 1976 report­ing of David Bowie’s “House Odd­i­ty.” In a 2001 inter­view with Mike Appel­stein for Scram magazine­a­zine, Fenger defined the sound results within the report­ing. “After I first taught ‘House Odd­i­ty,’ ” he mentioned, “the primary half I taught after the music was the youngsters rely­ing down. They liked that: they’d go ‘TEN!’ They might­n’t say it loud sufficient; the rely­down within the music was the large win­ner. However as quickly as they bought to zero, noth­ing hap­pened. So I introduced this previous metal gui­tar. Effectively, one of many lit­tle guys whose identify I’ve for­bought, I put him on this factor and mentioned, ‘Now lis­ten, after they get to zero, you’re the rock­et. So make a whole lot of noise on this. He’s idiot­ing round with this metal gui­tar, and I did­n’t even consider this, however he intu­itive­ly took out a Coke bot­tle from his lunch and begin­ed doing this (imi­tates a bot­tle run­ning up and down the fret­board). I simply cranked up the vol­ume and turned down the mas­ter vol­ume so it was actual­ly dis­tort­ed. And that was the ‘House Odd­i­ty’ sound impact.”

The Seaside Boys’ ‘In My Room’:

The chil­dren report­ed “In My Room” by the Seaside Boys in 1977. Fenger instructed Appel­stein it was the ulti­mate chil­dren’s music. “It’s the per­fect intro­spec­tive music for a nine-year-old,” he mentioned, “simply as ‘Mud within the Wind’ is the per­fect phi­los­o­phy music for a nine-year-old. Adults might imagine it’s dumb, however for a kid, it’s a really heavy, professional­discovered thought. To suppose that there’s noth­ing, and it’s expressed in such a sim­ple manner.”

The Eagles’ ‘Des­per­a­do’:

Sev­er­al of the report­ings fea­ture soloists. A younger woman named Sheila Behman sang the Eagles’ “Des­per­a­do” in 1977. “With ‘Des­per­a­do,’ ” mentioned Fenger, “you may see it as a cow­boy roman­tic sto­ry, however that’s not the best way Sheila heard it. She might­n’t artic­u­late metaphor­i­cal­ly what the music was about, however in that sense, I believe it was pur­er as a result of it was unaf­fect­ed. It’s not as if the youngsters had been strive­ing to be some­physique else. They had been simply strive­ing to be who they had been, and so they’re doing this music and falling in love with it.”

Notice: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this submit appeared on our website in 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

David Bowie Urges Kids to READ in a 1987 Poster Spon­sored by the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion

David Bowie Pre­dicts the Good & Bad of the Inter­net in 1999: “We’re on the Cusp of Some­thing Exhil­a­rat­ing and Ter­ri­fy­ing”

David Bowie Songs Reimag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers: Space Odd­i­ty, Heroes, Life on Mars & More

When David Bowie Launched His Own Inter­net Ser­vice Provider: The Rise and Fall of BowieNet (1998)

How David Bowie Used William S. Bur­roughs’ Cut-Up Method to Write His Unfor­get­table Lyrics