Staff pick of the week...
This week...Geoff picks it!

Artist: Langley Schools Music Project Title: Innocence & Despair Price: $14.75 CD	Tracks on this CD:
	Venus and Mars/Rock Show
	Good Vibrations
	God Only Knows
	Space Oddity
	The Long and Winding Road
	Band On the Run
	I'm Into Something Good
	In My Room
	Saturday Night
	I Get Around
	Mandy
	Help Me, Rhonda
	Desperado
	You're So Good To Me
	Sweet Caroline
	To Know Him Is To Love Him
	Rhiannon
	Wildfire
	Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft

Everyone knows the story – “The Langley Schools Music Project is not so much a group as the name that served as an umbrella for a couple of super-obscure, privately pressed LPs by Canadian elementary school students in the mid-'70s. The recordings were supervised and arranged by Hans Fenger, a Vancouver musician who had taken a post teaching music in elementary schools in the rural area of Langley, British Columbia. Fenger took a then-radical (and still-radical) approach to music instruction that emphasized participation and pop songs the kids liked. Even more radically, he recorded his students on a couple of albums, pressed in extremely small quantities for performers, parents, classmates, and faculty (only 300 were pressed of the first LP). Recorded on two-track in a gym, these feature approximately 50-strong groups of elementary school children singing, usually together (there are occasional solo spotlights), pop/rock songs of the '60s and '70s like "Good Vibrations," "Band on the Run," and "Desperado." They were accompanied by minimal instrumentation, including cymbals, xylophones, metallophones, one open-tuned string of an electric bass, and Fenger’s own acoustic rhythm guitar and piano.” (www.allmusic.com)

Granted, “Innocence & Despair” may be difficult to listen to over and over again, but I think anyone with a love of music, any kind of music, should listen to it at least once. This is a modern day version of the stuff Alan Lomax and Harry Smith (“Anthology of American Folk Music”) have spent their lives looking for – folk music sung by folks for other folks. No big recording budgets, no anxiety about every (or any) note being perfect, no aspirations of stardom. These are just kids learning about and having fun with music – isn’t that what it should be all about? The highlight for me is 9 year old Sheila Behman’s solo rendition of “Desperado” -- sung with more heart and feeling than even the Eagles (or Linda Ronstadt for that matter) could muster. Langley School Music Project’s “Innocence and Despair” is certainly an oddity, possibly not your cup of tea, but definitely worth a listen. Put it on at parties – your friends will love it!