September 13th, 2005
I want to preface today's rant with the assertion that, despite considerable formal education, I am not a musical snob. Here's some proof. And some more proof. And even further proof.
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It is with abject dread that I anticipate a certain aspect of the upcoming hockey season. I am talking about the singing of the national anthem before the games start.
For those who don't attend sporting events such as hockey or baseball games, you might not know that the national anthem is played and/or sung before the players take their positions and start play. If you attend games that are part of something like the National Hockey League, you will get professional, talented singers. For example, like Richard Loney, who sang before the Vancouver Canucks games for years before he went into semi-retirement. Dick Loney was a friend of my mother's, and, so the story goes, proposed marriage to her a couple of years before my dad did. (1)
But if you attend slightly smaller venues, such as minor league hockey (I have season's tickets to the Vancouver Giants) or triple-A baseball (Vancouver Canadians used to be that calibre, now they are single-A) then you frequently get a certain brand of singer: The Wistful Country Girl (WCG).
Who is the WCG? She will wear blue or brown skirts with long fringey dangling stringy things covering her knees. Cowboy boots, white blouses with brown needlepoint flowers around the buttons, and often a cowboy hat. She will sing in the shower and sound absolutely lovely to her own ears as the water drowns her out from the rest of the family, and she will do that musical device known as Anticipation (2) to death—over and bloody over again. Now, don't get me wrong: Bach did this occasionally and it is very pretty when used sparingly. But more than once or twice and it is like dolloping huge heaps of sugar into the coffee. It is, in musical terms, what Dogs Playing Poker is to the painting world. It's just that the WCG doesn't realise this and instead of once or twice per anthem, she anticipates every goddamned chord change. It is painful ... like watching a rerun marathon of Little House on the Prairie. Hell, even Loretta Lynn or Reba MacIntyre (or Patsy Cline or Roseanne Cash for that matter) employ a little restraint. But WCG doesn't.
WCG is sad and romantic and keeps pictures of Jesus and puppies on her bedroom walls. She sings in the church choir and everyone tells her how beautiful her voice is. And she believes it as she quietly murmurs "Coal Miner's Daughter" to herself under the shower nozzle. But bad days are a-comin' for WCG when she has to stand in front of a real band or with a microphone in front of a real arena full of people whooping in anticipation of the puck dropping. Then she suddenly has to sing overtop of that band or those hockey fans, and realises she's gotta belt it out. Suddenly her voice is not so pretty ... suddenly she can't keep her pitch ... and although she uses her little country style that she perfected in the shower, she can't make it sound appealing anymore. Uh oh ... reality has encroached on WCG when she realises that cutting three demo songs at the local basement 16-track recording "studio" (for $350 with a guy who probably would have preferred a quick roll in the hay for compensation) is a lot easier than shouting into a crackly microphone over the sound of your pissed off (and speeding up) drummer, or thirty drunk members of a hockey firmament hollering for the game to start.
Well, anyhow, with the new season coming up in just a couple of weeks, we will all have to watch a whole new batch of these girls screw up the anthems as they realise, wide-eyed with horror, that they aren't quite the Nashville-bound Next-Best-Things that they thought they were. It's like watching a slow-motion train-wreck, and I can see it coming like a parade down Main Street.
And one more quick thing, all you potential WCGs: Stop singing the %$*@%$-ing anthems so slow! Pick up the pace! We don't need to hear you run out of breath at the end of the phrases, either!
(1) - My dad would've been the guy who sings the anthems before the Canucks games. How cool would that have been? But, never fear, dear real dad: I am more than happy with the one I got. Oh, and thanks for taking me to those games when I was a child.
(2) -"A note played before a chord with which it is a concord, particularly where it is discordant with the preceding chord."
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