Shoop shoop shoop shoop

I just updated my online choir schedule. (I see the official one's still offline...) Bit depressing that almost all the bits that said "venue tbc" - and got my hopes up that we might not be going to my least favourite place - now say "WHGS tbc". Boo.

I also had a look through my music to see what Jamieisms I wrote down last week. There actually weren't any - except a visual one, when Jamie went over to the piano to demonstrate something. I think he took David by surprise, because David didn't move from his seat, with the result that he sat there for a couple of minutes with Jamie's bum right in front of his face. His expression was picturesque!

Jamie did say "keep the tiller in the water" again, so I decided I'd better put him straight once and for all! He claimed he did actually know it was the rudder that went in the water, and just got mixed up... yeah, right :p

Anyway, I was going to tell you about the Pleiades. This is a group of stars in the sky. It's also the name of my band, which has been in existence for 9 years now. Membership has varied in that time, but the singers are me, Alison P, Rachel B and a friend of mine (not in the Hallé) called Lindsey, together with my friend Nigel (who also plays guitar). I play the keyboards and the oboe from time to time instead of (or as well as) singing. There is also a bass player, drummer, violinst and flute player who each join us occasionally (although rarely all at once). We sing all sorts of stuff (in 4 and 5 part harmony, naturally) - the core of our repertoire is 50s/60s doo wop stuff, but we also do Commitments, Abba, Beatles, McFly, and everything in between. We don't do many gigs, mainly because we don't often get asked and none of us has time to go out in search of them! We do sing for the kids at my school twice a year, but the last proper gig we did was Sue's retirement party in Oldham last year.

We do have a gig coming up, though - Nigel is getting married next month, and we're singing at his wedding - a cappella stuff during the ceremony, and a regular set in the evening. I've arranged the a cappella stuff specially, and we practised it for the first time last week. (That's what inspired me to blog about the band, see.) As ever with the first run through anything a cappella, it was amusingly bad, but by the second and third goes it was all starting to sound rather lovely. I'm very much looking forward to the day! Anyway, hopefully we'll record these songs at some point, in which case I'll put them up here, but in the meantime here are a couple of songs we have recorded:

Mustang Sally (4.1 MB)
Will You Love Me Tomorrow? (3.4 MB)