The Langley Schools Music Project

This album is simultaneously beautiful and disturbing. These Canadian schoolchildren recorded nineteen rock songs during the mid-1970s. Sparkling walls of youthful vocal harmonies stretch in and out of tune over a clanging orchestra. You'll hear winding electric guitars, mischievous xylophone solos, off-time cymbals and the haunting echoes of a school gymnasium.

Led by hippie music teacher Hans Fenger, the sixty Canadian schoolchildren of the Langley
Schools Music Project formed their own little glee club in the mid-Seventies, performing
pop songs of the day with unschooled voices and broken instruments, and recording their
performances on a two-track deck in a gym. The tapes, never intended for commercial
release, were recently unearthed by outsider music impresario Irwin Chusid, als... More >

Hans Fenger was a gifted teacher on a mission. Cutting keepsake vinyl for his kiddie choir was a great way for him to reward past involvement while inspiring more. Irwin Chusid is a tedious ideologue with a hustle. Turning that vinyl into a collectible CD is the latest way for him to remind the converted that artistic intention is reserved for the beholder in these postmodern times--especially if the beholder has a hustle. A few of these songs were great, a few of them sucked, and every one was more innocent and/or desperate in its original version except Barry Manilow's (but not the Bay City Rollers'). A special annoyance is the reportedly tear-jerking "Desperado" by a 10-year-old who doesn't seem to have any idea what the song means, which is to her credit as a human being but not as a singer. The sole revelation is Brian Wilson, whose six songs still sound like themselves. (Grade - C-)