Decaf night

A lot of schools have things they call Coffee House, where kids come and perform mostly but not exclusively music. If this were talking place at an actual coffee house it probably wouldn't be called a coffee house, but that's another matter. This is a charming proposition, if fraught with risk from the perspective of the listener. It reminds me of the old Chris Rock line, "You know, they call it Community College because everyone in the community can go there." It always has the potential for awfulness.

This potential is one of the charms at my daughter's school, where they not only don't call it a coffee house but hold it in a room where no coffee or drinks of any kind are allowed (because why would a bunch of singers ever want a drink of water?). This particular school has these things every month or so, with the number of performers ranging from 15 to nearly thrice that.

The popularity of these shows tends to grow as the school year progresses, and the room's seats were about half full when the show began by showing a very nicely done if unremarkable music video done by students. Then the MC came on and immediately starts bemoaning the small size of the crowd. He continued to do so throughout the show, until a few of us called out, "Hey! The people you're talking to are here! You're complaining to the wrong people."

The performances range from bad karaoke types of things to some really excellent stuff to things that are just fun. The problem with many of the singers is the American Idol Syndrome, which requires one to have every song build to a huge, belted out crescendo. The better performers realize there's more than one way to sing a song and give the audience something beautiful or charming. There were also a couple of songs where I thought, "This is a good song to open a cellophane-wrapped candy to," where the aural assault was so intense that I literally grimaced.

One of the ways people do things differently is to not decide what they're going to perform until the day before or even day of. This has increased entertainment value if, for example, they have never even considered doing the song they've chosen, meaning they have to start from scratch, learning words and music a few hours before show time. You find these people frantically rehearsing in various alcoves of the building and outside until minutes before the show. It's all done in good fun and the crowd cheers everyone.

My favorite moment in the past year was when a lone 8th grader with an acoustic guitar decided to perform "Tubthumper" by Chumbawamba. He did a good job stumbling through and the audience was more than happy to join in for a rousing "I get knocked down, but I get up again" chorus. And we all went home happy.