It was Brisbane Clair who dragged myself and Calmer Sounds all the way to Hackney last night. Not only east London, but north-east London. It was a far cry from Buckinghamshire in all kinds of ways. Spoiler alert: we didn't get involved in a brawl. [This is a reference to this event. Ed.]
The first thing to admit about Pub Choir is that it defies explanation, truly. Clair had tried to explain it to us repeatedly and I can assure you that her attempts were hopeless.
First of all, pub choir is not in a pub. It's far too popular and has become a global phenomenon since its creator Astrid Jorgensen bamboozled the (admittedly quite simple) Simon Cowell on America's Got Talent.
Although the pub choir has outgrown the pub, drinking is lightly encouraged. It certainly helps non-singers like myself to relax. Your first reaction to this concept will probably go in one of two directions, and both of them are false platforms.
Option 1. You have always known you were a brilliant singer and cannot wait for any chance to show off to your friends. As Astrid said, this assumption is most likely false and even if you are right, your genius will be drowned out by the 1,000 strong crowd around you.
Option 2. You are a terrible singer and you will go to any lengths to avoid a show such as this one. This is the option that applies to me, and it is also false. Literally, anyone with a voice can sing. What most people mean when they say they cannot sing is that (when they do try) they think they sound like a hyena dry humping a coyote. While this might be true, your cacophony will likewise be masked by people around you who can sort of sing.
Pub Choir is about so much more than drinking and singing. It is very much about keeping your phone in your pocket for a couple of hours and being totally present. Worry not. Astrid and friends will film the shit out of the night with proper cameras and skilled operators, like Paris, who filmed us and every other pub choir night prior.
This enormous singing lesson IRL event is also about what can happen when a large crowd of strangers becomes a team for an evening. Although our own video will take a while to edit, and I don't want to tell you our song yet because there's a show in Brighton tonight (tickets still available) and Dublin later in the week, you can see the result below.
What I discovered last night, from the hottest high school music teacher in the known universe, is that Astrid can really sing. She can really teach. And I presume from her introduction that she is piss fit.
More than all of that, Astrid is a torch bearer for community, for a sense of optimism, and she brings an evangelical belief in the power of music to uplift and bring people together. Honestly, it's a great night out. We met new friends in the queue outside, and new friends inside as well. If you love Australians as much as I do, you will most certainly meet a few of those.
Astrid has a new book out next month, and now I better understand her instruction to aim for average last night. It's an interesting line when you think about it, and to me it says that doing something badly (or aiming for average at best) is better than not doing something. You can read all about Pub Choir and book tickets here.
Sahara Beck
One of Astrid's regular musicians, and present on acoustic guitar last night, was the one and only Sahara Beck. Sahara has one of those voices that is so clear and perfect that you feel like you must have heard her somewhere before, though I for one had not. She's definitely worth a follow and has an enormous future.
EartH Hackney
It was my first time at EartH and it gave me an excuse to dig around. It had an authentic, rough-around-the-edges vibe that so many of the current Hackney venues share.
It turns out that EartH was once the Savoy cinema, see below, and when cinema hit the skids it became a bingo hall, as so many former cinemas did, before finally closing for good. In 2018 the team behind the local Village Underground venue re-purposed the cinema as a community arts venue with a formal seated theatre and a gig venue called EartH hall, which is where we sang our hearts out last night!
