Created in 2005 by its director Caroline Redman Lusher, the Rock Choir has become something of a populist phenomenon. It’s a “people’s choir”, which means the songbook leans more towards Robbie Williams than Vaughan Williams. Anyone is welcome to join. There are no auditions and no talent requirements, a fact which will scarcely surprise viewers who last night witnessed the Bristol Rock Choir inflicting a very vocal form of GBH on ABBA's “Waterloo”.
Narrated with rather pained joie de vivre by Hugh Bonneville, The Choir That Rocks is a three-part series which follows several Rock Choirs as they gear up for a mass communal concert at Wembley Arena. Lusher being a classical musician who “trained to be a pop star” (but failed, presumably), those of an uncharitable bent might presume that Rock Choir is her revenge against the world.
Since 2005 her original choir, based in Farnham, has branched out into a countrywide organisation with some 7,500 members. Apparently happiest with a head mic strapped to her ear, she personally selects the “feel-good songs” for the choir’s repertoire, which includes “Let Me Entertain You”, “Something So Strong” and the ubiquitous “You Got the Love”. In return, each chorister pays £100 per term for the chance to learn, sing and dance their hearts out. Everyone seemed pretty chipper about the arrangement.
This opening episode captured only a little of the emotional tingle of communal singing, but the programme makers are no doubt keeping their powder dry for The Big Finish. Instead, they homed in on those documentary staples, the BBEs (Benign British Eccentrics), as they practised arthritic dance moves in their kitchens, sang “Mr Blue Sky” more in hope than expectation and sent texts saying things like “Weybridge rocked”. Their number included a Cliff Richard fanatic crooning in his slippers, a town crier and a singing policewoman who trilled “Dancing in the Street” as she patrolled a shopping precinct. I bet she doesn’t do that when the cameras aren’t there.
The choir leaders were an equally mixed bag. They came from a variety of professional backgrounds and all seemed like nice people, but at times they resembled the kind of over enthusiastic zealots – all zany T-shirts and politely bleached hair – more usually tasked with trying to make Christianity seem cool to traumatised teens.
Quite a few of them couldn't carry a tune in a bucket but that didn’t appear to matter. Lusher (pictured above right, in the centre, with members of Rock Choir) insisted the governing requirement for a choir leader was that “members need to fall in love with them”. It wasn't hard to see why Lusher's choir might pledge their devotion to her, but Leeds failed to fall for Nick, who had shipped his young family from a canal boat in Guildford in order to help extend the Rock Choir franchise to a rather sceptical Yorkshire.
A man just aching to be parodied by Robert Webb, Nick singularly failed to give his nine choir members the necessary degree of spiritual uplift. Cue the cavalry, in the form of Farnham's finest, bussed in to York to “flash mob” a shopping centre and rally the troops.
It highlighted one enduring truism: singing is good; singing makes you feel better
This amiable nonsense was a mere prelude to preparations for the pivotal Rock Choir extravaganza at Wembley Arena, which we’ll watch unfold over the next two weeks (although, like most “coming events" in television, in real life it has already happened). “I really hope they come,” said Lusher, gazing at 10,000 empty seats. I bet she does. The gig was being sold as a symbolic “celebration” but I itched for more info. Sadly for all nosy parkers, The Choir That Rocks was terribly coy when it came to cash. Lurking underneath the egalitarian ethos, of course, lies a very canny business model.
The programme preferred to focus on the much-trumpeted feel-good factor. Within 60 seconds we’d heard that Rock Choir was a “life-changing experience” that was all about people giving “110 per cent”. But devoid of the more socially concerned (and musically rigorous) motor which ostensibly lay behind the formation of Gareth Malone’s TV choirs, at times it was hard to see The Choir That Rocks as anything more worthy than a massive recruitment drive for Rock Choir.
Still, it was difficult to be overly cynical about anything which encouraged people of all abilities to find such obvious joy, comfort and release. The artistic merits of Rock Choir are negligible, to say the least: the singing is perfunctory and the dance routines resembled those rather disturbing video displays of communal callisthenics which sometimes leak out of North Korea, but to focus on those aspects is to obviously miss the point. The Choir That Rocks might have been all fluff, bumble and cotton wool, but it highlighted one enduring truism: singing is good; singing makes you feel better. Whether you need to spend £100 a term so that Nick can help you find that out is another matter entirely.
- Watch The Choir That Rocks on ITV Player
Find Rock Choir Vol 1 on Amazon
Add comment