You had to be there.

October 13, 2008 by Ro.

There are two events in our history that need to be documented, even though they will mean nothing to anyone who isn’t Moderately Bright. They both involve memory glitches we encounter during rehearsals that result in desperate fits of merriment and teary-eyed hysteria. Yes, Steve gets his weird V-shaped forehead vein thing going, Jeff snorts, and Audrey and Ro scramble for the bathroom, whenever we relive either one of these incidents.

Event #1 is the last chord of “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” — a catchy holiday tune, but admittedly not a challenging and inspirational choral masterpiece. However, our arrangement ends with a build-up starting with Jeff’s “Rock rock rockin’ round the Christmas tree” (how can you beat those poignant lyrics?) and then Steve adds in “Yeah we’re rock rock rockin’ round the Christmas tree” (how very pithy) and then Ro pipes up (you can see where this is going) “Yeah we’re rock rock rockin’ round the Christmas tree” and finally Audrey comes in to fill the chord “Yeah we’re rockin’ round the Christmas tree!” AND THEN WHAT? The music calls for a bizarre and seemingly unrelated chord on a generic “Oooo.” Whenever we try it, and we’ve rehearsed it a lot, it’s always stunningly wrong and comically bad. We all have to travel weird intervals from our starting note, completely unrelated to the note we’re on, and we never quite make the journey. We land, hard, on a jarringly awful chord that is decidedly unfestive. The result is always pants wettingly funny. Steve, our resident music theory guru, tries to explain the chord to us, but it always sounds like when the car mechanic tries to explain why the oil change will cost $780. “Jeff has to modulate the root up a minor third, Audrey has to swing down a diminished seventh, and Ro has to find the squeamish augmented fifth in the minor key of the chromatic blah de blah de blah blah.” By now Ro has glazed over and will take the “poke and hope” method of finding her note. We never, ever, have found that chord.

That’s why we end “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” on a cool and breathy “Yeahhhh.”

Event #2 is a lyrics malfunction that occurs when we try to resurrect our holiday repertoire after a 10 month hiatus without reviewing the music. We try to sing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and wind up with a hybrid of verse #1 and #2.
Verse #1 = “Let your heart be light”
Verse #2 = “Make the Yuletide gay”

WE SING “Let your Yuletide ___.” WHAT??? Let your Yuletide do what??? There is no word to complete that sentence in one syllable. So all four of us simultaneously stop and stare at each other. The Jewish contingent of the quartet stare at Ro’s lips hoping that she can figure out what we should let our Yuletide do, but she, too, is clueless, so we collapse in hopeless fits of laughter.

As you see, you have to be there to appreciate why these two incidents are so hilarious, but perhaps it gives insight as to why we all count down the days till we can rehearse again. We do have fun!

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