Remember when KH's had a piano and real singing?

by WingCommander 85 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  BluesBrother

  one more step toward corporate uniformity

  I could not have said it better. When I was 'in' I used to beef about this too. With a real piano and a live pianist there is a sense of unity and "pitching together" that is missing from a c/d. It may be played in perfect time but the soul is missing. When dear old Sister Musical toddled forward to start and end the meeting, everybody was one in purpose . Perhaps the notes or time were off , but we all got to know the way it would be and sang it all the better.

  "Keep music Live!" as the stickers say.. If they teach pioneers to build halls and speak deaf signing, I am sure they could pass on the skill to play the music.
• 

  Cellist

  Blondies experience is in line with the situation here also. Although I haven't myself actually attended any of the area churches, we've been offered jobs playing for a few of them. They didn't care what denomination we were as long as we were willing to play (some for money, some for free). Wasn't keen on getting up early Sunday morning and playing for any of them.

  Cellist
• 

  Van Gogh

  My step-grandmother played the piano. She was full of herself... so lots of hilarity when hitting a wrong key. Must have been 1969 or so. Some years later, as an eleven or twelve year old, I was at the keys... of the amplifier and the record player as the sound boy.
• 

  Athanasius

  
  Sure do. Brings back some fond memories.

  We had two sisters who rotated the piano playing duties. One was in her 30s and she played the songs by the book, nothing added. The other sister was in her early 70s and as a young woman had played honky tonk piano on stage and in night clubs. She always jazzed up the songs, which brought a few giggles from us younger ones.

  But there was a meeting where the younger piano player left during the meeting due to an illness and the older sister was away on vacation so at the conclusion of the meeting the Congregation servant asked if someone would like to play the closing song. A brother who was irregular about meeting attendance volunteered. Earlier in life he had played with an orchestra and was a talented pianist. Unfortunately this evening he was sauced. Not that I blame him, he probably needed the spirits to get through the meeting. However, because of his inebriated state the kingdom song had a slightly different musical score. It was hard for me to keep from bursting out laughing. Don't think they ever let him play again at the KH after that.
• 

  LuciousJ

  I KNOW WHAT HAPPENED....................THE LIGHT GOT BRIGHTER!!!!!

  Insane!
• 

  james_woods

  I went back and read all 5 pages of this great old nostalgic thread again just now.

  I concur completely with the loss of individual contribution and the substitution of big brother's record player. I guess the old grunts up at HQ were missing the wind-up edison boxes of yesteryear with the Judge holding forth about Catholicism for the poor captives at the door.

  We had quite a few very talented musical people in OKC when all this happened.

  What I can remember most of all was the horror that was felt when those records were heard for the first time...my God, the corny excess of it all! Those wailing violins! The way the society orchestra would let the timing fade up and down like a player piano that needed wound up again! I actually said something about it to the CO, and got told that lots of violin hystrionics was a "good thing" because it added "feeling". Right - a lot of us sound guys always got a "feeling" right in the stomach when we had to play it.

  This stuff was not you father's Oldsmobile - it was your great-great-grandfather's Curved-Dash-PreWW1-Oldsmobile!