More Northern Harmony stuff...

Yesterday, I received the adjudication papers of our NoHarm set.

Some good criticisms (mostly tuning and balance issues they were commenting on) along with some good compliments about us.

Two of the judges were Heebie-Jeebies, and so have heard and seen us before.

So I laughed my ass off when I saw a note scribbled on Chris' sheet:

"More individuality?"

Now the reason I find is funny is because last year, the winners of "Audience Favourite" was a quartet of guys from Calgary, dressed up in sweater vest and singing very safe songs.

We weren't too happy with our own performance (no training on mics), and so it was this huge malicious joke, "What if we dressed up like No Assembly Required and sang Christian spirituals? Then we'd get ALL the awards!"

And so we did. Dress up like them in any case...It fit the mood of "Teddy Bear" anyway. And then we ripped off the vests for Viva Las Vegas, both because it was all about 70's excess for that song, and we were ripping off vests that didn't suit us. It was SYMBOLIC!

Another funny note was Ken saying, "Maybe you should lower the key of Uniform Grey a bit so Deving can hit those higher notes."

We actually raised it a key, just so Dev could hit the low notes. Also, it makes it a bit happier a tune in that key...

So while I appreciate the comments of the judges (how else are we going to improve?), if they had only knew why we did these things...

Ken loved Clocks as a selection, and one of the judges loved my take of Little Red Riding Hood, where I try to overooze with machismo and charisma. (Hell, I do that for every solo I have...)

Mostly, I and the others pulled off a good set and did it capably, which I think exorcised the ghosts from last year's performance. Singing onstage as catharsis. Gotta love it.

So I'm thinking Kow can go back to its normal performing style next year, just dress as ourselves, do a standard three song set, complete with banter.

Not go as 80s Hair Band rockers and punkers, not as a parody of a well-meaning bunch of guys, not try for an Ironman set to thumb our nose at the 12-minute time limit. Just be Kow, like we were our first year at Northern Harmony.

That year, we sang Sesame Street in a Japanese style, combined Pachebel's Canon with Green Day, and some ballad.

And we took third place.

Back to basics next year, I say...

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Also in Kow-related notes, my friend Kit made a great fansite for us here. A stellar job, and she going to try to do relatively big things with it. (A comprehensive list of all the songs we've sung, since we started back in 1998, for example)

Thanks a lot, Kit. I (and I'm sure the other members) really appreciate you being one of our fans from the very beginning. Your support means a lot.