Piqued

I’m really loving The Family Force 5 Christmas Pageant album.  Ridiculous, but so fun.  “The Baby” is one of the FF5 originals and it’s particularly amusing.

Listen here.

Lyrics:

North Star
Hanging in the sky
Shining down (Shining down)
Where he lies
Going to meet a life changer
Sleeping in a manger tonight

Riding on down into Bethlehem City (City)
Hey, Mary, girl
A baby so pretty (Pretty)
Got you some Frankincense
Got you some myrrh
Got a dump truck full of presents
Should I drop ‘em right hurr?

Gifts (For the Baby)
Presents (For the Baby)
I’ll make it rain (All night on the Baby)
I got some silver and gold (Hey, Hey)
Let the legend be told (Hey, Hey)
(Don’t you know that I’m all about the baby?)

Wrapped up in some swaddling clothes
Get the 411
You know I think that Mary knows
Yeah, We came this far
We are the kings that know who you are
Riding on down into Bethlehem City (City)

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Here at Texas A&M, the student organization responsible for bringing a bit of culture our way is MSC Opas. The few shows I’ve attended in the past have been most enjoyable. The Irish Tenors concert last November was particularly fantastic. Last night’s East Village Opera Company performance was no exception.

Since I procrastinated about finding someone to go with (being single has its drawbacks), I didn’t find someone to give my second ticket to until 45 minutes before the show. But thankfully, a friend of mine was interested in going on short notice so the ticket wasn’t wasted. And he knows more about opera than I do, so it was interesting to hear his perspective on this opera company meets rock band.

Indeed, if you’ve never heard this mixture before, you’re really missing out. Although last night was the first time I had heard true opera performed in a rock fashion, it’s not the first time I’ve had the joy of listening to amazing opera singers against the backdrop of crunchy guitars and bombastic drums. Finnish gothic/orchestral metal band Nightwish featured a female opera singer until recently, and their stuff sounds amazing. Less opera-influenced but similarly enjoyable rock bands are Within Temptation and Trans-Siberian Orchestra (best known for their excellent Christmas albums, but which also did a great Beethoven-themed album). So, since I was already a big fan of this sort of band, I was interested to see what EVOC was all about. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting anything quite as polished as the aforementioned bands since I hadn’t heard of EVOC before, but half-way through the show I was glad to see I was wrong.

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