Put a choir together in a hotel and they will spread some noise around. We might have been singing Mozart’s Requiem in Chichester Cathedral at 9 o’clock, but by 11 it was Bryan Adams and Queen.
The university choirs festival is one of my highlights of the year. A choir of some 400 voices from ten or so higher education institutions tackle a large-scale choral work from the classical back-catalogue with as much finesse as we can muster. Then we leave the cathedral behind, disperse to our various hostelries and sing till the early hours.
I always look round to see how much we’re annoying the other guests, but on this occasion they were joining in. And the hotel manager looked pleased, because he saw a decent review on Trip Advisor coming his way. So that’s Travelodge, Chichester. Comfy bed – what little I saw of it – friendly staff and a sound-proof bar.
The only limitation to such communal carolling is the range of the repertoire. The demise of Top of the Pops has meant that the greatest hits of the last ten years have not spread through the generations as much as the pop song once did. The only time I have any idea what’s number one is at Christmas, when the media make much of it.
But even that shared heritage of TOTP is disappearing. If you watch re-constituted episodes, you’ll see that the heavy hand of the revisionist is now upon it. Footage showing anyone who has been arrested or convicted of sexual misdemeanours has been excised from the record. Given that this could be a DJ or a performer, there’s not a great deal left from the 1970s.
It’s not unlike the way Trotsky and his mates were air-brushed out of Soviet photographs.
Curiously, as far as I know, this edict does not apply to anyone involved in armed robbery, drugs offences or tax evasion. (I won’t name names here, in case I worry the editor.) That leaves a handful of episodes intact.
But it makes me wonder how long it will be before songs I dare not sing, by artists I cannot mention, and introduced by DJs who shall remain anonymous, are allowed back into history.
Memory itself cannot be expurgated – it does that for itself.
* Dr Chris Upton is keeping quiet at Newman University Birmingham
