One Song at a Time 16

Falcon

The Rah Band

Shocking Music 1980

After pre-training training for two years on The Aston Training Scheme I headed off to St John’s College, Nottingham, to study for the ordained ministry in 1981. In almost every respect it was eye-opening.

The family of three became a family of four within a year.  Plus Abi the Labrador and Katie the cat (another story).

My interests in politics, football, reading, music and writing finally found an outlet. I swear (don’t mock) amongst everything else for which I am grateful, college life saved me from being dull. I didn’t think I had many questions about the Christian life. Turned out I had thousands. I put them in a bag and took them with me. Every now and then I empty one out. Occasionally I don’t put it back.

We’ll get to the music in a minute. College had a drama group called Junction 25 Theatre Company. I didn’t join for the first year because it was demanding enough for my family without me getting too extra-curricular. But at the end of our first year they put on a show and we went to watch. It was a high standard compared to church drama sketches I had experienced. And there was dance.

Now then. Behave. There was a tradition of Christian dance in evangelical churches at the time. Vice-Principal Tom Smail called it ‘Psychosomatic ecstasy dressed by Laura Ashley’.

This was anything but. Stitching together three decent pieces of eighties music the troop depicted creation, fall and redemption. The thing is, the dancing was tight but it wasn’t complicated. 30 years before the invention of Strictly it left even the most unco of us thinking we could do that. Eventually I did.

This song was the final of the three pieces. The next year another student and I wrote a musical which we rehearsed for a year and put on over seven nights at college and Nottingham Co-op Arts Theatre. I still can’t believe we did it. I’m a bit embarrassed by the music now, but immensely proud of our achievement. It was a unique opportunity to have 70-100 volunteer actors, musicians, stage-hands and front-of-house staff.

Douglas Adams once said that the secret of flying is to throw yourself at the ground and miss. College drama was the ingredient that left me believing I could do things. I failed at quite a lot over the years but it never really bothered me. To some extent, then, we were too stupid to believe we might fail.

Listening to the tune again it’s all a bit Bob James but I’m back in College Chapel, chairs pushed back, learning choreography. Perfect in weakness? Maybe there’s something to that.