Barton Hills Choir (2019)

One Liner: The elementary school choir from the campus closest to Zilker Park.

Wikipedia Genre: Awesomeness (and no Wikipedia)
Home: Austin

Poster Position: 29

Both Weekends

Thoughts:  Like School of Rock, I'm pretty much just going to give you my review from last year.

Dammit.  I don't think we even had an elementary school choir when I was a kid, they were too busy bussing us all over town and spending all of their money on crazy ass bus drivers and diesel instead of innovative music programs and fancy microphones with pop filters. 

But this is freaking so awesome.  And its actually good.  I've just let YouTube autoplay all morning despite being done with this post, because the tunes are legitimately enjoyable.
I just read an interview with the choir director, Gavin Tabone, and I couldn't love his attitude more.  Oh, and in case you aren't going to read the article, just know that he mentions that he has between 150 and 200 kids involved in the choir program at an elementary school with about 375 kids.  That is amazing.  And he's helping these kids find a real, deep love for music, something that will make them better people for the rest of their lives.  Because complete fanatics about music, like people who would write about 100+ bands in their spare time, are the best kind of people.  ;)

Before I get into a new batch of videos, here are the past few years' reviews.

• 2014's Review.
• 2015's Review.
• 2016's Review (among other stuff)
• 2017's Review has a bunch of awesome Grateful Dead songs.  I loved it.  I am going to keep those videos in here, down below, because they are quite frankly quite a bit stronger than the two new ones I found.

Looks like they did some Talking Heads stuff this year to get prepared for this year's Fest.  Here is "Wild Wild Life."

I'd take their Dead stuff from last year over that any day, but that's just me.

And here is "(You Make Me Feel Like a) Natural Woman."  Why was I not allowed to be born in 2009?

Let's go back to last year and the awesome Dead stuff (and because I'm lazy, this commentary is all the same): "Ripple" is a jam anyway, and these kids do it up right.

I love that song anyway, but hearing a roomful of kids throwing down serious harmonies? Aw man. 51k views of that video (and I just added eight to the count).  How about another classic, one that reminds me of school because its the last song played in Freaks and Geeks?

Only 1,850 views on that video, which only utilizes two girls from the choir, so I guess you have a less robust crowd of parents and grandparents clicking to view the song.  "Cassidy" is also pretty solid, as is "Scarlet Begonias."  One more, let's get the whole choir involved. Here is "Touch of Grey."

SOMEONE BUILD ME A DAMN TIME MACHINE RIGHT NOW SO I CAN TELL MY PARENTS TO MOVE ME TO BARTON HILLS TO SING IN THIS CHOIR AND THEN JOIN SCHOOL OF ROCK SO THAT I COULD BE BIGGER THAN THE BEATLES TODAY!!!

Really cool deal, first that this choir director takes the time to make this a truly cool thing, and second that the ACL folks sign them up to come and perform on a real deal stage at the Festival.  Good stuff all around.  Hooray for humanity!