Posted on 05/13/2011 9:55:15 PM PDT by tlb
WASILLA — When members of Wasilla High School’s symphonic jazz choir heard Friday it wouldn’t be singing the popular Queen hit “Bohemian Rhapsody” at this year’s graduation ceremony after working on it all year, the students couldn’t get their heads around it.
WHS Principal Dwight Probasco reportedly had received complaints from at least one parent that the 1975 hit written by Freddie Mercury wasn’t appropriate for the ceremony simply because Mercury was gay.
“The whole thing was just ridiculous,” senior Rachel Clark said Monday. “They’d played the song on the school intercom and we played it at prom.”
Choir member Casey Hight, a junior, was angry enough to contact a gay and lesbian support organization in Anchorage. They told her to contact the American Civil Liberties Union.
“I felt like the school was discriminating for sexual orientation and I felt it was wrong,” Hight said Monday. “It’s so stupid because there’s nothing sexual in the song. There aren’t even any cuss words.”
Although Probasco wouldn’t comment on the issue Monday, Senior Class Advisor Deb Haynes said Probasco has now agreed to allow the choir to sing an edited version of Bohemian Rhapsody that doesn’t include lyrics in one section about killing a man.
“The kids had put a lot of time into the song, but at graduation we really try to accommodate anything that might be a sensitive issue for anybody,” Haynes said, adding she didn’t understand why the song would have been a problem in the first place. “I’ve heard it a hundred times and it’s never bothered me.”
Hight said she believes Probasco decided to put the song back on the graduation program because he didn’t want any problems with the ACLU.
“We were joking about singing Elton John’s ‘Candle in the Wind,’ instead,” Clark said.
(Excerpt) Read more at frontiersman.com ...
Freddy Mercury was gay? Next they’ll be alleging that Janis Joplin used drugs!
Keith Jarrett is amazing and agree it is hard to believe these works were piano improvisation. The man truly is both a genius and an artist.
One fall he did some great variation on a hymn. I asked him how long it took him. He said “I just did it now”. I said “what?”. He said he went to some jazz clinic over the summer to learn some of the basics of how jazz works. He said all those endless hours trying various variations, stopping to rewrite, play a few notes again etc. were over.
He said he just needed an idea of where he wanted it to go and would try out a few “themes” in practice. But those long hours of rewrites were gone! He was both relieved, and I think a bit embarrassed by how he used to agonize over his songs!
It should be banned as well as “We WIll Rock You” because the songs suck...as a musical group Queen sucks. I remember when they first came out and were on American Bandstand and they sucked then too. Did I know they were gay? No, but they sucked anyway. Gay, straight or sideways, their music sucks... There I said it.
-PJ
That’s some silly sh!t there...
Breakin’ the Law
This is right up there with punishing/suspending kids for letting stinky farts on the school bus. How can you stop a fart, you can slow it down so it isn’t noisy, but the gas will come out. If they eat Activia or some other probiotic for two weeks they will have much less smelly gas. Cured my husband. He once emptied out an entire railway depot with an SBD (silent but deadly). ;-)
American Bandstand ????
"Fat bottomed girls you make the rockin' world go round"
The best rock song of all time...and it's NOT "gay themed".
Queen Live at Wembley... Freddy at his best.
‘the word jazz itself was once a slang term, regarded as naughty, for “having sex.”’
I believe that ‘jazz’ derives from ‘jizz’, considered to refer to semen.
I worked at an editing house where most of their early videos were cut... once spent an enchanting evening watching video of nude women riding bikes.
‘It’s that she’ll unite the white’s before we’re overwhelmed’
What the h*ll are you talking about!!!
Yeah very early 70’s maybe 71 or 72. I even think the song was Bohemian Rhapsody. I thought the song sucked even then. Like you couldn’t dance to it and it had no melody. I rated it a 35!
While we’re at it, let’s not forget male and female “jacks”. Good Gravy! That’s always amazed me.
>>> The article states the musical group is a “symphonic jazz choir”. That alone is hard enough for me to grasp
Better a “symphonic jazz choir” version then a polka rendition.
Bizmillah, no!
Polka!? That’s how the group RUSH got started! (Intro video clip to their latest concert).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0U_09XcJRI&feature=related
Bohemian Rhapsody as a polka? It would be to die.
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