Boys' Glee

I bought a CD recently of some choral songs by a Cambridge University group. As I listened to it one weekend morning while doing some cleaning up I heard an arrangement of “The Lord is my Shepard” that I had sung in 7^th grade boys’ glee club. I don’t think I had heard it since then but it was really lovely and it brought back memories. The Walter Reed Junior High School 7^th grade boys’ glee club was a strange thing in that it was cool to be in it. All my friends were in it also. After boys’ glee you could do choir in 8^th and 9^th grade. This didn’t have quite the cache, but that was somewhat offset by the fact that choir was coed. The singing thing sort of diminished in coolness after 7^th grade, plummeting in high school. I decided to take computer class in 8^th grade instead of choir, drawn in by the allure of the punch cards that were the staple of junior high computer classes at that time (this was slightly pre-Radio Shack TRS-80s). Anyway, it was a really nice arrangement. I can’t even imagine a public school group in the U.S. singing “The Lord is my Shepard” now. I remember hearing that Mr. Kennedy, the glee club and choir teacher, died of AIDS not long after I graduated from high school. That was not uncommon in L.A. in the mid-80s.